In their comprehensive history of settlement in the Occupied Territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar describe what actually happened when that country “disengaged”: the ruined territory was not released “for even a single day from Israel’s military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day.” After the disengagement, “Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the
...more
