Strategic Assessment

The disengagement plan, or more precisely, the plan to evacuate Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria, is a watershed for Israel’s policy in the territories captured thirty-eight years ago in the Six Day War. In June 1967, Israel stood alone, facing what it perceived as an existential threat, in the form of a military coalition that united nearly the entire Arab world. The coalition assembled its forces, violated the understandings that Egypt had reached after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, and threatened war. Nearly four decades later, Israel has initiated a disengagement plan with the aim of staving off a completely different threat to its survival – the demographic threat.