Strategic Assessment

Implementation of the disengagement from Gaza in August 2005 had all the ingredients for a media extravaganza that would be disastrous for Israel’s image. Scenes of soldiers and police having physically to drag settlers from their homes; preparations for possible armed resistance by those opposed to the decision; the specter of Jew fighting Jew; Israeli bulldozers leveling the settlements after their evacuation as if a scorched earth policy was in progress: all these were images that might well cast Israel as a warring, militaristic society, even toward its own citizens.