In April 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon essentially blessing Sharon’s proposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in exchange for the US backing Israel’s positions that the future contours of Israel would account for “new realities on the ground” and not follow “the armistice lines of 1949,” as well as ending the Palestinian so-called right-of-return by “settling of Palestinian refugees there [in a new Palestinian State], rather than in Israel.” In response to the letter, Israel withdrew all Jewish civilians from Gaza and its military in September 2005.

Gaza has ravaged itself since then.

As a charitable generous gesture, several Jewish and Israeli businessmen purchased Israeli greenhouses and related equipment, and gifted them to the Palestinian Authority (PA) which had elected Mahmoud Abbas as president in January 2005. The PA never was able to secure any of it. Palestinian security officials were overrun, saying that the Gazans looted it completely, leaving nothing behind “like locusts,” as soon as Israel pulled out.

News reports at the time were prescient regarding “concerns about Gaza’s future.”

Abbas made grand and empty proclamations. The PA did not have the respect of Gazans and the region would not be controlled by its leader from the Fatah party.

A few months later, Palestinians elected Hamas to 58% of parliament. Then, in 2007, a mini civil war broke out it Gaza which routed the PA and gave Hamas exclusive control of the strip. Amid the public failure of Abbas, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon stressed his full support for Abbas and the PA, while he worried about food and aid getting to Gaza’s civilian population.

Does any of this ring familiar? Gazans overrun the Palestinian Authority; PA makes grand and empty declarations; Gazans saddle up with Hamas; UN worries about food and aid.

In 2025, twenty years after Israel left the Gaza Strip, the situation repeats. Gazans loot food and aid trucks; the UN decries the situation; Abbas reads statements as though anyone respects and listens to him; and Hamas – or whatever is left of it – still has the support of the local population.

The underlying reality in Gaza is that the western-backed Palestinian Authority has never had a presence in the strip. The region has never truly been part of “Palestine” as envisaged by the many conferences over the last decades. How can there be a “two state solution” of Israel and Palestine, when the dreamed up “Palestine” is two distinct entities itself? What are countries “recognizing” when they cannot see reality?

The Greenhouses Swarm of 2005. The Fatah Swarm of 2007. The Israel Swarm of 2023. The Aid Swarm of 2025.

Gaza devours charity, donors, neighbors and itself so completely, that the request for ever more attention and aid is either completely nonsensical or understandable. Or both.