Aug. 15 will mark the 10th anniversary of the disengagement, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the evacuation of 21 settlements and four additional settlements in northern Samaria in 2005. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the “father of the settlements,” shocked the world — and himself — in 2004 when he announced his intent to evacuate the Israel Defense Forces' bases and dismantle all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. No one believed him at first. Sharon? The very man who dropped settlements on every hill in Judea and Samaria? The same man who invented the system of putting up scattered outposts throughout the entire area, and who declared that “Netzarim was the same as Tel Aviv?”

But Sharon was serious. The "Bulldozer" who built the settlements became the "Steamroller" who tore them down. Within just a few months, the settlers realized that their father and founder had risen to destroy them. They also knew that he was the only one in any way capable of doing a thing like that. Only he had the necessary inner strength, the determined sense of leadership and the requisite self-confidence. Only he could turn on his life's work, rip up 25 thriving settlements and impose the hegemony of the Israeli kingdom on its insurgent representatives.

Sharon implemented the disengagement over eight days in August 2005. It went faster and was easier than originally thought. Though tens of thousands of national-religious young people gathered across the Gaza Strip to foil the decree, they ultimately failed. Israel withdrew from Gaza. It evacuated every last inch of territory and re-stationed itself along the familiar, internationally recognized Green Line.

A few months later, in January 2006, Sharon suffered a massive stroke and went into a coma from which he would never recover. Ehud Olmert succeeded him as prime minister and engaged in a last heroic attempt by the Israeli state to attain peace with the Palestinians. The effort collapsed when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas didn’t bother to respond to the generous peace proposal that Olmert offered during his final days in office.