The scenes are seared into our memory. Rage, anger, violence, tenderness, tears, compassion, sadness, confusion, incongruity, conviction, determination and great strength of character. All these words and more are part of the remarkable portrait of one of the most compelling moments in Israel’s young history.

Three years ago this week, the Jewish state unilaterally withdrew all Jews from the Gaza Strip. There were a number of justifications for the initiative. Chief among them was the belief that it was inappropriate, on many levels, for the Jewish state to rule over the more than one million Arabs who live in Gaza. That the pullout was undertaken unilaterally, without any quid from the Palestinian Authority for Israel’s significant quo, was one of the main criticisms of the withdrawal even among supporters of the idea.

Israel and Israelis paid and continue to pay a steep price in humanitarian, financial and strategic terms for disengagement from the Palestinians of Gaza. As CJN reporter Sheldon Kirshner writes in a feature story this issue, “the majority [of the former residents of Gush Katif] are still dazed and bitter.”

The government of Israel recently reported that “some 72 per cent of the families evacuated from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria” have taken up the re-settlement recovery options offered to them. The Disengagement Authority reported that “approximately NIS 8 billion [about $2.35 billion] has been invested in the disengagement process and in the rehabilitation of evacuees thus far… NIS 3 million [$883 million] has been invested in compensation and temporary and permanent residences for each family.”

The Authority further reported that “the average Gush Katif farmer has received, directly or indirectly, compensation up to NIS 5 million  [$1.5 million] for his plot of land.”

The government has not been ungenerous with the families and the individuals whose pullout-related miseries it caused. Of course, the damage wrought by those miseries cannot only be measured by material or financial loss. Some of that damage has cut far deeper and may last far longer than the time it takes to rebuild a home.

Strategically, Israel’s security seems lessened. The removal of the Israel Defence Forces and the subsequent putsch by Hamas have led to the creation of an Islamist, Iranian-backed, terrorist, mini-state along Israel’s southern border. Thousands of Qassam and other rockets have fallen on Israel since the unilateral withdrawal.

And yet, as many Israelis have also observed, the withdrawal has put paid to the notion that this leadership and this generation of Palestinians are interested in building an independent Palestinian state to live alongside an independent Jewish one. Hamas and its sponsors  show themselves time and again to be more interested in destroying the Jewish state than in building a Palestinian one. Palestinian behaviour in Gaza has been the yardstick by which most Israelis will measure any concessions in the West Bank.

Thus, it falls still to history to judge whether the withdrawal by Israel from Gaza in the August heat of 2005 was the right thing to do.