Disengaging Democracy

Disengaging Democracy, from award winning documentary filmmaker Igal Hecht, takes a rare and provocative look at what happened to Israeli democracy before, during, and after the historical Gaza Disengagement of 2005. In October 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took an historic step to pull Israeli forces and citizens out of the Gaza Strip. A year later in the community of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, over 40,000 police officers and soldiers began uprooting inhabitants from their homes. Though the decree for disengagement had passed legally in the Israeli Knesset, this issue was not considered legal or enforceable by many of the 8,000 Israeli citizens living in Gush Katif. Many former residents of the area have claimed that in the months leading up to the pullout, the Israeli government disengaged many of the basic democratic rights of its citizens.