From the Wikipedia article you linked: > Bernard Avishai states that the Gaza withdrawal was designed to obviate rather than facilitate peace negotiations [...

From the Wikipedia article you linked: > Bernard Avishai states that the Gaza withdrawal was designed to obviate rather than facilitate peace negotiations [...] > Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weissglass, explained the meaning of Sharon's statement further: The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state [...] > Shimon Peres, then Vice Prime Minister, stated in an interview that: "We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography"