PM: My votes in favor of Gaza Disengagement were cast before plan finalized

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushed during a press conference to explain his decision to vote in favor of Israel’s 2005 Gaza Disengagement before eventually resigning from the government.

He explains that he had been finance minister at the time and had wanted to finish carrying out a series of “reforms that revolutionized the Israeli economy.”

“I was caught at a quandary because I wanted to complete those reforms, but I knew that once the government actually votes to tear out the communities and to get out [of Gaza], that’s it — my reforms would be stymied,” he says.

Netanyahu explains that the initial votes that the coalition headed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon were aimed at testing the waters on the idea because it hadn’t yet been decided.

“What we’re going to do is create the possibility — by the Knesset bills — that if we decide to leave, there’ll be compensation for those who leave. That was the famous vote that people show on television. When the actual vote came in the cabinet to leave, I said, ‘You cannot leave the Philadelphi Corridor.’ And I resigned from the government, and I voted against it.”