The presidential and municipal elections, the Palestinian-Israeli summit and the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip were the most significant events that made the year 2005 distinctive in the Palestinian history.
In spite of the truce deal reached by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February and largely observed by Palestinian militant groups, intermittent flare-up of violence between the two sides proved that peace is still far away.
Smooth transition
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After the veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November 2004, there was a smooth transition of power, contrary to the expectations that the Palestinians would be drawn into internal strife and bloodshed for several years.
On Jan. 9, 2005, Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate, was elected as Arafat's successor on his platform of establishing an independent Palestinian state through peace negotiations rather than armed struggle.
"The smooth election of Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinian President had surprised some parties mainly Israel which expected the Palestinians to fail to choose another leader except Arafat," said Kholousi Abu Shaban, a Palestinian teacher at a Gaza secondary school.
The successful presidential elections encouraged the Palestinians to continue with the democratic process by holding the three-stage municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in which the radical Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) made a strong showing and posed challenge to the dominant Fatah led by Abbas in the coming legislative elections due on Jan. 25, 2006.
"Fatah movement that suffered from internal weakness and lack of organization over the past years woke up and began to work hard in order to be able to compete in any coming elections with Hamas and other factions," said Abdallah al-Hasham, a Fatah member in Gaza.
Faltering ceasefire
Abbas and Sharon reached an agreement in their first summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Feb. 8 to end over four years of conflict.
As a goodwill gesture, Israel released 900 Palestinian prisoners whose hands had no Israeli blood and ceded security control of the West Bank cities of Jericho and Tulkarem to the Palestinian National Authority.
In a Cairo dialogue in March, Abbas persuaded 13 Palestinian factions, including militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad ( holy war), to declare observance of calmness until the end of this year while reserving the right to respond to Israeli attack.
Abbas also ordered deployment of Palestinian security forces across the Gaza Strip to stop militants from launching rockets on Israel and to impose a ban on armed rallies as part of efforts to enforce law and order.
But he resisted Israeli pressure to disarm militant groups by force for fear of sparking civil war.
Sharon insisted that peace talks would not be resumed until
Abbas took steps to fight terror and rein in militants.
Abbas urged militants to refrain from firing rockets in retaliation for Israeli attack so as not to give Israel pretext to escalate violence and tighten restriction on the Palestinians movements.
However, the militant groups never allowed the Israeli aggression to escape without price, thus making the calm so fragile that it was near collapse for several times.
Following Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September, Palestinian militants carried out two suicide bombings in Israel's coastal towns of Hadera and Netanya and fired rockets from Gaza to neighboring Israeli areas to revenge the Israeli killing of militants in the West Bank.
Israel hit back with air strikes and artillery shelling against militant targets in Gaza but stopped short of sending army back into the territory to avoid all-out conflict.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that a renewal of the truce depended on Israel ending arrests and targeted killings of Palestinian militants and release of Palestinian prisoners.
Historic withdrawal
Israel ended its 38-year occupation of Gaza on Sept. 12 after all the 21 Jewish settlements and soldiers protecting them were evicted from the coastal strip under Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan.
It was seen as not only very significant for the Palestinians who felt that half of their dream of freedom and independence became true, but also a chance to revive the stalled peace talks on implementation of the internationally backed roadmap plan.
Mahmoud al-Zahar, top Hamas leader in Gaza, stressed that it was resistance and sacrifice of hundreds of martyrs that pushed the Israeli occupiers out of Gaza.
He also vowed not to give up arms until the end of occupation of all the Palestinian land.
Though there were no more Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks that made the Palestinians daily life so hard, they feared that Gaza would be turned into a big jail as Israel retained control over Gaza's border, coastline and airspace.
Israel closed the Rafah crossing on Gaza's border with Egypt shortly before it quit the Gaza Strip, citing concern it would be used to smuggle weapons and militants from Egypt.
The Palestinian Authority and Israel finally reached a deal,
brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to reopen the Rafah crossing on Nov. 25 under the European Union supervision.
The deal allowed the Palestinians to run the crossing, the only gateway for Gazans to the outside world, for the first time without the presence of Israeli security forces.
Israel however can watch the crossing on television screens and object to particular travellers crossing into Gaza, but has no veto power.
Addressing the opening ceremony, Minister of Civil Affairs Mohammed Dahlan said it was the first step toward an independent Palestinian state.