Whether pulling Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip, forging a new coalition, quitting his Likud party or suffering a stroke, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dominated the year's headlines from January to December.
In so doing, he won the enmity of his former right-wing allies, admiration from the international community and left the Palestinians largely bewildered.
The political whirlwind threw Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas into a spin over a year that saw him elected president in January but battling to prevent his own Fatah party from imploding come December.
Two general elections early next year will determine how much control both men will be able to continue exercising over events.
Sharon signalled his intention to uproot the 8,000 Jews living in 21 settlements in Gaza as long ago as February 2004, giving his opponents ample time to mobilise resistance.
His arch domestic rival Benjamin Netanyahu, who would later succeed him as head of Likud, quit the cabinet after the final decision was approved on August 7. Eleven days later, thousands of police and soldiers stormed the largest settlement of Neve Dekalim.
The opponents of the so-called disengagement plan had adopted "Jews don't expel Jews" as their mantra. They could not be more wrong.
Over the following five days - rather less than the scheduled three weeks - the security services won widespread admiration for keeping their cool while dragging settlers and supporters kicking and screaming out of the territory Israel began occupying in 1967.
The last settler was evicted from the settlement of Netzarim, a place Sharon declared in 2002 was as integral a part of Israel as Tel Aviv.
After troops finished demolishing settlers' homes and army bases, the Palestinian Authority assumed the poisoned chalice of responsibility for one of the world's most overcrowded and impoverished strips of land.
Under the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan, 2005 should have been the year when the Palestinians were awarded an independent state incorporating Gaza and the West Bank.
But Sharon decided to pull out unilaterally from Gaza after deciding that Palestinian patriarch Yasser Arafat could not be a partner for peace.
Sharon and Abbas, who was elected the late Arafat's successor as Palestinian president on January 9, initially tried to turn over a new leaf in relations.
A February summit, hosted by Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, ended with both men drawing a line under five years of hostilities.
A month later, Cairo underlined its emerging role in the peace process by hosting talks where the Palestinian factions called an informal truce.
The cool-down largely held, but the coastal city of Netanya was twice the target of Islamic Jihad suicide bombers.
Mutual recriminations over continuing violence, albeit at a lower level than at any other stage of the conflict, ensured that a second summit in June was a failure. The two men have not met since.
But Abbas was a two-time guest at the White House, where he was told not to expect statehood before the end of George W. Bush's term in 2009.
He did, however, persuade the US president not to back Israel's call for a ban on Islamist movement Hamas running in its first legislative polls, postponed until January 25.
Hamas' strong showing in local elections, spiralling lawlessness in the Palestinian territories and Fatah's failure to even agree on parliamentary candidates threatened the ruling party's hold on power like never before.
Sharon responded to rebellions in his party, largely sparked by anger over leaving Gaza, by ditching Likud and forming a faction called Kadima.
Seven Likud ministers jumped ship with him. The man who had been regarded as Israel's arch hawk also managed to attract former Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, who flounced out of the centre-left Labour party after being dethroned by trade unionist Amir Peretz.
The 'big bang' was completed as Netanyahu took over a right-wing Likud rump.
Sharon's minor stroke in December has so far failed to dent Kadima's ascendancy in opinion polls but underlined its dependency on the wellbeing of an overweight 77-year-old.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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