Thanks for all the reponses. At least I feel a little better about the fact that getting this panel off seems to sometimes be a pretty challenging undertaking. Removing door panels is one of my least favorite things to do on a car, because I'm always afraid of breaking the fragile clips, or messing up the holes in the panel that the clips attach to, but I've never actually broken a panel before. It's insane that removing a door panel can be this difficult and dangerous (to your wallet, anyway)

The thing that has me thrown for a loop is that the youtube video I was following was very explicit about NOT lifting upward on the panel. The guy even retracted his statement earlier in the video to lift upward, with an emphatic admonition that this is only to be done on the front panels, not on the rears, and then pointed to the clips to explain why. He also said to start from the rear to release the panel from the upper clips and move forward, which is what I did when I had my mishap. I suspect this job is a lot like the CV boot job - a small percentage of very fortunate X5 owners can release their axles from the outer connection, providing easy access to the outer boot, while the rest of us poor slobs have to remove the axle from the inner connection, which is five times more work. But I digress...

OK, I'll struggle with this wretched panel some more. I'll see if I can find a tool I can wedge in there. Hopefully I can find someone (like Fibernew, maybe) who can repair the 3" tear I put in the panel. But I have a lot of other car projects underway, so the X5 may be a 3-door vehicle for a little while.

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2003 X5 4.4i
1992 Porsche 968
2007 328i
2014 Subaru Forester XT