By Reuven Koret
December 22, 2003
Most of the commentary following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy address of December 18 has focused on the carrots extended, primarily to the Americans, of halting settlement expansion, removing unauthorized outposts and, for the first time, redeploying forces and relocating Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Much less attention has been paid to Sharon's stick. While pledging allegiance to the Roadmap as the preferred course for Israel, he also raised the possibility that the Palestinians would not fulfill their responsibilities, leading to indefinite deferral of Roadmap implementation.
Since the Arafat-appointed puppet government has indicated no willingness to dismantle and disarm terror groups, the first step in the entire Roadmap, Sharon has a safe bet. He is in effect giving notice of Israel's intentions to take actions which would lead not to a Palestinian state as envisioned by the Roadmap but rather to a cantonized autonomy that Sharon has long envisioned and preferred.
In this eventuality, Israel would redeploy according to new lines of its choosing, no doubt including the Jordan Valley, most areas of the Western ridge overlooking the coastal plain and Ben Gurion airport, the greater Jerusalem area, and the southern Gush Etzion bloc. Israel would remain able to prevent the flow of weapons and personnel in, out and between the Palestinian autonomous areas. Israel would maintain east-west security corridors enabling transportation from the coast to the valley.
The map of the Disengagement Plan is likely to resemble the classic "Allon Plan" or "Two Column" plan that Israeli pragmatists, from Labor and Likud, have long favored.
Israel would be encumbered by a sovereign Palestine, or multinational forces. Israel would retain the freedom of action to enter these areas for security purposes, including protection of communities and Israeli citizens on the other side of the security fence. Until the PA implements the Roadmap, including dismantling of terror organizations and governmental reform, Israeli would withhold recognition of a Palestinian state. More than that: the IDF would retain a free hand to dismantle the terror apparatus if the PA will not.
There is another, more subtle calculus, at work here as well. Sharon knows that any "relocation" of Jewish communities will be a wrenching trauma for Israeli society. In the "stick" scenario outline above, residents of the dozen or more Jewish communities that Israel would relocate could be called on to strengthen and thicken other parts of Judea, Samaria or even blocs in Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip.
If most of the residents uprooted from their homes, and those who support, could see that their sacrifice was truly strengthening Israel's hold on essential portions of its Biblical inheritance and preventing existential dangers to the Jewish nation, their loss will not be perceived as in vain.
More than that: the "transfer" of Jews from their homes on "Palestinian" side of the fence will unleash forces that are likely to lead to the reciprocal relocation of Arabs now living on the Israel side of the fence. That may also include self-defined Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel, starting with those who actively assist and support terror organizations. In any case, the Arabs would not see this redeployment as a victory for terrorism or a success in uprooting the Jews by force. And their dream of a state and a return to all of Palestine would recede from their grasp.
The brilliance of the Sharon Disengagement Plan is that it is wholly consistent with American interests. The last thing Uncle Sam needs is the emergence of an Arafat-led terror nation, which as a sovereign state would be free to import weaponry and people to further destabilize the region while enabling European- and Arab backed forces to prevent Israel from intervening to thwart threats and pursue terrorists.
While the Europeans and the Arabs will no doubt oppose any unilateral Israeli actions, and the State Department and White House may publicly express displeasure at them, the end result -- including the world witnessing the trauma of forced evacuation of Jews from their homes -- will reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into what people of good will recognize it to be: a border dispute like dozens of others around the world. Even people of ill-will may find it impossible to defend a Palestinian Authority that has rejected step one of the Roadmap.
In effect, by tightly embracing the Roadmap, Sharon is wielding it, to use an American idiom, as a baseball bat. True, the Palestinians could thwart his best laid plans by fulfilling their part of the Roadmap, throwing the ball -- to mix sport metaphors -- back to the Israeli court. But who expects that? In all probability, we can count on the Palestinians to swing and miss yet another opportunity to miss an opportunity.
A renewed spate of terror attacks is likely to trigger activation of the Disengagement Plan. Sharon would point to any such outrage, after long inaction against terror infrastructure, as proof of the Palestinian Authority's rejection of the Roadmap. Israel would embark on a campaign to wipe out the terrorist strongholds, after which Israeli forces would redeploy along the "improved" lines that Sharon envisages and his hand would be strengthened for relocation of a few isolated Jewish communities.
On the other hand, it is possible that after six months not much of anything will have changed, or other events more dramatic will recast the conflict and the entire regional dynamic. There too Sharon's ultimative embrace of the Roadmap and his Disengagement Plan is a win-win move, decisively answering the left-wing taunt of "What's the alternative?"
The situation calls to mind the story of the medieval bishop who has sentenced the local rabbi to death for refusing to convert. The rabbi, knowing of the bishop's love for his wolfhound, promises that he will teach the pooch to sing if only his own execution could be stayed for six months. The bishop, though skeptical, accepts. A fellow Jew whispers worriedly to the rabbi: "But Rebbe, you can't teach a dog to sing!" The Rabbi responds: "Yes, I know that, but who under Heaven knows what will happen in six months? The dog may die. The bishop may die. . . ."
Ariel Sharon is not a political lightweight, and he wasn't born yesterday. His Disengagement Plan, for all its risks and real costs, resembles the strategy of a sumo.
He is operating in a small ring, constrained on all sides. What he has done, in effect, is to deftly wield the power of the Roadmap to throw his domestic and foreign opponents off-balance. Their aggressive charges, directed at him, serve only to propel themselves right out of the ring, leaving him standing, weary but -- against the odds -- victorious and fit to fight another day.
Come to think of it, Sharon's sport is one at which the Jewish people have excelled through the ages.
Call it Jew-jitsu.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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