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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
May 18, 2004
This past week, several Israeli columnists started referring to the 1000th Israeli victim of the terror wave that began after the collapse of the Oslo accords in the fall of 2000. Actually, the number is hovering just below the thousand mark but, close enough (975) for the media to start contemplating the implications of a thousand dead since the collapse of Oslo in contrast to the five killed in Israel during the last three Oslo years.
It just proves the old adage that even a bad peace is better than a good war, although nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian struggle of the past few years has had anything good about it.
But this past week stood out as particularly horrible for both Israelis and Palestinians. Since Tuesday, eleven Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza when their vehicles were hit by rockets. Twenty-six Palestinians were killed, including children.
Actually, looking at the photos of the Israeli dead in Haaretz, it is obvious that most of them are also children, although children who are in uniform and armed. But they are still kids. And, like Palestinian kids, they shouldn't be dying in Gaza.
After all, the Sharon government has already announced its intention to get out of Gaza. It is true that Likud party referendum voters rejected Sharon's plan (that amounted to only 2.2% of the electorate with a mere 1.3% of the electorate actually voting against it) but every survey indicates that the vast majority of Israelis support it. No one can doubt that Israel is pulling out whether Likud's anti-Sharon faction likes it or not.
So why are these kids dying? For what?
It is all reminiscent of John Kerry's 1971 question before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Vietnam War. "How do you ask a man to be the last to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
And what is Israel's mistake? Columnist Ari Shavit provides the answer in a Haaretz column. "The young guys...who were blown up with their armored personnel carrier... in Gaza differ from all of their comrades who have been killed here since September 2000. They differ, because they are no longer the victims of extremist Islam....They are the victims of the settlement enterprise."
Shavit's point is simple. It is the settlers' movement - not the Israeli public -- that defeated Prime Minister Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan. Every poll of the Israeli public showed overwhelming support for getting out of Gaza. Every poll of Likud party members showed the same thing. Israelis across the spectrum want out.
This is not to say that they do not want the IDF to defend Israelis from attacks emanating from Gaza; no one is suggesting that and certainly not Sharon. They simply want to end a situation where soldiers risk their lives defending settlements which should never have been there in the first place, and won't be there for much longer.
But the right-wing of the settlers' movement - and its supporters - was determined to thwart the will of those majorities and the prime minister. So they hustled and organized and defeated the Gaza withdrawal in the party vote.
It is obvious with hindsight (actually it was obvious even in foresight) that allowing Likud party members to make a decision affecting all Israelis made no sense. Imagine if we allowed the Democratic or Republican national committees (or party primary voters) to determine U.S. foreign policy! It would never happen, and it shouldn't.
But that is what happened in Israel. A tiny minority of Likud voters made the decision while the rest of the country - mainly its sons -- would have to pay the price.
A cause for hope is that Prime Minister Sharon seems unlikely to let this decision stand. A man known as the "bulldozer" is not going to allow a few zealots to stand in the way of a policy which he believes is necessary.
Nor should he. For too long, a fringe group which seemingly values a bunch of trailers outside of Nablus more than the whole of Tel Aviv (and which jeopardizes Tel Aviv to protect those trailers) has played a disproportionate role in determining Israel's future.
It is time for Israelis to say that enough is enough.
Shavit puts it like this. "For a long time, there was justification for showing understanding toward the settlers. There was justification for talking with them, carrying on a dialogue with them. Not any more. The attempt of the organized settlement movement to force on the citizens of Israel a war that is not their war is unforgivable. The attempt of the settlers to turn the public into the cannon fodder of the Greater Land of Israel obliges a resolute response. Because after the disengagement referendum, one thing is clear: It is either Israelis or settlers."
And not all settlers either. Most settlers are not ideologues. They moved to the settlements because they were inexpensive places to live, and the overwhelming majority of them chose to live in settlements adjacent to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These are, in fact, the settlements that will likely be included with Israeli following an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. And even in some of the far-flung settlements, many - if not most - settlers are ready to move back into Israel if they are compensated for the loss of their homes.
It wasn't those settlers who voted to keep Israeli soldiers risking (and losing) their lives over Gaza. No, it was the ideological fringe (some religious, some not) who honestly believe that outposts in the midst of a hostile Arab populace are more important than places like Haifa, Tel Aviv and Eilat. For them, a Gaza withdrawal would be the first step toward getting out of all the isolated outposts. They are right. It would be. And, for the sake of Israel's survival, it must be.
President Bush must do what he can to see that the Gaza withdrawal is implemented. His decision to begin dealing with Abu Ala and other Palestinian Authority figures is a step in the right direction: steering the unilateral Gaza withdrawal toward the long overdue implementation of the roadmap. That is the best way to ensure that fewer Israelis and Palestinians die for a mistake.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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