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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 27, 2004
The third largest party in Israel's governing coalition -- the centrist Shinui party -- is offering a way out of the current nightmare. It is worthy of serious consideration by Israelis, Palestinians, and the Bush administration.
The Shinui plan comes in the context of a series of events that have proven, yet again, that the status quo is disastrous for Israel. It has been 11 years since the Israeli government first declared its determination to divest itself of "Gaza First," and yet Israeli forces are still there. No matter that Prime Minister Sharon wants out, or that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not want their sons defending the Gaza settlements, Israeli forces are there, being killed and killing as if Israel's future depended on it.
In fact, Israel's future depends on getting out of Gaza. If the pictures emanating from Gaza are not persuasive enough, then the Bush administration's decision not to veto a UN resolution condemning Israel's actions in Gaza, should be.
The President's decision not to wield the veto on Israel's behalf was most likely caused by his recognition that, given the situation in Iraq, the United States could not stand silent in the face of the Gaza violence. The last thing the administration wants is for 130,000 Americans in uniform to be identified not only with prisoner abuse and the killing of innocent bystanders in Iraq, but with the escalating killing and home demolition in Gaza.
It is becoming ever more clear that providing Likud activists with the opportunity to veto the Gaza withdrawal was a terrible mistake. At the same time, the horrors in Gaza - which would likely be occurring even if the referendum had succeeded - demonstrate that unilateral action by Israel is not going to stop the violence.
That is why the Bush administration has begun emphasizing the roadmap again. Israel can combat violence unilaterally if it has to but it cannot make peace unilaterally. Nor can it break out of a status quo in which Israeli streets are empty of tourists, foreign investment dwindles, and Israelis themselves despair of a future for their country. Changing that requires dealing with the Palestinians, even with Palestinians whom Israel does not like - and without insisting on conditions that have stymied negotiations in the past.
That is the conclusion reached by Shinui. As a centrist party which has grown dramatically in recent years, Shinui offers its plan knowing that it has to be taken seriously. The Sharon coalition will collapse if Shinui's fifteen members walk out.
The plan calls for the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without insisting on an end to violence first. Writing in Maariv, party leader Tommy Lapid says that Israel must "return to the road map and renew negotiations with Abu Ala, while waiving the condition that the Palestinian Authority first put an end to terror." He writes that waiting for the violence to cease in advance of negotiations is "not practical."
That reality has been proven by recent events. Ever since President Bush announced the roadmap in 2003, Israel has resisted complying with its terms until the Palestinian Authority takes on the terrorists. The Palestinians have refused, saying that they do not have the capacity to take on Hamas and that they are not inclined to enter into a civil war when there is no guarantee that they will get anything from Israel in return. And many simply do not want to fight the terrorists because they support them, pure and simple. As a result, the stalemate has deepened.
Lapid says that Israel's insistence on Palestinian action as a precondition (rather than as an action taken in the context of negotiations), thwarts any hope for negotiations.
"The Palestinian Authority is not willing to enter into a civil war with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, either out of weakness or due to Arafat's belief that we understand only the language of terror. The Palestinian Authority will not serve as Israel's contractor for destroying terror," he writes.
Lapid says that Israel cannot, at this point, count on the Palestinians to combat the violence. "We are the only ones who can do this job. Therefore we must adopt the slogan that Yitzhak Rabin used, i.e. that we will conduct negotiations as though there were no terror, and fight terror as though there were no negotiations," he writes.
Lapid's policy of roadmap implementation without preconditions would start with the Gaza withdrawal and the dismantling of some settlements in the West Bank. Thus, the Sharon "Gaza First" plan would serve as the foundation of a roadmap process leading toward security for Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state. In contrast to the original Sharon plan, Gaza withdrawal would be neither unilateral nor freestanding. It would be part and parcel of a revived peace process. In other words "Gaza First" is a good start; but if the process ends there, it will amount to very little.
The Shinui plan, Lapid writes, is necessary because the Israeli public "will not tolerate the losses caused by political stalemate. They do not want to live from one terror attack to the next, with no hope for a solution. Shinui will not sit for long in a government that does not do a thing to renew the peace process. The juxtaposition of the victory of the extreme Right in the referendum on disengagement with the tragedies that befell our soldiers in Gaza creates a public momentum that the government must listen to...."
Of course, if it does, it will lose the far right factions that defeated the Sharon withdrawal in the first place. That too would be a plus. Lapid says he would happily welcome Labor into the coalition in exchange for the extremists who would walk out if Sharon adopted the Shinui proposal. That is precisely what needs to happen. And the sooner the better.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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