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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
August 12, 2005
In the year and a half since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his intention to pull Israeli troops and settlements out of Gaza there has been considerable argument, both in and out of Israel, about the significance of the move. The arguments essentially boil down to two.
The first, which amounts to conventional wisdom in left-wing circles in Israel and abroad, is that Gaza withdrawal is much ado about very little. Sharon, it is said, is only leaving Gaza so he can consolidate Israel's hold on the West Bank. Once Gaza is evacuated -- along with the four settlements in the northern West Bank -- Sharon will tell the world, and especially the Americans, that he has done enough for now. Israel needs a breather, five or ten or twenty years, before implementing the Roadmap's West Bank requirements. And, according to this school of thought, the United States will yield, thereby relegating the Roadmap to the trash heap.
The alternative argument is that Gaza disengagement is hugely significant. Articulated most emphatically by the Israeli right and its supporters abroad, this argument holds that Gaza withdrawal is the first step toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The evidence: Gaza disengagement represents the first time Israel has ever yielded territory to the Palestinians. The Palestinian flags unfurled over Gaza will be the first ever to wave over sovereign Palestinian territory. The dismantling of Jewish settlements in Gaza is thus a precedent which will lead, almost inevitably, to the return to the pre-'67 lines and the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
At this point, no one knows if the particulars of either argument will be proven correct. But one thing is certain. Those who argue that Gaza withdrawal is insignificant have already been proven wrong. It may not lead to peace, at least not immediately, but it has already changed the political situation of both Palestinians and Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is by no means over but, at the same time, it will never be the same.
Clearly Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas does not underestimate the significance of disengagement. He has repeatedly called on Palestinians to refrain from any action that will lead Sharon to reverse or delay the withdrawal. Key Palestinian religious authorities have joined Abbas' call on Palestinians to prevent violence. One imam issued a fatwa prohibiting any Muslim from taking actions that would result in a delay in withdrawal.
Almost across the board (with the predictable exception of the extremists who would rather kill Israelis than achieve a state) there is an understanding that Gaza disengagement represents an opportunity that must be seized with both hands. As Abbas put it in a speech this week, "The withdrawal must take place in calm ... so that we can confirm to the world that we deserve a state and that this step is just the beginning and not the end."
At last the Palestinians are demonstrating that Abba Eban's jibe that they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" is no longer true. By seizing the Gaza opportunity, the Palestinians are, in fact, emulating the successful strategy that the Jewish national movement employed to achieve a state.
That strategy entailed acceptance of any plan that would have enabled Jews to establish statehood in any part of Palestine. No matter how small the land area or how insecure the proposed borders, the Jewish leadership said "yes" on the grounds that independence anywhere was better than independence nowhere, knowing they could always push for border changes later.
The Palestinians, for their part, said "no" to the same plans although the various proposals were far more favorable to them than to the Jews. They believed the Zionists were entitled to nothing and therefore they would accept nothing less than everything.
It's obvious how that turned out. The Israelis have it all and the Palestinians have not one acre under their control (until Gaza withdrawal that is).
Apparently the Palestinian leadership has now learned history's lesson. Although it remains determined to achieve statehood in the entire West Bank/Gaza/East Jerusalem, it will establish self-government in Gaza first. Mahmoud Abbas and his people understand that successfully administering Gaza -- and ensuring that it is no staging ground for attacks on Israel -- will almost surely lead to significant Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
In Israel as well, disengagement has already produced significant changes. Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to quit the Cabinet to protest Gaza withdrawal has already energized the vast Israeli center that supports it. Ariel Sharon says that he will not cede the Likud party to Netanyahu and will defeat him, and the forces of Greater Israel, in a Likud primary. But others are saying that Sharon could more surely defeat Netanyahu and his crowd if he were to leave Likud and establish a new centrist party with perhaps Shimon Peres, Yosef Lapid, Ehud Olmert and moderate religious figures. Either way, Sharon is likely to defeat any candidate who runs on a platform calling disengagement a blunder and pledging eternal loyalty to West Bank settlements.
But not necessarily.
The next Israeli election will take place in 2006. Just ten years previously, in 1996, Prime Minister Shimon Peres was the overwhelming favorite in a campaign against the self-same Netanyahu. With the nation still mourning the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, and the Oslo peace process popular, Peres should have won easily -- and with a strong mandate for peace.
But it was not to be. Hamas, determined to sink Oslo and those Palestinians who negotiated it, launched a wave of terror that hardened Israeli attitudes. Netanyahu narrowly defeated Peres, backed away from commitments previously made by Rabin and Peres, and Oslo sustained damage from which it was never to fully recover.
It could happen again. If Gaza withdrawal succeeds and if Israelis feel safer out of Gaza than they felt while still there, both the peace process and the vast majority of Israelis who still support it will be rejuvenated. But if the 1996 example is repeated and the terror intensifies, then the Gaza withdrawal will have amounted to very little. Palestinians will have Gaza, and little chance of obtaining anything more. Israelis will have achieved a slight improvement in their demographic situation but not much beyond it.
Gaza withdrawal is certainly significant -- but how significant will largely be determined not by Israelis but by Palestinians.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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