The uncertain future of Israel and the Gaza Strip
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - In the past few days it has become progressively more certain that Israel was truly taking a new road: pictures were seen around the world showing Israel's army and police evacuating the settlers from the Gaza Strip, "with sensitivity and firmness", as the commanders ordered. They may well have overdone the "sensitivity" bit, but there was no doubt on the firmness.
In his televised address to the nation, the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said very clearly that there could be no future for Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, surrounded by well over a million (most observers speak of a million and a half) oppressed, angry Palestinians. In itself this was a perfectly obvious point, but no previous Israeli government since 1967 appeared willing to understand it. Sharon himself only discovered it two years ago when he decided to withdraw Israel's army and settlers from the Strip .
The whole world is applauding this step and is anxiously following its implementation. The process is not yet complete, but several observations can already be made:
1) It is not at all clear what is going to happen in the Strip once both all the settlers and the Israeli Army have been withdrawn. The expectation is, of course, that the Palestinian Authority will take control of the entire territory and, with international help, will resuscitate its economy and improve life considerably for its population. None of this is certain. The armed Islamist organisation Hamas, branded by Israel, the U.S. and other countries as a terrorist organisation, and indeed the self-confessed author of numerous terrorist attacks against Israelis, is very strong in the Gaza Strip: with its own armed force (the Murabitun militia) it manifests every intention to be at least an equal partner with the PA in governing Gaza. Israel and the U.S. expect the PA and its President, Mahmoud Abbas, "Abu Mazen" to disarm Hamas and assert exclusive authority in the Strip, but this seems unlikely to happen. It would require a civil war for which President Abbas has no appetite, and which he might conceivably even lose, given the anarchic situation of the PA's own multiple security forces, perpetually feuding among themselves. And whether Gaza can develop economically will depend to a considerable measure on how much freedom of access Israel will grant the area. That the Israeli army will no longer be permanently stationed inside the territory does not mean the end of Israel's role as the occupying power. Israel will continue to control the airspace and the access by sea as well as, to a very large extent, overland. The weaker the Palestinian Authority, the more stringent the controls that Israel will believe it needs to impose, for its own security, to prevent the Gaza Strip from becoming one large terrorist base, as critics of Mr. Sharon say is likely to happen.
2) Hamas attracts large public support among Palestinians at this time: it claims that its own armed activity against Israel forced Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority's official commitment to a negotiated peace with Israel failed completely to secure such a withdrawal or anything else for the Palestinians. Hamas is therefore promising to use the same tactics, with increased force, to end the occupation of the West Bank as well. Whether or not it does so, the credibility of the PA and its commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Israel must now be urgently restored. This can only happen if Israel agrees to open peace negotiations with the PA. But Israel refuses unless the PA first disarms Hamas and the other armed organisations, which the PA probably cannot do without first gaining credibility with its own people, obtaining their freedom through a negotiated peace treaty. What will actually happen next is therefore impossible to foresee.
3) It is certain though that the withdrawal from Gaza will not by itself advance the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while Israel continues to occupy and settle the West Bank. For the withdrawal from Gaza to be a contribution to resolving the conflict, it will need to be followed by a coherent effort to achieve an overall Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.
4) Not everyone agrees that this is a realistic prospect. Both Prime Minister Sharon and his predecessor, Ehud Barak (who hopes to recapture the leadership of his Labour Party) do not believe that a negotiated peace is possible, and appear to be committed to a unilateral solution. Mr. Sharon already appears to be implementing it in the West Bank too, by means of the Wall that is being built through it. The territory and the settlements west of the Wall are meant to become part of Israel, while Israel would at some stage withdraw its army and its settlers from the land east of the Wall - unilaterally, just as in Gaza - while maintaining overall military control, as much as security needs dictate. This appears to many to be the "concept". Mr. Sharon himself simply says that "large blocks of settlements" will be part of Israel, implying that other - "isolated" - settlements will be withdrawn. The dismantling of four settlements in the northern West Bank, which is scheduled for this week, can be seen as a "pilot project" in this sense.
5) The meticulously choreographed, fanatical "anguish" of the Gaza settlers being evacuated were made for good television, but it failed to arouse much sympathy, or even much interest, among the large majority of Israelis. This is an important datum. The extreme right in Israel had hoped to excite a vast popular uprising against the Sharon government and in favour of the settlements. It failed completely. This datum will be very influential when a future government will have to consider dismantling all the settlements in the West Bank as a requirement of a peace treaty with Palestine. A large majority of Israelis do not support the colonisation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and more and more Israelis understand what even Prime Minister Sharon implied in his address to the nation, namely that the huge investments in the settlements over the last few decades have come at the cost of neglecting the real needs of Israeli society itself, that if more and more Israelis slip below the poverty line nowadays, it is because of the mega resources sacrificed on the altar of the settlements.
6) All of these are elements of the situation now facing the leaderships of Israel and Palestine as well as the international community and specifically the United States, the one power that can effectively influence events. Each participant in this unfolding drama has a specific responsibility. In the immediate future, the heaviest responsibility belongs perhaps to the Palestinian Authority. It must show that it is capable of effectively governing the Gaza Strip. It must finally implement the reforms it has been promising for years, end the endemic corruption that has alienated it from its own people, unify its security forces, prevent terrorism, and advocate credibly for the right of its people to freedom. But whether or not it will be able to do much of this, depends also to a significant extent on Israel, and what Israel will do depends to a fairly large extent on the United States.... which is to say that nothing is certain at this time, except the uncertainty itself..
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07/07/2006
