After the holidays

Thursday, September 23, 2004

But even if that is the case, and there is, as some Israeli strategists believe, some supreme overall policy governing Palestinian moves (as far as Israel is concerned, it's Arafat, of course, who reportedly is encouraging Qassam fire into the Negev, but gave orders to not aim at Sharon's Sycamore Farm), like so many other Palestinian moves in the last four years, it is a failure. While they appear to be in disarray, their economy crushed, the Hamas leadership eliminated, the Palestinian leadership, i.e. Arafat, scorned by most if not the entire West, there is nothing hasty about the Sharon disengagement plan.

Last night he told Channel 10 that the actual evacuation will take place next summer, after the school year is over, and he expects it to take 12 weeks. That's a far cry from the practically overnight evacuation of south Lebanon in May 2000 under Hezbollah fire, which Israeli intelligence says the Palestinians are trying to emulate.

Sharon is making every effort to prove that his plan is to proceed in an orderly fashion, irrespective of what the Palestinians do or say. Even more than he ignores his former allies on the Right, among the settlers and their supporters, and ignores the Likud's central committee, he is ignoring the Palestinians. And perhaps with good reason, considering that polls now among Palestinians show that Arafat remains the most popular politician followed by Marwan Barghouti. All the other known Palestinian politicians, from Abu Ala and Abu Mazin, through Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, and even the latest Hamas leader, Ismail Haniye, are far, far behind. And speaking of Abu Ala, he gave an interview to Israel Radio this morning practically begging for Sharon to speak directly to him about a handover for the disengagement. The only politician in Israeli mainstream politics who proposes talking with the Palestinian premier right now, is (not very surprisingly) Shimon Peres.

Woman Crucified # 13 by Silvia Rosenberg, mixed media on recycled paper, 20x30 cm.

onetheless, nobody still knows if the disengagement will happen. Israelis are gamblers but only in lotteries and sports and there are no betting parlors where odds are being placed on when – or if – the disengagement will take place.

No Israeli prime minister has ever defeated the settlers when they were determined to achieve their goal and there is no goal more supreme for them right now than halting the disengagement. Nobody knows if bloodshed, which everyone expects if the disengagement begins, will put an end to armed resistance to it or encourage armed resistance. Nobody knows if tens of thousands of Israelis will take part in resistance against removal of settlements, or whether by the time next summer rolls around, only the extremists are left in the settlements after everyone else took their compensation money and moved back to Israel.

It's still not clear if Sharon will succeed in rebuffing calls for a referendum, which everyone assumes the majority that favors disengagement presumably would win – except it was assumed that a pro-disengagement majority would win the Likud referendum. Haaretz reports this morning that top IDF officers recently told Sharon that 'a clear democratic process' is necessary to prove to the settlers and religious soldiers who might be under the influence of radical rabbis, that the majority of Israelis favor the disengagement move. Theoretically, that 'clear democratic process' could be a majority vote in the Knesset and that vote, at least as far as Sharon is concerned, is slated for this fall, 'after the holidays,' which is the most oft-used phrase now in Israel to postpone any decision on the agenda.

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