The coordination conundrum

Friday, April 08, 2005

Gush Katif, which constitutes about 25 percent of the Gaza Strip (one of the most densely populated places in the world), is the last remaining land reserve available to the PA in Gaza. It needs the land for farming, and if for housing, then in high-rises. Most likely, the Israelis will indeed not demolish the homes and the Palestinians will have to deal with the problem as they see fit.

But the issue touches on one of the most difficult problems now moving onto the agenda: will there be any coordination between the Israelis and Palestinians for the Israeli withdrawal? It is important to remember that Sharon conceived the disengagement as a unilateral step, and that it would not only mean a withdrawal from Gaza and four tiny but strategically located settlements around Jenin in the West Bank, but also a complete disconnection of ties between Gaza and Israel. That means no Gazans working in Israel, no Gazan produce sold in Israel (or Israeli produce sold in Gaza, for that matter). It was a move planned to spite the Palestinians, particularly their leader, Yasser Arafat, and Sharon even justified the move in the beginning by calling it a 'punishment' for Palestinian refusal to end the terror attacks against Israelis.

It certainly would be a punishment for the Gazan economy to be completely cut off from Israel's. Gazans have not been allowed to work in large numbers (tens of thousands) in Israel since the very early 1990s, when Israel first began using its 'closure' policy, meaning closing its borders to Palestinians from the territories, as a method to prevent terror attacks in Israeli cities. But it is not at all clear that Israel can so easily abandon Gaza. It's connected to Israel's electricity grid, without a deep water port capable of handling large freighters, almost all of its merchandise must come from Israel or its port at Ashdod. It's hinterland is the West Bank, and although Israel has cut off the two parts of the Palestinian Authority from each other, Israel understands there has to be some connection between the two.

The international community, which was as surprised by Sharon's change of heart on Gaza as Israelis, never seemed to pay much attention to the 'punishment' aspect of the plan, preferring to focus on the unprecedented Israeli evacuation of settlements in areas considered by the religious Right to be part of the Biblical Land of Israel. Israelis, for their part, just want out of Gaza and don't really care what happens to the Gazans afterwards.

But the death of Arafat propelled Mahmoud Abbas into power, and his pro-American positions, combined with President George Bush's political need for democratic and peaceful progress somewhere in the Middle East, suddenly propelled a potential peace process between Israel and the PA onto the agenda. And a peace process cannot be founded on spiteful behavior such as that originally planned by Sharon.

Indeed, Sharon says he wants to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinians. The question is whether the Palestinians want to coordinate it with Israel. Ostensibly it is in their interests – with Israel out of Gaza completely, the PA can expect international aid to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions, for reconstruction. Mohammad Dahlan has grand ideas about turning Gaza into a paradigm of good government, proving Palestinian maturity and readiness for statehood in the West Bank as well.

But optimistic scenarios are a dime a dozen in the Middle East, since they easily ignore the facts on the ground. And the facts right now are that Israel has just enjoyed its first month in four years without a fatal casualty of warfare with the Palestinians and the quiet is already having a positive impact on the economy. But on the Palestinian side, nothing has really changed, except for Jericho and Tul Karm being handed over to the PA. Checkpoints remain in place, a Kafkaesque bureaucracy run by the army still controls the issuance of travel permits for Palestinians to travel between the West Bank cities and villages (let alone between the West Bank and Gaza), and Israel still refuses to release any more than 500 more Palestinians out of the nearly 9,000 it holds as either convicted or suspected terrorists, people Palestinians consider national heroes. PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei' bluntly says that its an Israeli interest that there be coordination, not a Palestinian interest, but of course, he doesn't trust Sharon at all, and suspects the Israelis are planning to quit Gaza and the four Jenin area settlements and then freeze the entire process.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she is confident that there will be coordination of the withdrawal. Perhaps her confidence is based on knowing what she and President Bush plan to tell Sharon next week –and what they plan to tell Abbas, when the PA president makes his trip to the Oval Office, presumably a few weeks later. One thing is certain – if the U.S. doesn't make sure the Israelis take more steps to ease conditions for the Palestinians, the mood in the Palestinian street, which only a month ago was cautiously optimistic about conditions improving, will almost certainly deteriorate into angry frustration. The one thing, Sharon has warned, that can stop the withdrawal from Gaza, would be Palestinian military attacks on the evacuating forces and civilians. That evacuation is less than four months away. That's plenty of time for the pressure cooker of frustration to build up into rage – unless some genuine confidence building measures are taken. Sharon's excuses about Abu Mazin using politics instead of force to keep the terror groups quiet are just that, excuses, for him not to take action to help Abu Mazin and the moderate pragmatists of Palestine. The question is whether the Americans understand that.

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