The day after disengagement is almost here

Friday, August 19, 2005

True, early next week, the settlements of Netzarim, Atzmona, and Katif will be evacuated, and there will be some more scenes meant to wrench hearts and turn the entire event into a huge national trauma. And once Gaza is emptied of its Jewish civilians, the authorities will turn their full attention to Sa-Nur and Homesh, the two settlements south of Jenin in the northern West Bank where radicals – not registered inhabitants of those two settlements -- have been preparing for a showdown for the last few months.

In short, the disengagement, originally scheduled for 12 weeks could be over within 12 days. There will still be the work of demolishing the buildings, as requested by the Palestinians (and required by international law) and that could take two to three weeks, with the settlement houses of the northwest corner of Gaza now slated to go first, starting on Monday. Egypt and Israel are still trying to work out a deal whereby hazardous waste – mostly asbestos – could be buried somewhere in the vast empty reaches of Sinai, rather than in the Negev, but that’s a small obstacle to overcome. The Palestinians are supposedly planning to use the rubble from the buildings as raw material for the construction of their Gaza seaport.

So, what’s next after disengagement? There are almost as any scenarios as there are people putting their minds (or in many cases, their emotions) to considering what comes next, and a lot depends on whom one asks.

There are the doomsday prophets like Binyamin Netanyahu, certain that the Palestinians are too politically immature to do anything except turn Gaza into Hamastan, meaning that within months, Israeli troops will be back in Gaza, razing buildings used to launch Qassam rockets into Ashkelon and not just Sderot. For them, Middle East history is based on one fundamental assumption, once expressed by Yitzhak Shamir as ‘the Arabs are the same Arabs, the sea is the same sea,’ meaning that by definition, almost genetically, the Arabs will always seek only one thing – the destruction of Israel. For them, as Netanyahu likes to preach, the fight against Palestinian terrorism is part and parcel of the broader war against terror being waged by George W. Bush. Netanyahu, seeking to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from the Likud leadership, says that al Qaida is about to take over Gaza.

Others, with no less a conspiratorial bent, but from another side of the political spectrum, reckon that as long as Bush is losing that war – at least in Iraq – Israel and the Palestinians both can expect massive international pressure, with U.S. backing, if not leadership, for political progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front. If Bush can’t show progress in Mesopotamia, then he’ll want to see some progress in the Holy Land, goes that theory, and since no progress is likely in an Iraq being torn apart by sectarian violence – and as long as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas uses the rhetoric that Bush (and even the Israelis) like to hear – the Israelis, as Condolezza Rice said just this week, will not be able to stop with the Gaza and northern West Bank withdrawals.

Maybe. Prime Minister Sharon is saying that the next step is back to the roadmap, and as he has been saying since the roadmap was first presented, that means, first and foremost, a Palestinian Authority confrontation with the terrorists. That is usually understood in Israel to mean open war on Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Fateh-related Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and the various clan gangs like the Gaza-based Samahanda family, which has criminal origins as the main smugglers of southern Gaza, but portrays itself as an independent political group.

Abbas however has no intention of plunging his people into a civil war. Instead, he is trying to use the powers of persuasion – and political platforms – to maintain the quiet and coopt the armed groups into the political mainstream of Palestine, where despite Netanyahu’s theories, the overwhelming majority (as in Israel) wants to give the two state solution a chance. Even the Israelis are saying this week that Abbas and his security services are delivering the goods. Even after an Israeli settler shot dead four Palestinians who worked in the same factory as he did, there have been no outright acts of retribution by armed Palestinian groups. It appears that there is a unanimous consensus in Palestine that nothing should be done to interrupt the disengagement – even if there also seems to be a widespread consensus among Palestinians that the disengagement was the result of their armed resistance.

Abbas’ approach is didactic – lately he has repeatedly called on his people to regard the historic evacuation of Gaza as an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that the Palestinians are ‘civilized’ and can turn Gaza into a model of self-rule. Gaza will certainly be unique as a political entity. It won’t be a state, per se, but apparently will have control over at least one of its borders, the Egyptian one, without Israeli intervention. There are quiet negotiations underway not only for the construction of a seaport, but also for the renovation of the Gaza airport. Meanwhile, Abbas has set national elections for mid-January. Polls indicate the Hamas could win as much as 35 percent of the vote. But January is a long way off.

Indeed, the disengagement is throwing both Palestinian and Israeli politics into turmoil. Predictions are always difficult to make in the volatile Muddled East – but nowadays it is impossible to say which way the wind will blow in the Israeli electorate, once the disengagement is final. Conventional wisdom is that it strengthens Hamas and weakens Sharon. But there are other ways to consider it. Hamas could be weakened, especially if, as Hamas is now predicting, Abbas uses the end of the Israeli presence in Gaza as his chance to finally impose his ‘one PA, one law, one weapon’ policy.

Sharon could be strengthened, if, as some are predicting, the Rightists in the ruling Likud party who are challenging him are proven to be as weak as the settlers proved to be in the campaign against the withdrawals. And that is especially true if Abbas succeeds at keeping the lid on Palestinian violence and Gaza does indeed remain peaceful after the withdrawal.

But all that is still in the future. There’s next week to get through – and to paraphrase William Butler Yeats, nobody knows what rough beast yet lurches toward Jerusalem, if not Bethlehem, Hebron, or for that matter Tel Aviv or Netanya.

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