Gaza withdrawal carries important political and historic implications for any future solution, even if it is arriving many decades late
Common Ground News Service, January 12, 2005
by Mohammed Daraghmeh

Ramallah - During both his military and long political life Ariel Sharon has left nothing but images of blood, destruction and settlement in the memory of Palestinians. Yet his sudden exit from the political arena is considered untimely by many a politician and observer.

 

The man who is highly decorated for his achievements on behalf of the Hebrew state in its wars against Arabs and Palestinians carried, at the close of his political life, the title of being the only leader in Israel’s history to withdraw from occupied Palestinian land and to dismantle its settlements.

 

Facing a blocked political horizon, some politicians and analysts on the Palestinian side await the completion of the Sharon project of unilateral disengagement in the West Bank, not because this partial withdrawal will represent an historic and adequate solution to the Palestinian problem, but because it represents a removal of occupation from an important part of the occupied territory at a time when many people have lost hope that the settlement project will end. It is a withdrawal that carries important political and historic implications for any future solution even if it is arriving many decades late.

 

Mamdouh Nofal, who has undertaken an important effort in writing the history of the contemporary Palestinian experience, writes: “I view with great interest any Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian land, as a benefit to Palestinians, especially when it is unilateral and carries no political price tag.”

 

Mr. Nofal continues: “It is true that the Labour Party program is better for Palestinians than Sharon’s, but its problem is that it is theoretical and not practical. The Labour Party never evacuated a single house in a settlement during the Rabin era, so what will happen during Amir Peretz’s time?”

 

One could discern a qualitative difference in the way Palestinian public received the news of Sharon’s departure from that of the political arena. While the general public exhibited joy and exalted the event to the level of divine revenge, politicians expressed noticeable anxiety in relation to expected developments in the post-Sharon era. Some went so far as to expect a lapse into a prolonged stage of political coma.

 

Palestinians have expressed worry over the current Sharon plan which is based on the annexation of settlement blocks and Greater Jerusalem, the eastern part of which reaches the perimeter of Jericho, and considers the separation wall as the border between Israel and the proposed Palestinian state with temporary borders. But with Sharon’s absence some have expressed worry that nobody within the Israeli political establishment has the courage to take steps like this leader who wants to be remembered in a similar way to the founding fathers of the Zionist movement and the Hebrew state, such as Herzl and Ben Gurion.

 

Nobody among Sharon’s potential successors has his clout and weight whose political and military legacy qualified him to carry out the evacuation of 24 settlements and their 8000 inhabitants, including graves and synagogues, without any serious protest.

 

On the immediate level the absence of Sharon worries some Palestinian circles who see the probability of military escalation and deterioration, especially in the shadow of the chaos and lack of security rampant in the Gaza Strip where a small military group has set the political and military agenda for about one and a half million Palestinians living on a tiny spread of land (360 sq. kms.), considered to be the highest population concentration on the face of the earth.

 

Dr. Ali Jarbawi, professor of Political Science at Birzeit University believes that: “during this phase, Israel will be greatly agitated by any untoward action by Palestinians. If there is an operation or a missile launched from Gaza, the new Israeli leadership will respond a thousand-fold in order to show firmness in the absence of the “Bulldozer.” This may lead to an unprecedented deterioration, especially as some Palestinian factions have declared an end to the truce.”

 

Jarbawi adds: “The long-term impact of Sharon’s absence will be clear after election results are declared and the new government is formed. If this government is formed from the Kadima and Labour parties, the door for negotiating with the Palestinians will open once again. But if the government is to be formed by the Likud led by Netanyahu, then I believe that the negotiation door will be closed for a very long time.”

 

In the absence of Sharon, the Palestinian / Israeli relationship is expected to return to its old basis: The Israeli political establishment will return to governing the political relationship with the Palestinian side and the military establishment will revert to imposing its own conditions and agendas. In the former scenario, there is no indication of the potential for a political breakthrough in the foreseeable future. In the second scenario pessimistic expectations seem more realistic because the Israeli military establishment has always been more extreme and far-reaching than the political one.

 

Whatever the results of the forthcoming general elections in Israel, Sharon will have already left, leaving new unprecedented repercussions for the next and future leaders in Israel, replete with the disengagement precedent and a withdrawal from the Likud party which represents a withdrawal from the ideology of Greater Israel.

 


Mohammad Daraghmeh is a Palestinian writer and analyst based in Ramallah.

 

Source: Common Ground News Service, January 12, 2005.