Victims of the politicians in Gaza Strip plan

By Marlene Nadle
May 18, 2004

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is busy tinkering with his plan to withdraw settlements from Gaza, meeting with Labor Party leaders about forming a new government, and watching George W. Bush send his envoys around the world to resell this proposal defeated in the Likud Party referendum.

They are hard at work because the plan is good for them politically. It is just bad for the Jews and Palestinians.

It won't prevent more political assassinations and suicide bombings. It will only delay a real solution. This gives "you the illusion that you have more time, that you can afford not to be active. " warned Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution in a recent broadcast.

The two leaders are spinning this as a path to a comprehensive peace when it is a dangerous detour. Sharon more bluntly told the Israeli press that the Gaza plan is an attempt to head off the international community's demand for a more far-reaching solution. It's also an effort to maintain his popularity by defusing Israel's worry about a demographic threat by ditching Gaza and its Palestinians. Once he solves his political problem he will have no incentive to do more.

Bush hopes to use this illusion of progress to polish his foreign policy image and get more Jewish votes . If he is re-elected, he is likely to disengage as he has after other spurts of Holy Land activity.

Those close to the situation, like Israeli commentator Gideon Samet, aren't fooled. "The Bush administration," he wrote, "isn't doing us any kind of favor.... It is both giving support to Israel's pseudo policy and releasing itself from any sort of serious initiative to help us help ourselves." In The American Prospect, former U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk noted the discrepancy between the perception of Bush as a great friend of Israel and the reality that his failed diplomacy has put Israel at great risk.

If the two leaders don't expand their policy beyond meaningless rhetoric tying the pullout to the road map, the future will be an even greater disaster. The Israeli military's General Staff predicted withdrawal will make Gaza the militants' base for future attacks and lead to a re-invasion of Sharon's army. The madness will simply continue and intensify because the army will continue to control strategic areas in Gaza.

This escalated terrorism will elicit the president and prime minister's standard political response. They will make the end of terrorism a precondition for all other progress on the road map. That will dead-end everything. They don't have the vision of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose policy was to continue the peace process as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. It is why he could simultaneously talk and fight with the imperfect Arafat, make him a partner for peace instead of an excuse to do nothing.

If the current leaders had the same flexibility and statesmanship, they would have withdrawn from Gaza in 2003 to reward Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who is opposed to terrorism. It would have strengthened Abbas and the other moderates. It would have been proof for the Palestinian public that peace pays and an incentive to further concessions on both sides.

Whether from ineptitude or design, they are doing it now in a way that leads nowhere. Paralysis suits their political and ideological needs. Sharon, by not resolving the conflict, gets to keep extending his hold on the West Bank and the Israeli electorate. Bush, by not forcing Israel to remove all the settlements, doesn't have to anger the Christian Zionists or the right-wing Jews he needs for re-election.

If they weren't so interested in personal gain, they would have listened to the former head of Israeli security, Carmi Gillon. He dismissed both the road map and the Oslo plan as unworkable because they were based on stages meant to build trust, and there is no trust. He proposed doing a comprehensive peace treaty first, and then implementing the stages. Other advocates of a final plan, like the Geneva accord, argue that guaranteed results and rewards would give the parties incentive to take the hard steps.

Bush and Sharon are nowhere near trying a comprehensive plan.

Fixed on the tactic of terrorism instead of a strategy of solution, unwilling to risk their political capital, they and their pseudo policy will bring more misery to the Israelis and Palestinians. Neither people will get physical security, economic well being, or peace of mind. They will remain victims of the politicians.

Marlene Nadle is a journalist and an associate of the Transregional Center for Democratic studies at the New School University in New York City