Leaving Gaza the wrong way
Israel is acting unilaterally, but pullout could have been part of a peace process with the Palestinians

by Gershom Gorenberg
August 11, 2005

The orange ribbons appeared first. Opponents of Israel's impending pullout from Gaza tied orange strips of cloth to their car antennas and rear-view mirrors, to their handbags, bicycles, daypacks, belt loops and wrists. Afterward, supporters of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan started sporting blue ribbons, or pairs of blue and white, the colors of Israeli patriotism.

I prefer blue, but my unscientific eyeball check says there are lots more orange ribbons on Israeli streets. Volunteers wearing orange T-shirts knock on apartment doors in the evenings to sway opinion against dismantling Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. Although turnout at anti-disengagement protests has disappointed organizers, it reaches the tens of thousands. The rare pro-disengagement rallies, organized by the Israeli peace camp, have fizzled.

Pollsters would say to ignore ribbons and rallies. Sixty percent of Israelis back leaving Gaza, according to the latest Peace Index survey by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University. Only 34 percent oppose it. That reflects a consistent pattern: Most Israelis want to get out of Gaza.

But, as the ribbons show, a measure of passion runs the other way: Disengagement opponents are obsessed. Supporters have been singularly unexcited, for good reason. Sharon is doing the right thing in the wrong way - squandering much of the potential benefit. This has important implications for what will happen after the last Israeli troops and settlers leave the Strip and the small portion of the northern West Bank from which Israel is also withdrawing.

For its opponents, the pullout is simple disaster. They belong to a camp that insists Israel is obligated to keep all the land it conquered in 1967's Six-Day War: Either Israel's iron will or God's help will somehow persuade the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank to accept Jewish rule. Leaving Gaza violates national honor and breaks faith with either God or Jewish history, depending on whether a religious or secular rightist is speaking, and it creates a precedent for a future West Bank pullout.

The irony is that Sharon now relies on the political backing not of his own rightist Likud party, but of the Israeli left, whose votes in the Knesset keep him in power and whose activists hand out the blue ribbons. For the left, the disengagement is Sharon's partial, grudging, unhappy admission of what it has long argued: that keeping occupied land undermines Israel's democracy, its security and its hope of achieving peace with the Palestinians.

The settlement enterprise represents a unilateral Israeli attempt to determine the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an attempt that fuels violent conflict. Ultimately, it could result in a single state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, in which Palestinians will have parity or a majority - putting an end to the Jewish state and Zionism.

Getting out of Gaza implies recognition that settlements will not determine borders; settlements can be taken down. It is a first step toward ending Israeli rule over disenfranchised Palestinians, and therefore toward healing Israeli democracy.

Yet, the disengagement is also a unilateral Israeli move. It is not a result of negotiations with the Palestinians, because in any such talks the Palestinians would demand a similar pullout from the West Bank - precisely what Sharon seeks to avoid. One of Sharon's top aides has publicly asserted that the withdrawal will be "formaldehyde" for the diplomatic engagement with the Palestinians. Indeed, while the media watches the spectacle in Gaza, Sharon continues settlement building in the West Bank.

Leaving Gaza could have been part of a peace process that included Palestinian concessions. It could have strengthened moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Sharon has avoided those opportunities in the interest of maintaining the occupation elsewhere.

The risk is that tensions between Israel and the Palestinians will again turn violent after the pullout. Abbas will have a much harder time creating a stable Palestinian government. Within Israel, political instability is also likely: The ad hoc parliamentary majority keeping Sharon in power will evaporate, leading to early elections. More time will be lost before a real peace process can resume.

Given a choice of orange and blue, of staying in Gaza or leaving, realistic Israelis have chosen blue. They are indeed showing the color of patriotism.

But the choice, as framed by Ariel Sharon, is hardly reason to get excited.

Gershom Gorenberg is associate editor of The Jerusalem Report and author of the forthcoming book "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977."

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