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The Middle East: Ariel Sharon's disengagement from Gaza will result in a more secure Israel while enhancing prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state. By Abraham D. Sofaer.
Yasser Arafat’s death has generated widespread
calls for Israel and the Palestinian Authority
to resume negotiations aimed at a comprehensive settlement. Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft are
among those who think the time is ripe, now that the PA has elected a
leader who opposes the intifada, for the United States to press the parties
to return to the table. The British government is arranging a conference to
push the process.
Others not only support comprehensive talks but call
for abandonment of Israel’s plan to disengage from Gaza and four
settlements in northern Samaria. Arieh O’Sullivan, defense
correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, writes that “the moment Arafat was buried, the excuse
that there is no Palestinian interlocutor fell
away. Already the Labor Party is changing its position on Gaza because it is hoping a Palestinian leader might
emerge who could make a lasting peace . . . if both Gaza and the West Bank
were on the table.”
In fact, the Palestinians are far from ready to
negotiate. The president, Mahmoud Abbas, opposes the use of violence but
has made clear that he does not intend to use the PA’s forces against
other Palestinians. Even if he changes his mind and tries to stop acts of
terror, he may not succeed. Other Palestinians have yet to be elected to
legislative and Council posts, and their positions on ending terrorism are
not clear and likely to be even weaker than the
new president’s. At best, unless Israel were to agree to proceed
despite continuing violence, negotiations
between the PA and Israel could begin around the time disengagement is
scheduled to be completed (September 2005). To focus now on the resumption
of comprehensive talks would therefore be premature, even if such talks in
fact made sense at this stage.
Even if negotiations could be commenced sooner, their
existence would deplete the parties’ capacities to implement
disengagement and—most important—could undermine disengagement
by introducing irresolvable issues and encouraging the parties to make
unreliable commitments.
The important thing about disengagement is that,
without any negotiated agreement, it would result in Israel evacuating 21 settlements and
in Palestinian control of a sizable, contiguous
piece of territory containing 1.4 million
people, a port, an airport, and offshore natural resources. By contrast,
none of the many previous plans to negotiate peace through bilateral
agreements has resulted in evacuation of a
single settlement or Palestinian control of an area
sufficient for meaningful governance.
The Oslo Process promised movement but delivered only
promises. Palestinians failed to end terrorism
and persisted in spreading an ideology of hatred and death. Despite Israel’s partial
withdrawals, the number of settlers and
settlements increased, causing Israel to build roads and roadblocks to
protect its citizens. The U.S. effort to reach a comprehensive agreement at
Camp David failed, among other reasons, because
the fundamental issues of refugees and
Jerusalem could not be resolved. Those issues are if anything less likely
to be resolved today. President Abbas, for example, still insists that
Israel must accept the right of all Palestinians to return to Israel
proper, a position that Israel will not accept.
Disengagement is possible precisely because it is not
based on any negotiated agreement. When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
concluded that Israel faced not simply sporadic acts of terrorism but a war
fought with terrorist methods, he fashioned a
strategy to win the war, rather than defending every Israeli position, however untenable. He agreed to build a barrier
between Israelis and Palestinians and to
“re-deploy” settlements to “reduce as much as possible the number of Israelis located in the heart
of the Palestinian population.”
Realizing that Sharon’s plan would result in
both a more secure Israel and enhanced
prospects for creating a Palestinian state, President Bush agreed to recognize publicly that the barrier was necessary for
Israel’s defense; that Israel had the right to protect itself from
attacks; that the claimed “right of return” must be understood
to mean return to the new Palestinian state; and
that the few major settlements close to the 1967 border and containing most of Israel’s settlers would likely remain part of
Israel after any final negotiation. These propositions do not preclude the
Palestinians from securing different outcomes in direct negotiations, but
the president’s acceptance of them gave Prime Minister Sharon’s
plan the practical and political support he sought.
It is far from certain that disengagement will
succeed. Although the United States and its negotiating partners support the plan, they have
adopted a “show me” attitude
and done little to help ensure its successful implementation. Sharon has
thus far managed to move the disengagement policy forward but with great
difficulty. In the latest of several political crises triggered by the
disengagement plan, he has managed to form a new coalition between his
Likud Party and a group from the Labor Party led by Shimon Peres. He now
has a narrow but fragile majority, and he will need to hold it together
despite serious differences on domestic issues as the process moves in
stages to the actual removal of potentially violent settlers from Gaza.
Disengagement is vulnerable in Israel because it is
indeed a response to terrorist acts and signals Israel’s willingness
to abandon the expansive territorial aspirations of a small but powerful
minority. A clear majority of Israelis understand, however, that
disengagement is the rational, deliberate response
of a strategist, aware that an indefensible position becomes no more defensible because of one’s determination to maintain
it. Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza is untenable. The
settlements there have about 8,000 Jews who
control 20 percent of a territory containing 1.4 million Palestinians; and Israel needs 20,000 troops to defend these settlers, at
an annual cost of $560 million. Israelis opposed to disengagement compare
it to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Yet, although that withdrawal
was messy, it was long overdue. Today, the
Lebanese-Israeli border is more secure than during Israel’s occupation, and no one would suggest that Israel
reoccupy that area.
Instead of attempting prematurely to commence
bilateral negotiations, the United States and other interested parties
should help Israel and the Palestinians address the difficult issues on
which a successful implementation of disengagement depends. They include
Security. Israel’s
security would be threatened if Gaza is taken over by militants. The
disengagement plan calls for Israeli control over the border between Egypt
and Gaza and announces Israel’s intent to prevent importation of weapons. But Israel cannot end its
responsibilities in Gaza without relinquishing
control. Other solutions will have to be fashioned to secure the southern
border and to regulate commerce.
Infrastructure. Israel is
prepared to turn over the settlements and infrastructure but not homes. It
is unclear to whom those assets would be given and
what will be done with them. Militants, or thieves, could seize or destroy power lines, farms, and buildings. Ideally, Israel
should turn over all the homes, but it is unwilling to see them occupied by
terrorists. Mechanisms are needed to enable Israel to transfer and the
Palestinians productively to use as many of the assets as possible; the
homes could, for example, be sold by a mutually agreeable entity to
responsible buyers and the income used for desperately needed public
housing.
Economy. The economy of
Gaza is in a disastrous state. The World Bank has proposed projects to help
prevent the social catastrophe that could occur if Gaza’s economy
does not improve, but it is unwilling to assume the risks of managing the projects it proposes. The United States
and others interested in peace should be
actively engaged in developing politically neutral entities, managed by
professionals, to assume control of industrial zones, run facilities, and
perform other functions needed to encourage investment.
Israel’s announcement on November 15 that it is
prepared to coordinate disengagement with the Palestinians is a welcome
development; a cease-fire would be a blessing; and Israel should also do
all it can to facilitate Palestinian efforts to achieve stability. But
outsiders should not attempt to force discussions to occur or become a
vehicle for exchanging conditional commitments
on the basis of potentially illusory undertakings that could disrupt disengagement itself.
Unilateral steps in the right direction are preferable
to bilateral negotiations that lead
nowhere. All efforts should now be directed to the many steps needed to
ensure that disengagement succeeds.
An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 9, 2004. Available from the Hoover Press is The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism, edited by Abraham D. Sofaer and Seymour E. Goodman. Also available is The New Terror: Facing the Threat of Biological and Chemical Weapons, edited by Sidney D. Drell, Abraham D. Sofaer, and George D. Wilson. To order, call 800.935.2882 or visit www.hooverpress.org. Abraham D. Sofaer, who served as legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State from 1985 to 1990, was appointed the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1994. |
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