Good article by Ze'ev Schiff, saying, better not expel Arafat before you have a policy for what follows. Of course, when he, like Dennis Ross, suggest 'generous moves' to go with the expulsion, he doesn't say what should happen when the generous moves are received by Hamas in a not so generous manner:
And after Arafat is expelled?
By Ze'ev Schiff
If we disregard the tom-tom boomings saying
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat must
be expelled, the main rationale for the
government's decision is that Arafat does not
allow any other Palestinian leader to end
terrorism and conduct peace talks with Israel.
Arafat will never recognize Israel as a Jewish
state. In other words, his existence here, or in
general, is an obstacle to any progress and his
removal will serve the cause of regional peace.
Let us assume that the
government implements its
decision to expel Arafat -
which in my view entails
greater risks than allowing him
to remain at the Muqata, his
headquarters in Ramallah. What
might we expect afterward?
Indeed what exactly is Israel's
policy - or does it have any
policy of any kind?
The Palestinian reaction is clear. There will be
more terrorism, especially if harm comes to
Arafat, and other Palestinian leaders will find
it impossible to cooperate with Israel without
being considered traitors by their people.
If Arafat is expelled, the ball will be in
Israel's court. Israel will have to prove that
its action removed the obstruction to progress.
Whereas the Palestinians will be obliged to
prove they are fighting terrorism, as they have
often pledged, Israel will be obliged to
proving that "without Arafat" it is ready to
take steps it did not take in the past.
This does not mean miniature moves like those in
the past, which in terms of their effectiveness
are comparable to giving aspirin to a cancer
patient. If our boast will be that we are
giving entry permits to another couple of
thousand Palestinian workers and a few hundred
merchants from the territories, or if we think
we have brought deliverance to the conflict by
removing another ten checkpoints - which will
afterward be put up somewhere else - or by
opening border-crossing terminals at more
convenient times, we will have missed the
opportunity.
Only meaningful large-scale, generous moves can
perhaps move the process forward. Here are a
few examples that could be taken by Israel in a
post-Arafat era:
l Withdraw the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to
the lines of September 29, 2000, that existed
in the Gaza Strip and in Judea-Samaria on the
eve of the eruption of the armed intifada.
l Immediate lifting of the siege from the
majority of the Palestinian cities and the
unilateral transfer of responsibility for them,
and afterward for the rest of the cities, to
the Palestinian security organizations.
l Release of the prisoners and detainees who
were included in the list of candidates for
release that was drawn up by a cabinet
committee. This refers to hundreds of people
from various organizations.
l Immediate removal of all the illegal settler
outposts, as Israel pledged to do under the
terms of the road map. They are not called
"unauthorized outposts" by the defense
minister's office - which goes to show that
they are actually legal, but some procedural
step was overlooked to make them completely
valid full-fledged settlements.
l A sample evacuation of an important settlement
in the Gaza Strip - the best candidate being
Netzarim. This has become an entrenched army
camp and is a thorn in the side of Palestinians
without contributing anything to Israel's
security. There are some who say that a major
move has to include a more extensive evacuation
of Gaza Strip settlements.
There is little likelihood that the government
will make these or similar moves. The
government today has no policy for "the
post-Arafat era." Perhaps it will devise such a
policy, but in the meantime its actions amount
to no more than putting out fires.
One of the results of this situation is that the
targeted assassinations have ceased to be a
means and have become policy. If so, Arafat's
expulsion will turn out to be only the first
before the next expulsion of a Palestinian
leader, and so on and so forth.
haaretz.com |
