Good Jpost op-ed on the Gaza pullout.
Sharon was saying that Israel had gone as far as it could militarily under the existing rules of the game, so the only way Israel could advance further was to change those rules.
ie force some undeniable responsibility on the Palestinians for Gaza. Of course, the Pals will blow this opportunity like all the others, and blame Israel for their woes. The real question in Gaza, as far as I can see, is whether Hamas will continue to go along with the fiction that the PA runs the place, or will they make their move? Probably surreptitiously, so they don't have to take any responsibility. Everybody in the territories has learned too well from Arafat's playbook.
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Sharon speaks
Last night, following broadcasts of emotional scenes of Gush Katif settlers begging soldiers with expulsion orders to go away, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke to the nation. It was the moment for the man who has so singlehandedly brought us to this day to more fully explain where he has led this country.
Sharon's speech, stiffly delivered, fell short of adding much to our understanding, let alone giving voice to the pathos of the moment. But upon closer reading it is possible, piecemeal, to assemble the logic behind the historic turn around that we are now experiencing and the world is now witnessing.
Two parts of the speech, stitched together, complete the puzzle: "It is no secret that I, like many others, believed and hoped that we could forever hold on to Netzarim and Kfar Darom. However, the changing reality in this country, in this region and in the world required another reassessment and changing of positions." In other words, Sharon the pragmatist - hardly the ideologue many thought him to be - saw changing realities. One he mentioned, the multiplying population and squalor of Gaza. The other, the post-9/11 global war against terrorism, he only obliquely alluded to.
Yet this somewhat generic observation hardly begins to answer the questions every citizen has a right to ask of Sharon: "Why did you, who for so long opposed talking, let alone negotiating under fire, decide to dismantle settlements while terror and its threat are still solidly on the table? How will a unilateral withdrawal help matters?"
Then came the essence of Sharon's response: "Now the Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terror organizations, dismantle its infrastructure and show sincere intentions of peace in order to sit with us at the negotiating table. The world awaits the Palestinian response - a hand offered in peace or continued terrorist fire. To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they chose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever."
The echoes here of Ehud Barak's logic behind the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon were unmistakable. Sharon was saying that Israel had gone as far as it could militarily under the existing rules of the game, so the only way Israel could advance further was to change those rules.
In the south Lebanon security zone, Israel found itself in an endless tit-for-tat conflict in which it could not hold the parties really responsible - the governments of Lebanon, Syria and Iran - accountable without being accused of "escalating the conflict." The purpose of Israel's withdrawal was to change the deterrence equation so that in case of any further attack, it would have the diplomatic license to put the sponsoring countries at risk.
Similarly, Sharon found that even as Israel proved increasingly successful at defeating Palestinian terrorism on the ground, we were having little success at holding either Yasser Arafat or his successors responsible for presiding over an empire of terrorism. Once again, the rules had to be changed by removing the IDF and dramatically handing territorial responsibility over to parties who would then become a military address for response if attacks were to continue.
Though called unilateral, disengagement is thus really an unwritten, unsigned agreement with the international community. The agreement says: if we hand over territory fully to a Palestinian government, you will hold that government diplomatically and economically responsible, and we will hold it militarily responsible, if it refuses to eliminate terrorism from its realm.
Sharon's gamble is that disengagement is creating such a virtual agreement, and setting such new rules. When Sharon said that responses to further attacks would be "more severe than ever," he was signalling that he intends to begin acting according to the new rules. The international community's job will be to do its best to ensure he does not have to, by imposing new levels of diplomatic and economic pressure on the Palestinians that, together with Israeli deterrence, force dramatic changes in their behavior.
It will take the concerted effort of Israel and the international community, then, to ensure that the Israeli pain and sacrifice we are seeing today are not for naught and that Palestinian celebrations are not harbingers of a new round of belligerency.
jpost.com |
