A rchive Date
[ 31-01-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8940948/site/newsweek/from/RL.1/
Disengagement's Fatal Flaw
Disengaging from Gaza will not profoundly change Israel's strategic situation vis - a - vis the Palestinians.
By Alon Pinkas
Newsweek International
Aug. 22, 2005 issue - Is disengagement a strategy? No. Israelis are entitled, after sustaining several untenable visions from both the right and the left, to at least get an idea of what lies 10 years ahead, such as where the borders of Israel and of "Israeliness" will be demarcated. By launching the disengagement from Gaza, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proved that he may know which path Israel needs to follow - comprehensive separation - but he is incapable and unwilling to actually go there.
Still, Sharon deserves credit. What Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip is a timely step in the right direction for Israel: to separate itself - and, eventually, entirely disassociate itself - from 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, many living in abject poverty in one of the world's most densely populated areas. Given that by 2015, Palestinian Arabs will outnumber Israeli Jews there, disengagement is recognized by a majority of Israelis as an imperative if Israel is to remain a Jewish democracy.
Israel cannot and should not control the Palestinians, yet the Palestinians cannot govern themselves and provide security to their Israeli neighbors. So why should Israel be held hostage to Palestinian political development? Get out, cut your losses and do it on a cost - effective, nonideological basis.
But the current Israeli disengagement does not stem from, nor is it linked to, a coherent long - term strategy. Therein lies its basic flaw. There are no follow - up plans, no negotiations and no further disengagements. In diplomatic terms, there is a conspicuous absence of a "day after" policy, which means that, in and of itself, disengaging from Gaza will not profoundly change Israel's strategic and demographic situation vis - a - vis the Palestinians.
Assuming the disengagement is completed by the end of September, it will very likely lead to a political crisis by November or December, and to subsequent elections in Israel that would serve as an excuse to avoid devising any day - after strategy for at least six to 12 months. That has already been put in motion by the resignation of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who no doubt will challenge Ariel Sharon for the Likud Party leadership.
That leaves a major question: what is Sharon's grand design? Is it only demographics by subtraction (of 1.2 million Palestinians from a total of 3.5 million in the territories)? Throughout his political career, Sharon has often been accused of being a supreme tactician and a poor strategist, either by design or by default. Frequently, he was characterized as having a national - security concept more suitable to a brigade commander than a statesman. Controlling a ridge and the dotting of the West Bank with Israeli settlements - somehow thought to be able to prevent Iraqi tank formations from invading through Jordan - seemed to him to be of paramount importance, while demographic and geopolitical realities were ignored. Sharon believed that Israel will face a conventional existential threat from an "eastern front" and imagined a massive Israeli presence in the West Bank deflecting such an attack. His was - and, to an extent, still is - a military view of national security.
These characterizations of Sharon are wrong. In fact, by the late 1970s he came up with a significant strategic idea that has guided him since: Jordan is Palestine, especially since more than 60 percent of its inhabitants are of Palestinian origin. Between the river and the sea, there is no room for two economically and politically viable independent states. Therefore, Israel is destined to live in a permanent state of war or, at best, a protracted low - intensity conflict.
While publicly committed to President George W. Bush's "vision of two states" of 2004, Sharon's dealings with the Palestinian Authority in the last four years clearly indicate that he is out to undo the 1993 Oslo accords and make sure that a territorially contiguous Palestinian state, as offered by Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, will never be established - not on his watch. The Palestinians will one day have Jordan and their cities in the West Bank as their state. But a Palestinian state on 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza will not materialize.
The conventional wisdom in Israel is that Sharon finally realized the world had changed and recognized the constraints of Middle Eastern politics and demographics. The truth is that reality did not change. What did change was Sharon's understanding of reality - and his belated acceptance of demography as the be - all and end - all of Israeli polity. This is not about who owns the land, but about saving and strengthening the Zionist enterprise. It's perhaps $65 billion and 200,000 settlers too late, but better disengage now than never. This is his strategy and, like it or not, it is a strategy.
But Zionism does not stand or fall on the status of the West Bank and Gaza. The ideological and political foundation of Zionism was the creation of an independent, sovereign and democratic Jewish state in the ancient Jewish homeland that would normalize Jewish national and individual life in an international system based, since the 19th century, on nation - states. It was never about resurrecting the Biblical Jewish empire encompassing most of the Fertile Crescent. By this measure, Sharon's strategy for Israel is one rooted in the past not geared toward the future.
Pinkas, former policy adviser to four foreign ministers, was consul general of Israel in New York
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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