Un-deciding disengagement
GRAHAM USHER
Al-Ahram Weekly, 28 October - 3 November 2004
On 26 October the Israeli parliament passed by 67 votes to 45 Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, under which 7,000 settlers from Gaza and several hundred from four settlements in the northern West Bank will be evacuated sometime next year. Some called the decision historic: others "a kind of treason" by a man who has long stewarded Israel's colonising drive in the West Bank and Gaza.
But the dominant mood -- among Israelis and Palestinians alike -- was not one of euphoria but of foreboding and impasse. This had less to do with the decision itself than with the events that accompanied it.
The day before the vote the Israeli army invaded Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, leaving 17 Palestinians dead, 100 wounded as well as the usual ruin of homes and psychological sanctuary. As the vote was being acclaimed tens of thousands of nationalist religious settlers encircled the Knesset in a mass protest to dam a public tide they know is starting to leave them.
And within minutes of it being approved Sharon's finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and three other ministers from the Likud Party said they would quit the government unless Sharon put the disengagement plan to a national referendum. This, too, is the demand of one of his few remaining coalition partners, the pro-settlement National Religious Party.
All of which suggests that - in principle - the decision to remove settlements from occupied Palestinian land will neither end the violence in Gaza and heal the divisions between Israeli Jews nor result in any kind of territorial withdrawal. On the contrary, it is likely to tie all three dynamics in an unbreakable knot, despite Sharon's entreaties to the right that disengagement will "strengthen Israel and its hold on territory essential for our existence"; to the left that it will "lead us forward on the path of peace with the Palestinians"; and to every Israeli to "unite in this decisive hour".
Violence is built into disengagement as it is conceived by Sharon. Denying Palestinians any role in the implementation means, in Gaza, that its terms will be fought out between the army and the armed Palestinian resistance on the one hand, and within and amongst densely peopled areas like Khan Yunis, on the other, with all the civilian Palestinian casualties this entails.
There is an alternative, at least according to Hamas sources. "We are ready to end the mortars if Israel ends the assassinations and incursions," says one. This may be part of the package Egyptian mediators present to Sharon when they visit Israel next month. But there is little hope of the Israeli leader agreeing to a ceasefire, even an unacknowledged one. It would deny the kernel at the heart of his argument for disengagement -- that "there is no partner" on the Palestinian side.
Nor does the authority now conferred on disengagement by parliament temper the threat of violence from settlers, especially those on the wilder fringes of the movement. On the contrary, the more Israeli law and opinion negate their claim to embody the "Jewish nation" the more they will seek other sources of authority, such as God as interpreted by their Rabbis.
"Look, the Bible says this is our land and no referendum can change that," says Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler with the messianic Kach movement based in Hebron. "And we will fight against whoever comes to take us away the same way as they fight. They should know getting the nation of Israel out of Gush Qatif [in Gaza] means you will need to prepare a lot of coffins."
That "war between brothers"may not come. Should Netanyahu and the NRP make good on their vow to quit the government Sharon would be left with the most vulnerable of coalitions. He would then have one of three options.
He could concede to the demand for a referendum, bridging some of the schisms in his Likud Party. But then he may lose Labour and the other opposition parties on which he has so far been dependent to get his plan through parliament and will be dependent on to have it implemented. He could try to bring Labour into his coalition, but the opposition to this within Likud is even greater than it is to disengagement.
Finally, he could accept what many Israeli commentators are beginning to see as inevitable: new elections fought on the issue of the disengagement plan, with the rightist, religious and settler parties opposed and the left in favour. In this realignment Sharon would be on the left.
Nor is it at all clear he would win, despite the endorsement from parliament or polls that show solid Israeli majorities in favour of the plan. The more likely scenario is an electoral contest that would delay implementation of the disengagement plan and certainly mount a challenge to his leadership of Likud, probably from Netanyahu. Given Sharon's estrangement from his party it is a battle his long-time rival could win. And Netanyahu is a past master at paying lip service to "historic" decisions while doing everything he can to bury them -- look at his 1996-1999 premiership and look at Oslo.