From Challenge # 85  May - June 2004

editorial

Strategy in a Time of Impasse

PRIME Minister Ariel Sharon's miracle cure, known as "unilateral disconnection", has been roundly rejected by his party's registered members. It takes its place in the gallery of failed programs that have dominated the agenda of the Middle East in the past decade.

The first was the Oslo Agreement, which originated in the Labor Party. It failed because it took, as its basic premise, a perpetual imbalance between the Israeli and the Palestinian sides. In the geopolitical change that occurred at the start of the 1990's (with the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of Iraq), the Oslo architects saw a golden opportunity to wrest from the Palestinians, by peaceful means, what they had not been able to get by overt oppression. Oslo was intended to transform direct rule over three million Palestinians into neo-colonial control. Just as the European states, upon "withdrawing" from many of their colonies in Africa and Asia, made sure to buy and install such leaders as would maintain dependence on the mother country, so Israel sought to transform the PLO, a national liberation movement, into a Palestinian Authority (PA) that would serve as its appendage in the Occupied/Liberated Territories. Israel played its hand so badly, however – niggardly in its redeployments, malicious in its closures, greedy in its settlements – that when the moment of truth arrived at Camp David in July 2000, its putative puppet, Yasser Arafat, broke the strings. A bloody Intifada ensued. It continues.

The next program, the "Road Map", was imposed with friendly arm-twisting by the Quartet, consisting of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia. Whereas Arafat had been the designated partner during the Oslo period, after three years of Intifada – and under Israeli pressure – the Quartet attempted to weaken his powers while installing a new American-Israeli puppet, Abu Mazen. Here too a major geopolitical change was supposed to make the program possible, namely, a stunning US victory in Iraq.

Shock and awe would have been required, indeed, to make the Road Map work, because the latter had set conditions that the Palestinians found virtually impossible. They were supposed to unite all the armed militias under the PA, subject to the CIA (working by means of Egypt) – or in Israel's terms, "to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure." In addition, they were to undertake thorough reforms and bind their economy to the World Bank. An attempt to meet these conditions, especially the first, would have meant civil war. Abu Mazen preferred to resign.

The US did not get its splendid victory in Iraq. It became entangled, and this fact was reflected at once in the breakdown of the Road Map.

Sharon then put forth the third program in the series of failures: unilateral disconnection from Gaza. (See article.) It presupposes no talks with the Palestinians; on the contrary, this plan is meant to replace talks, because the freeze on negotiations can continue for years while fighting proceeds. Israel would redeploy to more tenable positions, lock the 1.2 million Gazans behind barbed wire, and control the exits and entrances (just as it plans to do in the West Bank with its wall). Such disengagement would require the evacuation of 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza. Aside from the settlers, few Israelis on the right or left see any point in maintaining direct control over Gaza – or, for that matter, over most of the Territories. (At present there are about as many Arabs under Israel's rule as Jews, and disconnection would shift the demographic balance in Israel's favor.) The need for dismantling some settlements, then, is clear to most Israelis. Between consensus and praxis, however, yawns the abysmal prospect of settler resistance – or in other words, the prospect of a basic social rupture: if not civil war, civil strife. By his disconnection plan, Sharon took on what no Israeli government has ever tried to do (with one exception: his own dismantling of Yamit in Sinai (1982), when he served as Defense Minister under Menahem Begin.)

Sharon believed that his position as political father of the settler movement would lessen the risk of civil strife. After the referendum, it is clear that he was wrong. Just as the Palestinians, in response to Oslo and the Road Map, questioned whether the reward would be worth civil war, so the Likud members asked, "Confrontation with the settlers – for what?"

In bypassing negotiations with the Palestinians, Sharon's plan dispensed with any body on the other side that could take responsibility, bringing quiet. This was the point he stumbled over. The settlers persuaded 60% of the voting Likudniks that unilateral disconnection would be a "prize to terror," bringing nothing in return. Because of Sharon's defeat, the showdown with the settlers has again been deferred – and made more difficult.

*** 

Sharon's failure in the referendum is no cause for celebration on Palestinian streets. Palestinian leaders have no alternative program or international backing that can lead them out of the present impasse. The PA is still bound hand and foot to the White House, as well as to reactionary Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Hamas, on the other hand, refuses as ever to face reality. The Palestinian tragedy today is one of chaos: the resistance movement in the Territories is out of control.

A striking example may be found at Erez Checkpoint on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. Until recently, about 4000 Palestinians worked in its industrial zone, while another 12,000 or so commuted through it to Israel. At a time when the Palestinian economy is paralyzed, Erez was Gaza's single little ray of hope for earning a living. Among the Palestinian organizations, there was a tacit agreement to keep Erez out of the armed struggle for the workers' sake. Lately, however, Hamas has launched attacks there. Israel has responded by a total shutdown of the checkpoint and its industrial area. This is a measure that the workers from Gaza will not be able to bear. Apart from the absence of any strategy in such attacks (which represent nothing but a thoughtless, emotional craving for revenge), Hamas shows utter lack of responsibility toward the Palestinian people.

Israel cannot impose its will on the Palestinians. Yet this point, for all its importance, is not enough. The prospect of a lengthy war of attrition obliges self-examination. Instead of waiting for America or Israel to initiate some new program, the Palestinians must themselves take action. They must free themselves from the leaders who are responsible for Oslo and the deterioration of the second Intifada. As long as the US rules the roost, encouraging Israel to refuse concessions, there can be no fair resolution of the conflict. It is necessary, therefore, to take a breathing space, building a leadership free of corruption. This must announce a cease fire, not in order to conciliate Israel, but to make possible a thorough reconstruction. A new perspective needs to develop, one that ties the lot of the Palestinian people not to Washington, nor to Islamic fundamentalism, but rather to new shoots of opposition against America's global hegemony – for example, to the millions in Spain who voted for Zapatero, to the millions who, more than a year ago, protested the war in Iraq. This new perspective will not provide a quick fix, but it will place the Palestinians on the same side as the forces of sanity. Together these forces can present an alternative response to the questions of nation and class that today demand solution.  n

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