AMMAN, Jordan — The events of the past week sum up pretty well where we are and where we do not want to be in the Palestine-Israel situation:
* Israelis and Palestinians traded missile and rocket attacks;
* Israel rounded up nearly over 440 suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank and killed nine others in the West Bank and Gaza;
* Hamas members and Palestinian Authority policemen fought street battles in Gaza, culminating in Monday’s incident where Palestinian policemen entered into the grounds of the parliament during a session and shot into the air to demand greater backing from the political establishment; and meanwhile,
* the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president postponed their planned meeting this week.
This is about as bad as it could get in the short period since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip last month. The two key political dynamics that need to succeed — Palestinian-Israeli and Hamas-Fateh relations — have both quickly soured, reflecting the very serious problems that still define the overall situation. Low quality leadership is the major problem for Israelis and Palestinians alike, with neither Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Israel nor President Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine able to summon the courage or the national constituency needed to break through the constraints of the past and forge a truly new political path to peace-making and coexistence. Neither is able to go beyond the partial, provocative and unilateral tactics that prevail today, and lead his people into a grand but reasonable compromise that achieves the legitimate rights and secure peace that Israelis and Palestinians both deserve and need.
At this delicate moment of transition in the Gaza Strip, and perhaps all of Palestine and Israel, the biggest danger that looms is for both sides to revert to the failed old ways, and this is exactly what is happening now. The Israelis have marketed their unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a bold new initiative that could trigger a wider peace process; but this is a package of false goods because on all other key fronts in their conflict with the Palestinians, the Israelis continue to pursue the politics of colonization and subjugation. The predominant theme among Israeli politicians since the Gaza withdrawal has been the need to consolidate and expand Jewish settler-colonies in the West Bank, finish building the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, and strengthen the judaization of all of Jerusalem.
The average Palestinian today faces dire prospects for a normal life anytime in the near future. Gaza remains surrounded and indirectly controlled by Israel, and the completion of the separation wall around Jerusalem will trigger massive disruption of life, travel, commerce, health care and education for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Jerusalem region and its West Bank hinterland. It will also enflame the sentiments of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims everywhere, as well as concerned Christians around the world who increasingly appreciate how the Israeli occupation-colonization policies are gradually promoting the emigration of Christians in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area, to the point where the Christian presence there will soon comprise just a few thousand souls.
No wonder, therefore, that Hamas leads the military resistance against Israel, and continues to score well in local elections in Palestine. The only good news last week was that the Palestinians held the third of their four rounds of municipal elections, with Hamas winning 26 percent of the vote, compared to 54 percent by Fateh. The Abbas-led Palestinian Authority will continue to confront the opposition groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who feel that armed resistance to the Israeli occupation and colonization policy is the only route to liberation and statehood. That confrontation will take three forms: peaceful political elections at municipal and parliamentary levels, armed clashes here and there, and control of the streets and neighborhoods, including the provision of basic services such as health and education, jobs, and assistance to the needy.
Both the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government can be faulted for this situation, which should have been anticipated and prevented. The Palestinian leadership should have made far more strenuous efforts than it did to engage all political factions and seize the moment to assert itself through dramatic political initiatives. These should have included a government of national unity, efficient control of the Rafah border crossing, a massive and immediate job-creation program with available global support, and a political initiative to move to final status talks with Israel based on the Saudi peace plan that has been twice approved by Arab summits. There is no reason other than sheer incompetence that the Abbas-led Palestinian government has found itself confronting Hamas with guns in the streets and being treated with contempt by the Israeli leadership, when it knew ten months ago that Israel was withdrawing from Gaza.
The Israelis for their part are equally at fault for withdrawing from Gaza with one hand, and with the other hand arresting and killing Palestinians and pushing ahead on more land confiscations and settlement expansions in the Jerusalem and West Bank regions. Israel pulled out of Gaza, but with its traditional militarism and colonialism policies it simultaneously pulled the political rug out from under Mahmoud Abbas.
Gaza is a small part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The potential impact of the Israeli withdrawal from that small piece of land will be rendered meaningless if all other Israeli policies towards the Palestinians simply perpetuate the expansionist, militaristic policies that got Israel into such an untenable mess in Gaza and South Lebanon that it unilaterally withdrew from them both in the end.
A dramatic change of pace and direction are required by Israelis and Palestinians alike if this potential turning point is to be actualized into a real moment of transformation in this bitter conflict. The moment demands decisive international engagement to help the parties move towards a political settlement, but that is looking equally elusive. The sad likelihood, given the realities of Israel continued occupation and colonization policies and the mediocre leaderships in Palestine and Israel, is that we should expect continued clashes and some large-scale violence for the near future.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri
—————-
Released: 05 October 2005
Word Count: 1,020
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606