Sharon’s Gaza disengagement: roadmap to a Palestinian state?

The Palestinians view President George W. Bush’s support for Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan from the Gaza strip as a setback. They are rightly concerned that, after withdrawal, Israel will still control both Gaza’s airspace and its land passages, and preserve complete freedom of military action should it fail to combat terrorism effectively. Moreover, Sharon’s insistence on keeping the Philadelphi Road – that is, the border of the Gaza strip with Egypt – under Israeli military control, will remain a source of friction similar to the Shabaa Farms in southern Lebanon following Israel’s May 2000 withdrawal from that territory.

This article, appearing also on Fride’s website (www.fride.org), presents some of the elements of the Toledo International Centre for Peace and Fride's current work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The major Palestinian concern is, however, that Gaza proves to be both “first” and “last”, and that Sharon envisages no further stages of disengagement.

But despite the Palestinian concerns, I believe that the Gaza disengagement project can be a platform worth supporting by both the Palestinians and the international community, if it is executed in the framework of an overall peace plan – the Quartet’s roadmap published on 1 May 2003, for example – and of a coordinated international effort to prevent a chaotic vacuum of authority in the Gaza strip after Israel has withdrawn its military and civilian presence.

If, as Sharon implies, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is no longer a negotiating partner for the handover of Gaza, and if Hamas is anyway targeted for extinction, then the only reasonable alternative is that of forming an ad hoc Gaza Provisional Authority that would consist of the main socio-political forces in the strip.

To be representative and legitimate, such a governing coalition must meet two essential conditions. It will have to include both PLO and members of Hamas who are not involved in terrorist activities, and to rely on some kind of approval by Arafat.

For openDemocracy’s extensive background coverage of the Israel / Palestine issue – from debates on the roadmap, international engagement, “return”, and West Bank occupation to passionate and informed forum exchanges, click here

We need to be realistic, however. The current Israeli government will not allow such consent to be wrestled from Arafat through the all-too-familiar pattern whereby endless trips are made by international figures to negotiate his conditions for saying “yes”. For once, the Palestinians alone will have to assume responsibility, in an orderly way, for taking over a territory relinquished by Israel.

To fulfil its functions in matters of law and order, fighting terrorism, institution-building and economic development, this Gaza Provisional Authority would urgently need assistance from an international taskforce with an unambiguous mandate, perhaps even from the United Nations Security Council.

It is likewise important that the Quartet (the United Nations, the United States, European Union, and Russia) impresses upon Israel the need to conduct a real and total disengagement that would not turn the Gaza strip into yet another collective prison for the Palestinians. There must be reasonable freedom of movement from Gaza to the West Bank, and a distinction must be drawn between Israel’s control of the airspace and the Palestinian entity’s in running the latter’s airport. The Palestinians need to be given a fair chance to succeed in the difficult task of stabilising Gaza.

openDemocracy has published two analyses by Israeli architect Eyal Weizman which combine text and visuals to illuminate Israel’s West Bank strategy: “The politics of verticality”
(April-May 2002) and “Ariel Sharon and the geometry of occupation”
(September 2003)

The legitimacy gap: from Clinton to Bush

The Americans’ sad experience in Iraq should teach them that international legitimacy can be no less vital than overwhelming military might. Sooner or later Israel will have to come to the same conclusion if it is to have solid peace arrangements with its Palestinian neighbours. To acquire legitimacy, its latest unilateral move needs the active support of the international community.

Indeed, lack of legitimacy is the main problem also with the recent exchange of letters between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush on the contours of a final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.

The key principles that President Bush has explicitly subscribed to – blocks of settlements in the West Bank and the stipulation that the Palestinians’ “right of return” should apply only to the future Palestinian state, not to Israel – are not altogether new. The Clinton parameters of December 2000 outlined similar contours for a final status agreement. In fact, Clinton was far more elaborate and specific. His outline included every particular item in such a final deal – including precise percentages of land for the blocks of settlements, the ratio of exchanges of land, the denial of the right of return to Israel, and the future of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Two Palestinian writers offer contrasting perspectives in openDemocracy on the pains of exile and dreams of “return”: Omar al-Qattan, “On going home” (August 2003), and Ghada Karmi, “The right of return: the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” (August 2003)

There are, however, major differences between Bush’s and Clinton’s statements. Bush does not seem yet to have fully assimilated the lessons of Iraq, and his pledge to Ariel Sharon is as unilateral and as illegitimate as America’s invasion of Iraq. Bush’s letter recalls the historic Balfour Declaration of 1917 only in one vital point: both were exchanges of letters between a western power and the Zionists which totally ignored the perspectives and the wishes of the Arabs.

Another difference is that the Clinton parameters were not the sudden political whim of a president desperately looking for re-election, nor an attempt to throw a lifebelt to a politically drowning Israeli prime minister; they were a brilliantly devised point of equilibrium, achieved after intensive negotiations, between the positions of the Israelis and the Palestinians as they stood at that advanced stage of the peace process. Thus, the Clinton ideas were not an arbitrary imposition but born out of negotiations between the parties.

This partly explains why the Clinton parameters were acclaimed by the international community. Leaders throughout the world – from United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan to President Putin of Russia, almost all European and key Arab leaders – joined in the American effort to convince Yasser Arafat to seize the historic opportunity and endorse the parameters.

This is certainly not the case with President Bush’s pledge to Ariel Sharon. It is the unilateralism of the move perhaps more than its content that has alienated the Europeans, the Arab states and of course the Palestinians. It is again the question of legitimacy, without which a peace platform cannot endure and would not be viable, that is at stake here.

The Palestinian challenge

Whatever the provenance of this latest initiative, the Palestinians must engage in some serious soul-searching if they are to recover control of their own destiny. The Palestinian leadership is not free of blame for the political calamity that has befallen their people in recent years. This is a leadership that has failed to seize historic opportunities – such as the Clinton parameters – and by its own blunders has lost one of its most vital strategic assets, namely the intimate relations with America afforded to them through the Oslo process.

Despite President Bush’s chaotic international policy and the loss by America of the respect of its allies and of the world in general, the United States remains the central pillar of any peace architecture in the region. The total lack of dialogue between the Palestinians and the US is a tragedy for the peace process.

I am afraid that the recent debate that seeks salvation for the Palestinians through a bi-national, one-state solution is based on totally far-fetched and unrealistic premises. Israeli and Palestinian nationalism are both as proud and as exclusive as any nationalism can be. Neither will relinquish its dream of separate statehood.

Indeed Sharon’s wall, though it is hardly a contribution to mutual trust and is certainly not motivated by humanitarian considerations, is nevertheless a clear step towards a two-state solution. It is an acknowledgement that Israel has lost one of the central battles of Zionism, that is the aspiration to reach demographic superiority. Demography and the dream of Eretz (greater) Israel could simply not be reconciled. The wall is a bold manifestation that Israel will not allow this fact to usher in a one-state solution. But it is also a recognition by the Israeli right that it has lost the battle for Eretz Israel, and that it is therefore ready to define – admittedly in a unilateral way for the time being – a border that concedes the bulk of the West Bank and the entire Gaza strip to the future Palestinian state.

Also in openDemocracy, Palestinians differ over the “one-state” solution; see Omar Barghouti, “Beyond ‘relative humanity’ to a secular democratic state”
(April 2004) and Linda Benedikt’s two-part interview with Sari Nusseibeh, “What future for Palestine?” and “Faith, not optimism” (April 2004)

Those of us who were involved in the peace process over several years, including the crucial period from the Camp David summit of July 2000 to the last effort at Taba in January 2001, wanted to reach the second partition of Palestine through bilateral negotiations and with the assistance and the legitimacy of the international community. Our political successors subscribe to different concepts. If it is indeed a bad bargain, the Palestinians should try to make the best from it.

For, with all its deficiencies, the Gaza project is now the only practical proposal on offer. It will hopefully be seen by the Palestinian leadership as an opportunity to recover their relevance, and move back to the forefront of peacemaking efforts. Their performance in creating a Gaza Provincial Authority that would fight terrorism, create a stable environment throughout the Gaza strip and build there decent public institutions, could be a model of what is possible in turning that land of desolation and despair into a wider Palestinian state that will in future include the West Bank as well.

This is a challenge also for the international community. Palestinian institutions are shattered and their economy is a shambles. Now is the time to move from declaratory policies and the familiar inertia of condemnations of the policies of Ariel Sharon to a practical and pragmatic approach. Alongside this, active and robust involvement of the international community to closely assist the Palestinians in their task could ensure that Gaza will indeed not be the “first” and “last” of Israel’s disengagements, but will become rather the prelude to a wider and more credible peace process.