Posted on 08/23/2005 12:50:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
JERUSALEM - Now that Israel has redrawn its borders before the world's eyes, completing with dazzling speed its pullout from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, it has this message for the Palestinians: We've dealt with our extremists, now you deal with yours.
The Palestinians are telling Israel: You've proven that withdrawing is feasible, so keep going.
Both Israeli and Palestinian officials said the evacuation opens a rare opportunity for renewing talks. But militant violence, chaos in Gaza, Israeli politics and big differences on issues of statehood and borders bode poorly for peace.
On Tuesday, optimism outweighed the misgivings.
"This is a momentous and very important point in history for us," said Rafiq Husseini, the Palestinian presidential chief of staff. "But now we want to start building."
Once Palestinians begin reining in their militants, said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir, "we can start to talk about the final status of the territories."
It took the army just six days to clear residents out of all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank — the same time it took for Israel to capture Gaza, the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights during the 1967 Mideast war.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Israel's prime minister and president to praise them for the withdrawal and suggest renewing negotiations. Premier Ariel Sharon agreed to meet soon to discuss it.
Tuesday's evacuation of two hard-line settlements in the West Bank was particularly significant for taking place in the heart of biblical Israel — a stinging blow to right-wing zealots who view relinquishing land there as a betrayal of God's will.
The pullout sent a dramatic message that the settler movement, which wielded great power for decades, is no longer untouchable.
In the West Bank, as in Gaza, Jewish settlers and their supporters failed to achieve their goal of making Israeli withdrawals appear so costly that no future government would dare attempt them again.
Palestinians hope the precedent — that it's feasible to dismantle Jewish settlements — can lead to further Israeli withdrawals and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But they fear Israel will avoid further pullouts, arguing it has sacrificed enough.
Tuesday's resistance — extremists throwing eggs and tins can at troops, protesters at a Jewish seminary locking arms and kicking — crumbled quickly as the army fulfilled Sharon's pledge, made more than a year ago, to "disengage" from the Palestinians by withdrawing for the first time from land they claim.
Some analysts argue that Israel is unilaterally imposing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without a renewal of peace talks, they say, the conflict increasingly will be defined by Israel drawing its own borders, through unilateral withdrawals and completing its separation barrier in the West Bank.
Without a negotiated solution, Palestinian hopes for a viable, contiguous state would falter.
Most agree that if Sharon's disengagement is to lead to new peacemaking, Abbas' Palestinian Authority will have to assert control in the Gaza Strip, which for the past five years has been a virtual no-man's-land ruled by militants and rival gangs.
Success in Gaza also depends on Israeli willingness to allow Palestinians to have a harbor and an airport, keeping borders open for the movement of goods and people. This openness is crucial to Gaza's prosperity and the future of Mideast peacemaking, but Israel fears it, since open borders can be used to smuggle in deadly weapons.
But if allowing Gaza to be open risks terror, keeping it closed is sure to increase its misery and fuel extremism.
The weak Palestinian government is likely to have trouble taking on Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are painting the Israel pullout as a victory for their militant resistance and which may attempt to use violence to spur more withdrawals.
"We disengaged the people from the land in the Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank. Now it's the Palestinians' turn to disengage themselves from violence and terror," said the foreign ministry's Meir.
If Gaza becomes Hamas-stan, as many Israelis fear, few will expect Israel to hand over more territory.
For their part, Palestinians remain suspicious of Israeli intentions, with settlement construction moving forward in the West Bank even as huge bulldozers demolish the remains of Jewish Gaza.
Palestinians listened closely to Sharon's oft-repeated statements that quitting Gaza can help Israel keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank. They are concerned about Israel's plans to build thousands of new homes in the West Bank's largest settlement to connect it to Jerusalem, a city they claim as their future capital.
Still, Husseini, Abbas' chief of staff, welcomed the Israeli withdrawal as "a very important step toward liberation and freedom and independence."
In an Associated Press interview, he said the Palestinian Authority has every intention to "create accountability and transparency in dealing with the land evacuated by the settlers."
He said the Palestinians hope to co-opt militants into the political system, but he held out the possibility that force also might be needed.
"The options should be open, especially for those gangsters ... on the streets who think they cannot be gotten," he said.
Israelis hotly debate why Israel's 77-year-old prime minister, once the champion of Jewish settlements, suddenly became the first Israeli leader to dismantle them in the West Bank and Gaza.
Some believe he suddenly awoke to the reality that Israel cannot hope to be both a Jewish and democratic state if it holds on to the West Bank and Gaza and the millions of Palestinians who, according to one recent study, already outnumber Jews.
The study said that by placing Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinians outside its boundaries, Israel bought itself another 20 years of a solid Jewish majority inside the lands it controls.
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Steven Gutkin is The Associated Press' bureau chief in Jerusalem.
Shouldn't that be "ANUS"?...........
Let's not be draggin' the UN into this.. Thanks! ;-)
Slam the door on the fools and treat them as adults when they learn how to act like adults.
The Palis will, as they always do, totally screw this up. They are the biggest freep-ups in human history. Complete masters of ruining golden opportunities.
When the missiles start flying over the rest of Israel launched from Gaza and the West Bank, and Sharon realizes he f'd up and wants to retake those lands, he'll have a helluva time removing the 1.5million muzis than the 9 or 10,000 Jews he just screwed over.
I think you miss the point... It really isn't about what Sharon will be doing if this move fails to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, and to have them deal in good faith...
If the Palestinians fail to act like decent human beings, then they'll be praying to have Sharon back... Because if this fails, Sharon will probably be out of a job, and his replacement is going to be less moderate... by a long shot.
Agreed. An Israeli Prime Minister said, "The Palistinians never miss an opportunity - to miss an opportunity."
I think you missed the point. When a missile flies out of Gaza and there aren't any vulnerable settlers peppered throughout the strip the Israeli's will hit back hard. Very hard. The Palestinian answer of suicide bombers and car bombs is much harder to pull off with the wall in place. The settlements could not be included inside the wall, so they are gone. It was a strategic retreat to allow the Jews to put the hammer down when they need to.
Bingo!
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