bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 36
An Israeli View:
The only good news is disengagement
by Yossi Alpher
Just a few months ago, a number of observers were ready to
pronounce the intifada "over" as it neared the end of its fifth and least
violent year. Now it appears that a sixth year of some sort may be in the
offing, with the relative quiet of recent months ascribed at least in part
to the disengagement and to a temporary internal Palestinian political
truce.
In the latest spiral of violence, Hamas and Islamic Jihad
took the lead in both the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel reacted with
disproportionate counter-violence in the hope of weakening Hamas, sending a
message that it did not leave Gaza out of weakness, and establishing a
deterrent against further violence. Israel also now encounters a Hamas with
political aspirations--a byproduct of that movement's relative success
(compared to Fateh) both militarily and in societal terms in the past five
years.
This evolving situation only underlines the
single positive achievement of the past five years: the unilateral
disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. Disengagement is
good news, but its advent merely reflects the fact that the roadmap, the
sole international political initiative of the intifada years to which
disengagement was in many ways a reaction, was stillborn. Indeed, from Camp
David II via the roadmap to disengagement we have narrowed our horizons, in
the course of these years, from a conflict resolution mode to little more
than conflict management.
Five years of intifada appear to have
persuaded a majority of Israelis to readjust their strategic outlook: to
prefer demography to geography, unilateralism to negotiations, strategic
consolidation to strategic depth. At the tactical military level, too, these
five years have produced innovations. On the part of the Palestinian side
these comprised waves of suicide bombings and of Qassam rockets. The suicide
bombings, in turn, provided the impetus for Israeli security innovations:
the fence that has been remarkably successful in curbing the bombings, and
targeted assassinations, a collection of highly sophisticated techniques
that have been improved so as to radically reduce bystander casualties, and
that succeeded, albeit temporarily, in decapitating the terrorist
leadership. Both Israeli tactics, however necessary and successful, can do
little more than contain the conflict, and have proven problematic from the
moral and humanitarian standpoints. Moreover, Israel still has no effective
defensive measure against the Qassams, and has now opted to reply in kind,
with artillery--an escalatory measure.
The causal link is not only between
Palestinian terrorism and Israeli military innovation, but between terror
and political innovation, too--between the suicide bombings and Israel's
newfound reliance on the unilateral measures of both the fence and
disengagement. Coupled with the Israeli public's disillusion after the
collapse of the peace process, the suicide bombings appear to have persuaded
a majority of Israelis that, first, the Palestinians are not a viable peace
partner, and second, Israel has to create a physical distance between itself
and them without a peace process, i.e., by unilateral means. This dynamic
evolved in the course of the past five years in a totally unscripted way:
Palestinian beliefs to the contrary, there was no conspiracy, and the prime
minister was dragged into it unwillingly by an anxious and insistent Israeli
public.
How can a sixth year of intifada (some may
call it a "third intifada") be prevented or mitigated? By leaving more
Palestinian land where we should not have stayed so long in the first place:
the West Bank mountain heartland and Arab East Jerusalem. If a negotiated
process is impossible--and at this juncture it appears that none of the
necessary leaders, Sharon, Abbas and Bush, is a strong and viable candidate
for negotiations--then more unilateral disengagement is called for.
Completion of the security fence along a rational path that largely follows
the green line and the settlement blocs will in any case reduce the profile
of Palestinian violence. But if we don't remove the remaining settlements,
there is no chance that this conflict will ever end.- Published 3/10/2005
© bitterlemons.org
Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the
bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is former director of the
Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a former
senior adviser to PM Ehud Barak.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
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