| A Realistic Proposal |
22 December 2003
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Disengagement is an Engaging Idea
TPeace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is an impossibility, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's speech last week outlining his "disengagement" strategy merely acknowledges the fact. The plan doesn't bring peace, nor does it even halt the violence. Instead, it merely tries to reduce the killing. For that reason, it might succeed in its objective.
The disengagement idea calls for the removal of certain settlements, those most exposed and least defensible, but otherwise, it has little in it to appeal to the other side. It is not supposed to appeal, but rather it is to force action on the "Road Map" plan that was dead on arrival last summer. Prime Minister Sharon is not an idiot, and he doesn't really expect his idea to goad whomever answers to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as Prime Minister. He knows the peace plan from last summer has no hope of success. He wants to create a border, de facto is good enough, that the Israeli Defense Force can protect, that keeps Israel a Jewish entity, and that will have a nice Berlin-like wall along it to keep out suicide bombers.
This may be the first realistic idea in this sad and pitiful affair in the 55 years is been running. The idea requires no assent from a second party -- it is unilateral. It demands nothing of Israel that it believes it needs -- settlers can always be bought off, and the very few who won't be, can stay where they are without the protection of the IDF. Best of all, the idea doesn't promise the undeliverable.
Mr. Sharon's speech pointed out that there is a segment of Israeli political thought that says once there is peace with the Palestinians, the rest of the nation's problems (economic, educational, environmental) will fall into place. He knows that's non-sense, and his "disengagement" plan is an effort to put the West Bank and Gaza on the back burner permanently.
The Palestinian leadership is in trouble on this one, because there is nothing it can do. Stepping up the violence won't work because the new border will be harder to cross with explosives. Negotiating won't work because the more radical elements keep refusing to negotiate. And just maybe, this would be a good thing for the Palestinian people. Getting decent schools and hospitals into Gaza City, Hebron and Bethlehem is, frankly, a damn sight more important than which bunch of bureaucrats hands out the passport stamps for visits to the holy sites of Jerusalem. If they really want a Palestinian state, perhaps their time has come to declare one and start building it. If unilateralism works for Mr. Sharon, it can be made to work for Mr. Arafat.
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