A momentous moment
In all the clamor over the election, too little attention has been paid to the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, the source of so much tumult and bloodshed in the Middle East. Nobody is spelling out what the Arab states--and the European Community--need to do following Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unprecedented plan to withdraw from 21 settlements so as to create a completely separate Gaza Strip that could be run entirely by the Palestinians within a year, with the Israeli infrastructure intact. Sharon's plan, now approved by the parliament, also includes pulling out of a section of the northern West Bank and is the first step in a larger disengagement-and-withdrawal plan--a clear signal that Israel is serious about achieving a two-state solution.
Sharon, the patriarch of the settlements, has confounded his critics by proposing what no previous prime minister has ever done. But he is paying a price. His coalition is in tatters, his party divided, and he must now rely on a hate-addled Egypt to police the southern part of Gaza. Hamas and Palestinian radicals want to smuggle in longer-range Katyusha rockets to bomb towns deeper inside Israel or from deeper in Gaza, as well as antiaircraft and antitank weapons to limit Israel's capacity to respond to attackers--the only tactic that has proved even moderately successful.
Success--or failure. What is the matter with these terrorists? Every time an Israeli concession is made, they respond with more indiscriminate maiming and killing. Which, in turn, forces Israeli peaceniks to the right. Why is it that when an Israeli prime minister, at great political cost, decides to turn over control of Gaza, the Palestinians go on another rampage in the very areas destined for evacuation?
The reasons are simple: Yasser Arafat and Hamas. Arafat, because he never cooperates unless it is clear all decisions are his; Hamas, because, like other die-hard rejectionists, its members simply don't accept the existence of a Jewish state anywhere in the region.
Gaza is thus a critical challenge for the Palestinians. Can they break free from a corrupt, law-breaking regime and accomplish what has not been accomplished since the peace accords negotiated in Oslo a decade ago? Whether the Palestinians can meet the challenge will be determined by success or failure in six key areas:
1. Palestinian security forces must be placed under central control with an international monitoring presence to prevent their becoming a terrorist base.
2. The Arab countries, with Egypt in the lead, must persuade radical groups, especially Hamas, to abjure violence.
3. The European Union and the world--especially the Arab oil countries--must organize investment sufficient to sustain Gaza's economy--and supervise it so that money is not siphoned off by graft or to radical groups like Hamas.
4. Both the Arab and the European communities must emphasize that if Israel is not afforded an orderly withdrawal or a peaceful neighbor that doesn't resort to rocket or mortar launchings against Israeli towns--forcing an Israeli return to Gaza--all aid will be cut off.
5. They must support the moderates within the Gaza community, many of whom are willing to push back against Arafat's Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
6. The moderates must soon launch a program of public information and education to enlist the support of the Gaza population behind an effective and orderly transition. The propagation of hate in schools must cease.
The only country that can pull all this together, of course, is the United States. This is not to suggest restarting the Camp David process--there's no way the Israelis can go back, as if the Palestinians had not wantonly killed more than a thousand and maimed thousands more over the past four years. We're not talking conflict resolution; we're talking conflict management .
Gaza is a test case not just for Palestinian society but for the entire region--a challenge to determine whether it can transform itself from an incubator for militant Islamists bent on violence to one in which representative governments will seize the opportunities of the new century and allow their people to better their lives--and demonstrate a willingness to permit Israel to live in peace. If the test in Gaza fails, however, and Israel must return there to protect its people and towns from rocket attacks, it will be a shattering blow to the hopes for achieving any kind of stability in the region.
The choice, quite simply, is up to the Palestinian people. They can seize this opportunity, move forward, and build a new society that will live in peace in the 21st century, or they can embrace the darkness and violence of the 11th century. The moment of truth is now upon them.
This story appears in the November 8, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.