Life After Gaza
The mutual anguish of Jewish families in Gaza and the Israeli military forcing their removal from their long-cherished homes was intensely moving to witness, even as it was an inspiring demonstration of democracy and the rule of law. Nearly 10,000 Israeli citizens from two dozen thriving towns and agricultural villages in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank now have to start their lives all over again.
Their prime minister, Ariel Sharon, shares the anguish and deserves the congratulations he has received for his bold but risky attempt to change the political dynamic of the region. But will it? The response of the Palestinians to a heroic act of statesmanship is contemptible. Not only have their leaders been demanding more, but they have endorsed the baldfaced lie of the extremist Hamas group that "the blood of our martyrs" drove the Israelis out of the Gaza settlements.
The implication is that more bloodshed will produce more Israeli concessions. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has said all the right things in English for a western audience, but what is he doing to counter the notion that terrorism pays? Not a thing. On the contrary. He asserted that the credit of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank goes to the Palestinians who were killed, wounded, and are present during the struggle--the credit for the retreat, he said, goes to the martyrs.
This is not just false. It is an incitement to more violence and terrorism. Most Israelis expect that Gaza, after a period of diplomatic quiet, will once again be a base for terrorism aimed not to adjust borders but to drive Israel from its biblical lands into the sea. Indeed, the idea of a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel is not credible to anyone who experiences the demonic nature of the hatred or reviews the threats continuously promulgated by the Palestinian leaders in every forum--mosques, schools, radio, newspapers, television, the Internet--everywhere.
Friends like these. Since all this poison passes largely unnoticed in the West, it is necessary to spell out a few declarations of intent. Abbas himself, on the occasion of Israel's 57th birthday, proclaimed that the creation of the Jewish state was the "greatest crime in human history." More recently, he said: "Today we are beginning the march of the fishermen towards freedom. Soon you will be able to fish along the whole coast of Palestine." What could he mean when the rest of the coast of Palestine is Israel?
Yes, yes, Abbas is busy selling the idea that his strategy is to bring Hamas into peaceful politics, but what kind of people does he think he's dealing with? Just look at some of the recent statements by Hamas leaders. Mahmoud Zahar: "We are part of a large global movement called the International Islamic Movement. . . . [Gaza is] proof that the armed struggle has borne fruit. Neither the liberation of Gaza nor the liberation of the West Bank will suffice [for] us. . . . We don't recognize the State of Israel or its right to hold on to one inch of Palestine. . . . After the victory in Gaza we will transfer the struggle first to the West Bank and later to Jerusalem." The armed struggle is the only strategy that Hamas possesses. Radio al-Aqsa: "[Our] battalions will make you tremble in Haifa, in Tel Aviv. They will strike you in Zefat and Acre. Wait for us in Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv. . . . The knights of Gaza are coming. Our beloved sons of Palestine, we make no distinction between [Israeli-controlled] Palestine and [the West Bank and Gaza Strip] Palestine." Jihad leader Muhammad Hindi: "The resistance will continue until the expulsion of the occupation from all our lands, including the West Bank, Jerusalem, and all of Palestine." The war isn't over, in other words, until there is no more Israel.
Yasser Arafat's death has not marked the end of Arafatism. Abbas is no more resolved today to confront Fatah's terrorist factions than Arafat was. His actions belie his words. Abbas announces that jihad is terrorism, but at the same time he continues to meet with terrorist leaders. He dined with many of the worst of them in Syria, and Ahmed Qureia, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, has just met with leaders of terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Syria and announced they would not be disarmed. No wonder al Qaeda announced that it's opening a branch in Gaza.
The truth is Abbas is not so much trying to smash the terrorist organizations as he is trying to reconcile with them, including paying some that engage in acts of terrorism, like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin, mostly former members of Palestinan security forces, who continue to receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority. Jamal Abu Samhadana, the head of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, announced that at least 500 members of his group have been recruited to the PA. He himself was offered a senior "intelligence" position by the PA. There are over 700 armed gangs like this in Gaza, all connected with Fatah, that have made murder, kidnapping, and extortion a part of everyday life.
Whatever emollient words may be uttered on the occasion of the Gaza withdrawal, the violence from the Palestinian side simply cannot be ignored. In the five months between the February cease-fire and July, Palestinians carried out 812 attacks on Israeli targets, and thousands more were disrupted by Israeli security efforts. No fewer than 47 percent of those attacks were claimed by Fatah, the ruling group in the Palestinian Authority, which is headed by Abbas--yet no one was arrested or expelled.
How long can Israel negotiate a peace with people who in fact are coconspirators in the efforts to destroy the Jewish state? Diplomacy fails if one side does not deliver on its word. Where is the pro-peace, pro-prosperity, and pro-freedom wing of the Palestinian people determined to dismantle the terrorist groups, as called for by President Bush?
Pressure. Far from being disarmed, the terrorist forces are being rearmed, and now they're trying to transfer their technical knowledge on how to build rockets to groups in the West Bank, in order to attack nearby Israeli cities.
So what does Israel get in return for giving Palestinians Gaza? An Islamic terrorist state? Even a liberal think tank like the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies has concluded that the disadvantages and the risks of disengagement outweigh the benefits and that it will lead to more terrorism. In a recent paper, the center's scholars concluded: "After the disengagement, terrorism's center of gravity will shift to the West Bank . . . while Gaza will serve as a rear echelon and support base for this activity" and will "offer safe harbor for wanted terrorists and senior commanders," thus providing a place for Hamas and other terrorist groups to build larger militias with a greater degree of immunity.
In these circumstances, Israelis will be wholly justified if they refuse to make any more concessions until the Palestinians change their behavior over an extended period of time. And they will deserve the strongest international support for that. Western sympathy and aid for the Palestinians should now be conditioned on the Palestinians' unequivocal answers to six questions:
1. Will there be a decline in incitement to hatred or a change in the rhetoric of Palestinian officials when speaking in Arabic to their people?
2. Will the Palestinians continue to be directed toward the destruction of Israel, or will they seek to build up their own nation-state?
3. Will there be a stable government with real control of the territory that will stop terrorism and disarm radical groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a terrorist paramilitary group ruled by Fatah?
4. Will Palestinians continue to claim Israeli withdrawal as a victory through terrorism, thereby justifying more terrorism?
5. Will the billions of dollars of new aid disappear into the private bank accounts of their leadership groups, as it has for years, or instead be put into programs for the welfare of their people?
6. Will they dismantle the refugee camps that, despite all the foreign aid, have been a permanent condition of Gaza life and resettle their people in decent housing?
Without the right answers to these questions, it will be impossible for Israel to make further concessions and withdrawals, especially when the message from the international community is always that they are never enough--no matter what the Palestinians do.
Fortunately, President Bush has long insisted that meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians cannot be held as long as Palestinian terrorism persists and the terrorist organizations are not dismantled and disarmed. His instincts will be to hold to that, but the instincts of a second term in any administration are similar to those of the last Clinton administration--namely, to accomplish some great diplomatic coup in this part of the world before the president's final term ends. The Bush administration would be wise to look not just at the failures of the Clinton administration to hold the Palestinians accountable but also at the Carter administration's participation in the ouster of the shah of Iran in 1979 because of Iran's poor human-rights record. The ensuing revolution brought the ayatollahs to power--a strategic catastrophe for America, for the region, and for Israel, since now the world must contend with a nuclear-ambitious and terrorist-sponsoring regime. Similarly, the danger is that Gaza will become a worldwide terrorist training base, much as Afghanistan was for the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, David Welch, said last week that it is critical that the Palestinian Authority disarm Hamas and other terrorist organizations. "In the road map," Welch said, referring to the U.S.-backed plan for peace in the region, "there is a requirement to take steps toward the dismantlement of the terror organizations. Hamas is, for us, a terror organization. I would expect that the PA would do those things. . . . Security is the beginning, the middle, and the end."
Until now, Abbas has shown neither the willpower nor the firepower to stop the extremist terrorist groups from resuming terrorism. The next few years will determine whether President Bush continues with his policy of moral, strategic, and diplomatic clarity or abandons it in the pursuit of an illusory solution, pressuring Israel for more concessions, before knowing whether Abu Mazen presides over a Palestinian state or a terrorist state.
This story appears in the September 5, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.