A Fulcrum Moment
The best, slim hope for an Israeli-Palestinian peace is the continuance in power of Ariel Sharon. This prospect, however, is now at risk. In Europe it was fashionable for quite a while to portray Sharon as the iron-fisted zealot, contrasted with the oppressed Palestinians who wanted only peace. The opposite, of course, was true. The peace process, throttled by Yasser Arafat, was given new life with Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement from Gaza. But it came at huge political cost. Sharon lost his majority in the cabinet and in the parliament and the support of many in his own Likud Party. It was a highly risky gambit, and he and his new party will see how it fares when they face Israeli voters in March.
Sharon is ahead in the polls right now, but perhaps more than anyone, he knows the bleak history of the role of terrorism in Israeli politics. The terrorism of the intifada in 2000 forced Ehud Barak out as prime minister, leaving the office to Sharon. Suicide bombings in February and March 1996 knocked Shimon Peres out of the prime minister's job. Prior to that, terrorism caused Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to lose an earlier election. And in an election in 1988, Peres lost following the firebombing of a mother and her three children near Jericho. Terrorists, interested not in peace but only in conquest, have been trying to obstruct the re-election of any Israeli prime minister who seems moderate and willing to compromise. The renewal of suicide bombing in Israel is simply a part of this malevolence.
Why is Sharon so vulnerable? Precisely because if the withdrawal from Gaza and the opening of the Rafah border crossing from Gaza to Egypt exposes Israel to more murder, he will have to show that the moves made sense. He can advance his program for peace only with the broadest possible public support, from the right and the left. But here the news is not good. The Rafah crossing was supposed to be reopened for trade while preventing the passage of weapons and explosives. The security arrangements, effectively forced upon the Israelis by Washington, were so porous that every single Israeli military, security, intelligence, and police service opposed the agreement, recognizing how easily the Palestinians could smuggle terrorists and weapons into Gaza.
Eight minutes. To date, the worst of fears have been realized. The Israelis believed they were to receive information regarding every person crossing in and out of Gaza so as to put a hold on their entry if necessary. Instead, information comes in at least eight minutes late, long enough for the person to cross through the terminal and enter Gaza. As the head of the political-military section of the Israeli Ministry of Defense put it, "The agreement is worthless." Another security expert put it well, "It is like seeing a movie with no sound and no subtitles."
Dire results, unsurprisingly, have ensued. Senior Hamas operatives, whom Israel had previously expelled from the territories, returned to Gaza via the Rafah crossing with no hindrance from the international supervisors or from Israel. The highest-ranking one was the brother of Hamas's top leader in Gaza, Fadel al-Zahar, who had been kept out of Gaza for 15 years. The feckless Palestinian security forces admitted that 10 to 15 high-ranking wanted militants had returned to Gaza through the Rafah crossing in just seven days since it came under Palestinian control--mostly from Izzadin al-Qassam, the armed terrorist wing of the radical Islamic Hamas movement. Included was Sheik Ahmed el-Malah, one of the founders of Hamas; Rafik al-Hasanat, a senior member of Hamas wanted by Israel for over a decade; and Nihro Masoud, one of the founders of Hamas's al-Kassam Brigade.
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