The
Gaza "Disengagement" Plan
And West Bank "Expansion" Plan
By George Bisharat
18 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
With
the spotlight on Lebanon, another Middle East milestone is passing largely
unnoticed. However, its lessons are just as important. A year ago this
week, Israel began implementing its unilateral Gaza disengagement plan
-- yet the region is beset by violence. Why did withdrawal of 8,500
Jewish settlers from Gaza lead to more conflict? Can Israel withdraw
from Arab territories without inviting attack?
Last August, Gaza Palestinians
greeted disengagement with both cautious hope and cynicism. They relished
freedom from the daily humiliations of military occupation. Students
longed to study, children to frolic on the beach, and entrepreneurs
to build businesses. Yet many also saw disengagement as an expression
of racial preference for Jews. Israel could not annex the Gaza Strip
without absorbing 1.4 million Palestinians, thus jeopardizing its status
as a Jewish state.
Israel marketed disengagement
to Americans as a step toward peace, but Palestinians remembered the
October 2004 comment of Dov Weisglass, adviser to former Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon: "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde.
It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there
will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
Why would Israeli politicians
subvert negotiations with Palestinians? Perhaps because no Palestinian
leader could agree to Israel's planned takeover of Jerusalem and much
of the West Bank.
Thus, the Gaza "disengagement"
plan is also the Jerusalem and West Bank "expansion" plan.
The number of Israelis settling in the West Bank this year exceeds the
number withdrawn from Gaza.
Further conflict, therefore,
was inevitable.
Moreover, while Israel decolonized
Gaza, its military occupation continues. Israel still controls the entry
and exit of people and goods into the region, patrols its coast and
airspace, oversees its water, fuel, electric utilities, and sewage,
and enters it with military forces at will. Under international law,
"effective control" determines whether a territory is occupied.
Since the January Palestinian
elections, hailed as the fairest in the Arab world, Israel has strived
to undermine the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, withholding $50 million
to $60 million monthly in tax revenues owed to the authority. The U.S.
and European Union have followed, halting aid to the Palestinians until
the Hamas government renounces violence, recognizes Israel and pledges
to honor prior agreements of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has not
yet bowed but has repeatedly signaled willingness to negotiate.
Of course Hamas should not
just halt violence -- it had suspended military operations for 17 months,
until June -- it should also renounce it. But shouldn't the same standard
apply to both parties? Shouldn't recognition and respect for prior agreements
be reciprocally required of Israel, which denies Palestinian national
rights and regularly violates the Oslo accords?
Palestinian civil servants
have gone without salaries since January. Gazans have suffered serious
deterioration in nutrition and health. The special U.N. rapporteur on
conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories warned in June of
an impending humanitarian crisis, saying, "In effect, the Palestinian
people have been subjected to economic sanctions -- the first time that
an occupied people have been so treated."
On June 24, Israeli troops
entered Gaza and abducted Dr. Osama Muantar and his brother, Mustafa,
alleging they were members of Hamas. The two joined some 9,000 Palestinian
prisoners languishing in Israeli jails. Many have not been charged with
a crime and more than 100 are minors.
The following day, Palestinian
groups attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers and capturing
a third.
Since then, Israel has laid
siege to the Gaza Strip, closing it to travel and trade and abducting
64 Hamas officials, including Cabinet ministers and parliamentary representatives.
Its jets have bombed roads, bridges, government buildings, Gaza's main
electrical generating plant, homes, fields, orchards, workshops, and
offices. To date, 184 Palestinians have been killed, including 42 children,
while another 650 have been wounded.
In 1982, Israel withdrew
from the Sinai Peninsula as part of a comprehensive peace agreement
with Egypt. Twenty-four years of peace on that border followed. But
unilateral redeployments that only shift the character of Israeli control
over Palestinian lives will never yield such results. Unilateralism
-- wherein the legitimate interests of the other party are ignored --
is the flaw, not withdrawal.
Would Americans remain quiescent
if a neighboring power sealed our borders and airspace, suffocated our
economy, expanded into our most desirable lands and attempted to throttle
our democratically elected government?
We should counsel Israel
to abandon unilateralism and unremitting violence against civilians.
Negotiations based on respect for international law and equal rights
offer the only way to lasting peace.
George Bisharat,
a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco,
writes frequently on the Middle East. His e-mail is [email protected].