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COMMENTARY
May 4, 2005
Brainless in Gaza
The idea that Israel can promote peace by unilaterally withdrawing Jewish settlements from occupied territories is one of the world's great "no-brainers". Like other no-brainers, it shows no brains. The Israeli cabinet is now losing its most intelligent and impressive member -- Natan Sharansky -- thanks finally to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of unilaterally pulling the few Israeli settlements out of Gaza.As usual, the headlines are captured by the superficial and irrelevant details. The Israeli newspapers were vexing themselves yesterday over whether the IAF should demolish the settlements after moving their inhabitants (many of the adults now becoming refugees within Israel for a second or third time). It is typical of the non-meeting of minds, that the Palestinians mostly want the buildings demolished and their sites cleared, while most Israelis want to hand over the buildings to the Palestinians rather than wasting them. The Israeli authorities are also aware that if the buildings are demolished, the international media will have an anti-Israeli field day showing the scene. Which is in turn why many Palestinians want the demolition to happen: they would rather see that TV show, than have the use of buildings better constructed and serviced than most they now own. So much for red herrings. The real issue, as Mr. Sharansky correctly grasps, is how will the Palestinians respond to this Israeli gift of withdrawal? Will they note that the Israelis have made an overture for peace, and now it is their turn to reply, in equally good faith? Or will they dance in the streets to celebrate another assumed victory over Zionism by Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, et al. -- the way they did when the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from southern Lebanon? See if you can guess. In Mr. Sharansky's view, the only possible secure future for Israel requires the democratization of her Arab neighbours. Nothing short of this will bring peace for long. And the most important democratization is for the Palestinians. Israel, in his view, has a vested interest in advancing democracy in the West Bank and Gaza. This happens also to be the view taken by the U.S. administration in Washington -- though not consistently, for no matter how many times President Bush says it, or Condoleezza Rice repeats it, the diplomatists and bureaucrats of the State Department have difficulty hearing. Their minds remain locked in headspaces defined in the generation prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; they think only in terms of balances of power among governments they assume must be permanently authoritarian. Mr. Sharansky, whose book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, has been explicitly endorsed by President Bush as an explanation of his own point of view, knows that this democratization will only be achieved by a Palestinian Administration that is prodded every step of the way. It follows that the Israelis should prod with every bargaining chip at their disposal. What is given gratis is not merely amissed opportunity: it reinforces tyranny and terror on the other side. Meanwhile, the spinelessness of the Palestinian Administration was put on display again yesterday, when they released three Hamas "activists" from prison. These gentleman had been caught after a gunfight, apparently fresh from firing off a few Qassam rockets in the general direction of the Israeli town of Sderot. They were paraded before the international media as examples of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's new "iron fist" stance against terrorism. But Hamas, which claims to have been observing the ceasefire Mr. Abbas negotiated with them in March, threatened violence against the PA Monday afternoon. The "activists" were then quietly released Tuesday morning -- only the latest of several thousand serious malefactors who have passed through the revolving doors of Palestinian prisons. The attitude among the anti-Israeli legions in the West seems to be, that since Mr. Abbas takes so much heat for giving lip-service to the security agreements he signs with Israel and the U.S., it would be outrageous to expect him to actually keep them. Surely we should be content with his nice words alone; and why can't the Israelis get used to all the rockets and suicide bombs? This is the kind of thinking to which the thinking of Mr. Sharansky is opposed. He insists upon "linkage" between words and deeds. And he clanks the chain of reasoning all the way to PA headquarters. The Palestinians are supposed to be getting a democracy. This is not a single event, like the overturning of a public statue, but rather a long and even arduous process of societal reform. It involves big public things like constitutions and elections, but also little things -- such as eliminating roving bands of terrorist hitmen. And sometimes, the little things are the hardest to achieve. Well, Mr. Sharansky is now gone, and we are back to watching the blind leading the blind towards the usual Armageddon. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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