Sharon’s Disengagement & Unlearned History Lessons

Monday, 11 July 2005, 8:54 am
Opinion: Ramzy Baroud

There is little in argument that the second Palestinian Uprising is effectively terminated, despite the fact that the causes which led to it remain in place. This claim does not deny the looming prospects of a third revolt, nor does it undermine the unbroken will of the Palestinian people to carry on with their resistance by any channel available.

However, unfolding events in the Occupied Territories, topped by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s declared intentions of "disengaging" from the Gaza Strip, with a first phase scheduled for August 2005, have shifted internal Palestinian focus, even if temporarily, from confronting the Israeli occupation to settling factional and political grievances.

As far as the Israeli disengagement plan is concerned, Sharon’s real motives are starkly clear and require no elaboration. In a noteworthy policy speech delivered on June 30, 2005, Sharon, while taking on settlers opposing the disengagement plan clarified that the conditional move is motivated purely by demographics. This is certainly a palpable insinuation that Sharon’s actions are motivated by the recommendations of the US-led quartet on Middle East peace, the provisions of the US forged road map or international law.

"We concluded that we are going to leave Gaza, where there is no chance of establishing a Jewish majority," he said in Cesaria. "It is clear to everyone that Gaza will never be part of Israel in any final agreement. At the same time, we are turning our resources to the most important areas, which we need to safeguard for our existence: the Galilee, the Negev, Greater Jerusalem, the settlement blocs, and security areas."

Sharon has once again demonstrated that he is anything but a changed man. His commitment to the illegal settlements project is approaching the apex: caging in Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, annexing 58 per cent of the size of the West Bank, expanding the borders of Greater Jerusalem to include major settlements blocks and working diligently to offset Palestinian population growth by dispatching thousands of Jewish settlers to the West Bank, expropriating a large area of Palestinian land by extending the illegal wall which has already snaked its way around scores of Palestinian towns and villages, incarcerating tens of thousands of Palestinians behind walls, fences, trenches and locked gates.

This is what Sharon has to offer Palestinians in response to their one sided ceasefire and to President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s trying hard to prove to Washington and Tel Aviv, that he unlike Arafat is a worthy "peace partner."

Meanwhile, the world watched with shock and amazement Israel’s over-publicized clashes between Jewish settlers and soldiers. "Israeli vs. Israeli in Gaza", read a Christian Science Monitor headline. The media did its best to diminish the ingrained conception that Sharon’s commitment to the illegal settlements is everlasting. If the man who earned the title of The Bulldozer for destroying so many homes in Gaza during the 1970’s is willing to take on his extremist and most loyal constituency for the sake of peace, then he must be earnest in his efforts to bring the conflict to a halt, many concluded.

But there is more to "Arik’s horror show" in Gaza, wrote veteran Israeli journalist and peace activist, Uri Avnery, following a noisy clash between settler youth and Israeli troops on June 29, 2005. He wrote: "There is no escaping the simple conclusion. It is in (Sharon’s) interests that TV screens in Israel and all over the world show the scenes of the terrible riots. That’s how he sows in the heads of the viewers the natural question, ‘If the evacuation of a few small settlements causes such a huge uproar — how can one even dream of removing the big settlements in the West Bank?’

Moreover, if the transfer of Gaza’s settlers to the West Bank (estimated at 1700 families) will needlessly cost the Israeli budget 1.1 million dollars per family, then how will the Israeli public ever back the removal of hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers infesting the West Bank?

Sharon has indeed calculated will, creating enough political, ideologically, technical and financial hindrances that place an Israeli settler evacuation from the West Bank in the realm of impossibility.

On the political front, the Disengagement serves a great purpose and compels one to recall remarks made by Sharon’s lawyer and advisor, Dov Weisglass who told the Ha’aretez that the "disengagement" would actually supply the amount of formaldehyde necessary so there would not be a political process with the Palestinians."

And indeed, there was no political process and none should be expected. The highly touted meetings like that between Sharon and Abbas in Jerusalem on June 21, 2005 were simply used by the Israeli premier as another opportunity to reprimand Palestinians for not doing enough to curb violence and uproot the "terrorist infrastructure" and so on.

And while Sharon’s plan is actualizing to the last point, Palestinians are haunted by a long legacy of corruption and nepotism, which is as old as the PA itself. Left alone to battle Israeli tanks and army helicopters, the Palestinian masses are also undeniably weary and in need of a ray of hope, however faint it might be. It is highly unlikely that such a ray will come from neighboring Arab countries, some being very eager to embrace political and economic normalization with Israel. Egypt, for one, agreed to supply Israel with cheap gas in a lucrative deal signed last month.

It is only Palestinian resistance, which is capable of defusing Sharon’s dangerous plan, whose blueprint was repugnantly highlighted in his infamous speech on March 05, 2002. "It won’t be possible to reach an agreement with them before the Palestinians are hit hard. If they aren’t badly beaten, there won’t be any negotiations. Only after they are beaten will we be able to conduct talks. I want an agreement, but first they have to be beaten so they get the thought out of their minds that they can impose an agreement on Israel that Israel does not want."

If history was of any use at all, Sharon might have realized how horribly mistaken he was following every act of carnage against Palestinians. After all, it was a Palestinian who once wrote, "like the trees we die standing," a phrase that has been ingrained in the Palestinian psyche for generations and was demonstrated in heroic resilience throughout the Occupied Territories.

But neither Sharon nor most of Israel’s decision makers seem to be good students of history. They are condemned to repeat the same mistake again and again, and with every unlearned lesson, squandering an untold number of lives and countless opportunities for a genuine, just and lasting peace.

-Ramzy Baroud, a veteran Arab American journalist, is editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com. He is the author of the upcoming book, A Force to Be Reckoned With: Writings on the Second Palestinian Uprising to be published by Pluto Press, London.

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