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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
As Israeli battles Israeli over Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza, the prime minister is working to keep the real prize: The big West Bank settlements. Will Bush go along?
Jul 22, 2005 | Israel is divided these days by colors. Orange belongs to the right-wing opponents of prime minister Ariel Sharon, protesting his "disengagement" plan to remove the Jewish settlements from the Gaza strip and northern West Bank next month. They appropriated the color from Ukraine's pro-democracy camp, which successfully overturned a sham election. The pro-disengagement crowd took blue, or blue-and-white like the Israeli national flag, as its emblem.
Driving up the hills to Jerusalem, with its heavily religious population, one sees an abundance of cars with orange stripes tied to their radio antennas and external mirrors. Down in secular Tel Aviv, there are more and more blue stripes. The war of colors is the public expression of a deeper debate, centering on Israel's direction and the ability of its democracy to absorb an act as deeply divisive as Sharon's disengagement.
The anti-government protests have many faces, from angry teenagers blocking main highways to calls by prominent, white-haired rabbis for their followers in the military to disobey the evacuation order. "Soldier, officer, refuse the order" is the battle cry of right-wing demonstrators, and those who have actually refused (a small number) have become symbols of the fight. So far, however, the anger has not ignited into mass violence: both sides have refrained from forceful confrontation. The country's security chiefs, defense minister Shaul Mofaz and police chief Moshe Karadi, anticipated in advance that the worst-case scenarios of settlers shooting at the evacuating police would not happen. Mofaz predicted that the settler movement would not want to risk losing its remaining public support by breaking with democracy and the rule of law. "They will have to live with us on the day after, and send their sons to the same army, and they know it," he said. The actual removal of settlements, scheduled for August 15, is over three weeks away, but so far it appears that Mofaz was correct.
The government hesitated at first to act strongly against the road-blockers and demonstrators. But the opposition overplayed its hand, and Sharon used it to gain public support for tougher measures. Sharon blasted those who preach refusal as "leading to the country's destruction" and ordered the security organs to take a harder line. (State attorney Meni Mazuz, however, still refuses to indict the refusal-preaching former chief rabbis, Avraham Shapiro and Mordechai Eliahu, questioning the wisdom of dragging old people into police stations.)
Last week Sharon signed a decree closing the Gaza Strip to all Israelis except those who still live and work in the soon-to-be-evacuated settlements. Its aim was to preempt the largest expression of protest to date, a mass popular march towards Gush Katif, the site of most settlements slated for evacuation. Yesha Council, the settlers' official leadership, brought tens of thousands of people to the journey, but the police and army successfully stopped and encircled them at Kfar Maimon, a village on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. After three days in the scorching summer heat, spent in an orange-colored, Woodstock-like gathering, most demonstrators dispersed quietly to their homes, having failed to achieve their dual goal of undermining the government's authority and reinforcing the Gaza settlements. Their leaders pledged to infiltrate via other means to the locked-off Gush Katif. The organizers maintained remarkable discipline among the marchers, who avoided violence, but they failed to attract participants beyond their core group of West Bank religious settlers, many of them children on summer break. Three weeks before the Gaza D-day, Sharon has prevailed over his opponents, at least for now.
The prime minister's aides said that the settler leadership's ability to control the crowd was the most important lesson of the week's events. "We were afraid they would lose control to less organized, and possibly more violent, forces," said a senior aide. Both of Sharon's deputies, Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert, suggested an earlier withdrawal timetable to cut short the settlers' protest. But Sharon balked at the idea. His office explained that changing the schedule would involve complicated legal and operational moves.
Sharon's life story is a record of continuous struggle, mostly against Israel's Arab adversaries, sometimes versus his army commanders and political rivals. For four years he led the country during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which cost about 1,000 Israeli dead and perhaps three times that many on the Palestinian side. Currently, however, he is facing the toughest battle of his lifetime, against his erstwhile settler allies. He had sent them to the West Bank hills and Gaza's golden dunes, and now, with the same ruthlessness, he wants to redraw the map, give away the less strategic Gaza strip for a stronger hold over Israel's "settlement blocs" in the hills overlooking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. This is heresy, not to say treachery, in the eyes of ideological settlers, who believe they are fulfilling God's biblical pledge to give the land to the people of Israel. Sharon's more secular critics, mostly within his Likud party, blame him for "rewarding Palestinian terror" by abandoning a hard-won territory.
Sharon justifies his about-face over the settlements by claiming to have reassessed the changing domestic, regional and international balance of forces. Facing the opposition's rage, he has reacted with characteristic calmness, maintaining his normal schedule aand pretending that it's business as usual. Presenting a statesmanlike image has been the key to Sharon's electoral victories in 2001 and 2003, and he wants to maintain it for next year's reelection effort.
On Wednesday, the Knesset rejected the right's last effort to derail the evacuation through a parliament bill. Sharon's challenger, finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu, did not participate in the vote (under the principle of collective responsibility in a parliamentary system, a minister who votes against the cabinet's line is automatically fired. Avoiding the vote, however, does not carry such a penalty.)
Sharon's strategy has paid off in his improved international image. It is difficult to grasp how a man who was despised for years as a warmonger and bully for his violent record in fighting the Arabs, has now become the darling of world leaders. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to Jerusalem on Thursday to show support for Sharon and push Israelis and Palestinians to better coordinate the Gaza withdrawal. Rice will visit Sharon's farm on Friday, a small reciprocity for the prime minister's trip to President Bush's Texas ranch last April. But American support for Sharon will not be expressed only in touring the pastures. The administration is expected to announce a $2 billion aid package to Israel, to underwrite the military relocation out of Gaza and development projects in the country's northern and southern regions.
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