PERSPECTIVE
Pullback, a smokescreen
SHELLEY WALIA
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Gaza remains a prison, with its borders under exacting vigilance. Critics are of the view that no peace will come out of the Israeli withdrawal.
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ECSTASY: As emotions ran high while reclaiming Gaza, the hope is that the Israeli withdrawal might give some respite to the Palestinians living there. PHOTOS: AFP
THE last troops have departed. Palestine is passing through an ecstatic state of joy. "Gaza, It has Come", "We liberated Gaza", "It is Returned with Blood". These were the songs sung to the accompaniment of gunshots, drumbeat and the violin celebrating the end of Israel's 38 years occupation of Gaza and parts of the Northern West Bank. Smoke could be seen rising from the synagogues. Palestinian policemen stood helpless, watching their countrymen go mad with joy at the historic event bringing to an end the blood spattered years of violent occupation. It seemed that the Palestinian's intractable refusal to accept oppression has finally paid dividends. This is the belief of the radical Islamists too who are of the opinion that Sharon has been forced to implement his "Disengagement Plan" because of the violent opposition of the Hamas group. The sight of a hopeful window for peace seems to usher a moment of rare commitment and a culmination of the never-ending drama of killings on both sides.
Although the Israeli evacuation from Gaza has taken place and more than 8,500 Jewish settlers have been evacuated from the Gaza strip, there has been no mention of either the 2,00,000 illegal settlers on the West Bank and Gaza or the same number in East Jerusalem. With no provision of an international vigilance force to oversee the implementation of the peace plan, Israel has the option to do what it pleases at other localities of occupation.
Chomsky's reaction
I recently wrote to Noam Chomsky about his remarks in one of his interviews that the fertile part of Gaza represents about a third of the Gaza Strip, this being the part Israel has always wanted to retain owing to its economical productivity and sale of produce to Europe. How would he then react to Israel's recent withdrawal from Gaza? Is it because the maintenance and protection of Israeli settlers was proving rather costly for the Israeli government or because the United States nudged Sharon in that direction, or whether Sharon had his own agenda?
Chomsky promptly sent his reply:
The motives do not seem obscure. Gaza has been turned into a disaster area under the Israeli military occupation of 38 years. A few thousand Israeli settlers take a substantial part of the scarce land and resources, and have to be protected by a large part of the Israeli army. Sane Israeli hawks understand that it makes no sense to continue with these arrangements. The settlers who were subsidised to establish themselves there are now being subsidised to settle elsewhere, leaving the population of Gaza to rot in a virtual prison. The few scattered West Bank outposts that are being abandoned are also simply an annoyance for Israel.
The "disengagement plan" is in reality an expansion plan, as was made plain at once. The presentation of the plan was coupled with an announcement of tens of millions of dollars for West Bank settlements and infrastructure development, a further expansion of the programs designed to ensure that valuable land and resources will be incorporated within Israel, while Palestinians will be left in scarcely viable cantons. The shameful "separation wall" is one particularly ugly feature of these programs. The actions are gross violations of international law and elementary human rights, but can continue as long as they are supported by the reigning superpower. American citizens are the only ones who can put an end to these continuing and very severe crimes.
The operation was a complete scam, a repeat of "Operation National Trauma '82" as the press called it at the time, carefully orchestrated, a media triumph, intended to convey the message "Never again must Jews suffer so; the West Bank is ours."
I agree with Chomsky that the biggest eye sore still is the eight-metre high and two-metre thick fence that is fast coming up on the border, which most Israelis feel, gives them a sense of security and personal safety as it prevents terrorist infiltration. But undeniably, the wall is not conducive to building confidence on both sides, and moreover, it is politically useless, though militarily useful. Most unfairly, the wall swallows large chunks of land belonging to the Palestinians, and in many cases, the poor farmers are left on one side of the wall while their land now lies on the other. Added to this, the withdrawal from Gaza is also meant to strengthen Israeli control over the West Bank, an area that is thickly populated by Palestinians. One of the reasons why Sharon has succeeded in getting the cabinet to endorse his disengagement from Gaza is his next move to intensify the expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Let us not be taken in by this façade of the roadmap to peace as indicated by the mass departure of the Israeli settlers.
"No peace from this withdrawal"
Interestingly, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disagrees with the Hamas group about the motive of his withdrawal which he argues was necessitated to increase security of residents of Israel, ease pressure on the Israeli military and trim down hostility between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Many critics are of the view that no peace will come out of this withdrawal. Nevertheless, the Israeli defence forces have succeeded in getting the settlements vacated in spite of stiff resistance by the Israel's right-wing and religious parties that are still very unhappy at the relinquishing of Israel's right over this land.
The Jewish residents of Gaza were reluctant to leave their homes in Gaza because of the conviction that the land is part of what they call "Eretz Yisrael" or Greater Israel and therefore a legitimate occupation according to the Old Testament. The settlers may have felt the dreadful loss of the security and the well being that they benefited as residents of the Gaza strip, but they refused to even give a passing thought to the Palestinians' wretched state of existence here.
While these 8,000 settlers lived in handsome comfortable houses with gardens and all up to date amenities, on this tiny strip of land, a mere five miles by 25 miles, occupying 40 per cent of that strip, 1.3 million Palestinians had to survive in the remaining area under unheard of congestion and insufferable squalor. These few Israelis have not realised that the maintenance of their security had resulted in the death of 1,700 innocent Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli defence forces, whereas the militant Palestinians had killed only 400 Israelis since 2002. One thing is certain: the withdrawal will unquestionably give some respite to the Palestinians living in Gaza, but this will be at the cost of displacement of their brethren elsewhere in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
What lies ahead
It has yet to be seen what economic changes the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) can initiate. New jobs for graduates have to be created and financing arranged for new commercial enterprises as well as development of housing facilities for the needy. The international community has to take serious steps to advance living conditions of the thousands of refugees who are still living in camps. Though Sharon has agreed to withdraw from the Philadelphi route along the Gaza-Egypt border, which will give the people of Gaza an outlet to the world, the establishment of a link with the West Bank is still on the anvil.
As appeasement of the evacuated Israelis, the government is giving, on an average, $2,50,000 per family while the Palestinians have gained nothing but unrestricted movement within Gaza as well as administrative control, though the borders, coastline and airspace as well as natural resources will remain under Israeli supervision. On the other hand, very deviously, the Sharon government intends to construct many new settlements in Jerusalem in the vicinity of Arab settlements and, by strategic urban planning, carry out its discriminatory ethnic politics. "We break up Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in isolated islands of Jewish presence in areas of Arab population," said Uri Bank, a leader of the pro-settlement Moledet party. "Then we definitely try to put these together to form our own continuity. It's just like Legos — you put the pieces out there and connect the dots ... Our eventual goal is Jewish continuity in all of Jerusalem." With such an ideology before us, the prognosis of the post-disengagement scenario is not far to seek. The displaced settlers from Gaza will now be rehabilitated on unlawfully occupied Palestinian territory thus violating all norms of international law. Thirty thousand new settlers are earmarked to move into recently raised units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by December 2005. Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land is far from over. Gaza remains a prison with its borders under exacting vigilance. And a sovereign Palestine only a dream.
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