Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): A gift of dust and bones

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday June 2

A gift of dust and bones
Sharon's plan for a pullout owes more to demographic shifts than a belated conversion to peace-making
By Jonathan Freedland in Gaza

It is hardly the Mediterranean's shiniest pearl. And yet this strip of land - cramped, dusty and overrun with poverty and squalor - currently stands at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether the near-dead peace process twitches back into life will depend on it; the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon could fall over it. All eyes are on the Gaza Strip.
It is Sharon who has given this benighted sliver of land - simultaneously pocked with refugee camps and blessed with a coastline that, anywhere else, would be a major tourist destination - its sudden prominence. His Operation Rainbow, bulldozing home after home in the Rafah refugee camp, put the place back on the TV news. Meanwhile, his "disengagement" plan, which calls for a phased Israeli withdrawal from the strip over the next year, has replaced the roadmap as the Middle East initiative of the hour.
He first launched the idea in February and all sides - including Sharon's own Likud party - have been trying to fathom its meaning ever since. Some believe it is little more than a trick. They say the PM is still the same super-hawk of old - just one smart enough to realise that occasionally it pays to dress up as a dove. On this theory, Sharon has no intention of giving up an inch of Gaza or anywhere else, but knew it would look good if he was seen to try. This is why, say the sceptics, he put his Gaza pullout plan to a referendum last month of Likud voters - the one group guaranteed to reject it.
It's an appealing theory, but I don't buy it. If this was a deliberate bit of stage-managed self-sabotage, it badly backfired. Sharon is now fighting for his political life, wounded by the referendum rebuff and fending off a cabinet revolt. The buzzards are already circling, eyeing up Sharon's job, with former PM Binyamin Netanyahu first in the pack.

Read more.

[Lithos]

1. It is an appalling theory

However, I think it bears more than a kernel of truth and backfired only because of the rapaciousness and greed of the average Likud party member which Sharon miscalculated.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Like Freedland, I don't buy it

However, as you say, the greed and rapaciousness of the typical Likudite is the reason for the failure of Sharon's plan.

Sharon's plan wasn't at all a good one. Any unilateral plan is bad. Sharon realizes that he can't claim the land on which Palestinians are living and continue to pretend that Palestinians aren't human beings with human rights; he can't maintain a Jewish state in a country that will soon be majority Arab.

Sharon is still trying to hang on to what he can of the Likudite dream of Greater Israel, even if it's a lesser Greater Israel than the one Begin envisioned when he declared the West Bank and Gaza to be "an integral part of Israel" in 1977. Most Likudites won't let go of Begin's vision, no matter how impractical, costly and anti-democratic it has become.

[bemildred]

3. Interesting, but I'm not buying it either.

A couple comments seem in order.
If one does buy this, then:

1.) One sees Israel in a defensive position, no longer looking
for more, but rather, trying to hang on to as much as possible.

2.) Any demographic solution by in-migration has been abandoned.
(No, encouragment of in-migration will continue, as will having
children, but this is an admission that the "demographic problem"
cannot be solved that way, Israel will lose a reproductive war
with the Arabs.)

3.) This is also an admission that the military road goes nowhere,
it has purely tactical utility. This was obvious to the knowledgeable
long ago, but the acolytes of the shrine of violence do not abandon
their faith easily, witness the debacle in Iraq.

---

I still do not see why Egypt should be interested in getting
sucked into this. They already live next to "Hamasland", and it's
Israel's problem. Under this "plan" it will become Egypt's problem.
Hosni has shown no signs in the past of being anything but a hard-
nose, I expect some sort of payment will be required, if this plan
is accepted at all.

Sharon is still an idiot. Now he's a desperate idiot. That is not
a good thing for anybody when an idiot like Sharon is desperate.