Israeli pullout may be 'prelude to the big battle'
USA TODAY
Date: 08-26-05
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
While Israel's pullout from 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank took little more than a week, lasting peace with Palestinians still appears to be a long way off.
"Everybody understands that this (withdrawal) is the prelude to the big battle" over claims to land still passionately in dispute, Hebrew University political scientist Reuven Hazan says.
The battle may have already begun. Less than 48 hours after Israeli troops evacuated 15,000 settlers and activists from Gaza and four West Bank settlements - territory Israel is ceding for what could be part of a future Palestinian state - violence erupted in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Israeli troops killed five suspected Palestinian terrorists during a raid in the Tulkarem refugee camp overnight Wednesday. A Palestinian stabbed to death a British ultra-Orthodox Jewish student and injured his American classmate in the first attack in Jerusalem's Old City in three years.
The violence underscores the intractable dispute to come: How will the West Bank be carved up and what will become of Jerusalem, a holy city to both sides?
Even after Israel hands over Gaza some time in October, 230,000 Israelis will remain among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. They live in more than 220 settlements and unauthorized outposts strategically placed across the West Bank's terraced hills, as well as in three major settlement blocs that Israel says it will never give up. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said a Gaza-type withdrawal would not be repeated in the West Bank and peace negotiations would begin only after Palestinians disarm militant groups.
Sharon may close a few outposts his government considers illegal, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk says, but he will continue to send Israelis to West Bank settlements despite U.S. warnings to halt construction there. Some of those settlers came from Gaza.
On Wednesday, Israel seized land near Maaleh Adumim, the West Bank's largest settlement bloc, to extend a controversial security barrier that effectively makes the area part of Jerusalem. Israeli officials also approved construction of a new police station in a disputed area between the settlement and Jerusalem, part of a plan Palestinians say will divide the West Bank in two.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed last week that the Gaza withdrawal is only the "first step towards the liberation of the West Bank and Jerusalem."
For now, both sides are likely to settle into a long-running "holding operation," predicts Shlomo Avineri, a Hebrew University political scientist. "The time, unfortunately, is not yet ripe" for peace negotiations, he says. Instead, Israelis and Palestinians are conducting lower-level talks on Gaza that include building a seaport, repairing the airport and creating a safe-passage corridor to the West Bank.
U.S. prods both sides
The Bush administration wants more. The pullout is "an important opportunity to re-energize the road map" peace process, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said Sunday after meeting with Abbas in Gaza City.
Knesset member Avshalom Vilan of Israel's left-wing Meretz-Yahad Party says he expects the Israeli government will close no more than two dozen of about 100 illegal outposts in the West Bank.
Vilan says Sharon would throw out just enough hilltop radicals to satisfy the United States without further inflaming former right-wing supporters, who opposed the pullout and Sharon will want to woo back in next year's election.
Palestinians fear Sharon's unilateral withdrawal will be his only goodwill gesture and that the momentum for advancing peace will soon be lost.
"People see peace is doable, they see settlements can be destroyed and demolished," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat says. "We have to seize this opportunity immediately" and return to negotiations without delay.
"A period of mutual testing" has begun, Tel Aviv University political scientist Aharon Klieman says. Palestinians will finally get a chance to govern Gaza themselves. Israel will watch closely to see how they do. "It's going to take time," he says. "There is going to be a lapse before anyone really moves forward."
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres says progress depends on how well Abbas reins in militants.
"If things emerge reasonably well in Gaza, then the door is open for further moves, wider decisions," Peres says. He adds that Palestinians "have to take their own destinies in their own hand."
Wall is political obstacle
Palestinians counter that they can't take control of their destinies so long as Israel maintains its security barrier.
Ziad Awoawdy's flower shop faces the wall that has cut him off from many customers. He used to make $1,000 a day; now, less than $300. "The people don't have the ability to get here from the other side," says Awoawdy, 23, as he wraps white tulle for a newlyweds' car. "I'm happy because the Palestinians are getting their land in Gaza but it won't affect me."
The barrier, a Berlin Wall-style divider in heavily populated Jerusalem, has sharply reduced terror attacks inside Israel. But for 55,000 East Jerusalem Arabs stranded on the West Bank side, the wall is an obstacle to peace.
"The wall must fall. It is not for security. It is a political wall only" designed to unilaterally set Israel's border, says Mohammad Aslan, executive director of the Al-Ram local council. He calls the Gaza pullout a "trick" to tighten Israel's grip in the West Bank.
Sharon has said that Israel would keep the three major West Bank population centers of Ariel, Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion near Jerusalem. Peres says Israel hopes to negotiate a land swap for the bedroom communities.
About 80,000 more Israelis live in 120 smaller settlements that will lie outside the barrier when it is completed this fall.
Some secular settlers have lobbied for compensation to move back to Israel. But 50,000 settlers say God gave the land to the Jewish people and they have at least some historical claim, unlike in Gaza. Avineri says both sides should now take unilateral actions: Israel should evacuate 20,000 people from 20 to 25 isolated West Bank settlements and Abbas should consolidate his security forces and tell Palestinian refugees that they must give up their dream of returning to their old homes inside Israel.
Convincing ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to give up their cherished land will not be easy.
Jewish settler Moshe Aharon, 27, moved two years ago with his wife and toddler daughter to a trailer in the illegal hilltop outpost of Nofei Nehemia, east of Ariel. From his window, he can see the valley he says once marked the border between the biblical tribes of Benjamin and Ephraim in the heart of ancient Samaria.
Aharon, who believes the West Bank belongs to the Jews, expects he'll be removed next. "Our country has lost its course," he says.
Mussa Taeh, 55, moved to the Jalzon refugee camp as an infant from a village near Tel Aviv. "They're (Israelis) going to take more land, make more settlements, make more problems," he says.
His son, Raji, 24, adds: "We want them to leave not just Gaza but all our lands."
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