[GushShalom] Will something come of it?

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM  pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 www.gush-shalom.org

International release
Tel-Aviv - July 2, 2003.

Will something come of it?
Evaluation by Adam Keller

"Will it will work this time? Maybe, just maybe". You can hear it from 
Israelis and from Palestinians, from committed peace activists to shop-
keepers who had voted for Sharon: a mixture of hope and scepticism, 
still prevalent on the third day of the fragile "hudna" - Arabic for "cease-
fire ", a concept drawn from an ancient Islamic tradition which has in 
the past year entered into day to day Hebrew. 

Israelis and Palestinians, we have all seen it before - promising 
ceasefires broken into terrible scenes of bloodshed, partial 
withdrawals which ended with the tanks coming back even more 
brutally, prisoners released and arrested again. 
Can it possibly end differently, this time around?    

The reasons for scepticism are many and obvious. The Israeli military 
commanders make no secret of not having wanted this cease-fire - 
which is potentially more dangerous than the Palestinian rogue groups 
who so far defy the cease-fire. (Ironically, they are not drawn from 
Islamic militants, but from outlying groups of the Fatah organization, 
the central structure of which was all too successfully targeted by the 
IDF.) 

There is a fundamental difference of opinion on what the whole thing is 
about. Sharon, his ministers and his generals are stridently demanding 
the disarming and dismantling of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. In this 
demand, which would inevitably entail a full-scale Palestinian civil war, 
Sharon seems to be backed by the Bush Administration. For their part, 
the Palestinians have undertaken to enforce the cease-fire and prevent 
attacks on Israelis, including attacks on soldiers and settlers - which 
was among Palestinians a long-debated point. But they also made 
abundantly clear that they have no intention whatsoever of presenting 
Sharon with the spectacle of bloody battles among Palestinians in the 
streets of Gaza.

Assuming that this major hurdle will be somehow overcome, a far more 
fundamental discrepancy remains unresolved. When Sharon speaks of 
"a Palestinian State", he means a truncated series of enclaves 
embracing no more than half of the the West Bank, and surrounded on 
all sides by Israeli-held territory studded with military camps and 
settlements. Hardly a "viable state" as envisaged in the famous 
Roadmap. In furtherance of that aim, Sharon is continuing full ahead 
with settlement construction, fully authorized by the government and 
paid for from its budget - while the much-trumpeted "dismantling of 
unauthorized settlement outposts" has dwindled into unconvincing 
farce. Moreover, Sharon is busily marking out his version of the 
eventual border in the form of the so-called Separation Fence 
("Apartheid Wall" as the Israeli and Palestinian protesters call it).
Day by day, as this monster advances across fields and olive 
orchards, Palestinian villagers continue to lose their land and livelihood -
 notwithstanding the public expression of displeasure by National 
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.

Why still feel even a bit of hope? Not just because people are alive who 
might be dead otherwise, nor just because some manifestations of the 
occupation such as roadblocks in the Gaza Strip have been moved 
away.
What is far more significant is the general feeling on both sides that 
the military option has been tried to the full and beyond. No Israeli 
general could point to significant results to be expected from 
continuing to hold down the Palestinian population. Nor can Palestinian 
militants credibly promise any good result of further suicide bombings.
The two societies are exhausted; the two economies ravaged. 
Palestinian poverty goes much deeper but also more and more Israelis 
are unable to make ends meet.

As many commentators remark, the "War of a Thousand Days" is 
ending - if it is indeed ending - in a stalemate, with no clear victor. 
Considering the enormous discrepancy in economic and military power 
such a result is an enormous tribute to Palestinian endurance and 
steadfastness.

In a way, the very scepticism on both sides could turn out to be a 
blessing. One of the inbuilt failures of "Oslo" was that a preliminary 
agreement which left the most important issues open, was 
ceremoniously presented as peace had already been reached. 
Everything thereafter could hardly be anything but a let-down. This 
time, with expectations extremely low among Israelis and  Palestinians 
alike - any surprises would have to be for the good.


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