Frustrated aspirations, until the world wakes up, define Palestinian political horizons as the occupation marches forward, writes Jamal Juma* Without doubt, the Zionist occupiers of Palestine did not evacuate the Gaza settlers out of good will. The occupation understood that it would never be able to defeat Palestinians in Gaza; that despite all the Israeli massacres, atrocities and sieges, the Palestinian resistance could not be broken. Israel failed in its attempts to create internal Palestinian conflict in Gaza. It became a costly and heavy burden for the Zionists and a perpetual source of fear for its soldiers and settlers. Yet amidst Palestinian "victory" celebrations -- led by various political forces, and the media fanfare that included live Arab and international coverage of every step of the settler evacuation -- the Palestinian people look on with frustration, knowing full well that Israel will make them pay a heavy price for the so-called "disengagement". In the West Bank, while the construction of apartheid ghettoes and gates, the expansion of settlements and the opening of new settler bypass roads accelerate, Gaza is becoming 365-square kilometre prison. The image of Gazan workers lining-up at the Erez checkpoint is inscribed in our memory, and the West Bank seems destined for a similar future. Concurrently, Jerusalem is treated as if it was already ethnically cleansed and all opportunities to save it have been extinguished. Escaping from Gaza has been an age-old Israeli dream, growing in persistence since the first Intifada. Yitzhak Rabin infamously wished "the sea would swallow Gaza", but it is the current political machinations of the occupation -- and the increased international complicity with them -- that convinced Israel that the "disengagement" would not resemble a second "South Lebanon" but instead cut-off Gaza with walls and fences serving as a distraction from the real aims of the occupation. This involves first and foremost, disconnecting Gaza from the Palestinian cause while maintaining stronger and exclusive control over the West Bank. Gaza throughout the years of occupation has been the flame of resistance, considered by Israel as a terrifying battlefield. Resistance in Gaza was strengthened by the occupation's continuous crimes and further catalysed by the dense population of the Strip and the presence of the largest refugee camps, which long gave Gaza the feel of being one single refugee camp. Today, the attempt to disconnect Gaza is reminiscent of the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, which succeeded in neutralising Egypt's role in the Palestinian cause. The overall blow to the Arab and Palestinian liberation movement facilitated the occupation's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, as Israel sought to totally eradicate the Palestinian resistance. Meanwhile, the project of sealing Palestinians into disparate prisons throughout the West Bank is accelerated and will lead to a new reality that will force the people into intensified popular Intifada. Fully aware of this, the occupation wants to deal with the West Bank alone, away from the heavyweight resistance in Gaza. It seeks to forge a scenario in which Gaza will be alienated from the struggle for Palestine, tied down by new chains, and reduced to an observer of Zionist expansion as other Arab states have been for years. Or, in the case of continued Palestinian resistance, Gaza will enter into some kind of internal conflict with the Palestinian Authority (PA), which undertook responsibility for "security", while Israeli air missiles would burn the land and the people in response to actions it disapproves of. Second, further demographic "engineering", in the occupation's equation of a racist "Jewish state". As the Mofaz recently stated, the disengagement will make fundamental demographic changes in favour of Israel's interests. Current estimates show that the number of Palestinians in all of Mandate Palestine is equal to the Jewish presence. By cutting-off the Gaza Strip, the occupation is able to remove 1.3 million Palestinians from its equation. Sharon in his latest visit to France declared that he plans to bring a million Jews from all over the world to Palestine in aid of settlers already engaged in the colonisation of the country. If these plans are realised, an even larger Jewish "demographic capacity" of colonisation and expulsion will be created to secure the goals of the apartheid wall. Ghettoised in already crowded residential areas, future Palestinian generations will be denied living space, facing "voluntary" expulsion, while refugees of 1967 will have no place to return to in the West Bank. Third, controlling the political direction. As impossible and costly the control inside Gaza was for the occupation, the unilateral Israeli decision to evacuate settlers has been presented as the only political initiative on the table to the maximum profit of the occupiers. It has been drawn up after internal Israeli negotiations, regardless of the American or international position, negating any presence of a PA, while disingenuously bypassing even the rhetoric of the American- initiated "roadmap". Israel has determined the how, the when, the conditions and the role of the PA vis-à-vis the "disengagement", and thus set the rules that will determine any future "negotiations". These rules have been completely accepted by the PA, and reaped the praise of the US and Europe. This comes as little surprise given the influence of the Oslo agreements on the current political climate, for it was Oslo which attempted to remove the liberating aspect of the Palestinian revolution, turning the Palestinian cause into aspirations for an illusionary state. The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence has been changed into a so-called "conflict of lands and borders", with even the word occupation absent from political circles and recent conferences like Sharm El-Sheikh and London. What is next? In a few weeks' time, the tears will dry up and the dust of celebrations of "liberation" will settle. We will wake up in a new reality with familiar scenarios. Gaza a big prison surrounded by walls, plagued by a crippled, sabotaged infrastructure, high levels of unemployment, a devastated economy dependent on its Israeli paymaster, social problems and the severe polarisation of political forces that will add to the anxiety and fears of ordinary Palestinians. The sea remains besieged, borders, water and electricity under complete control by the occupation. The West Bank meanwhile, sliced into a series of miserable Bantustans and surrounded by walls and gates, with expanding settlements swallowing what is left of the lands. Open-air prisons and ghettoes are shaping a reality in which life is impossible. In Jerusalem, the ethnic cleansing project that started with the city's occupation continues with the wall expelling Palestinian presence from their capital. Next month more than 120,000 Jerusalemites will be separated from both Jerusalem and compatriots in the West Bank. They will lose their right to reside in the city (racist laws of the occupation declared them "temporary" residents since the beginning of the occupation of the Jerusalem). At the same time, thousands of Israeli housing units will be added to existing colonies while new settlements are being built in a massive Judaisation campaign for Jerusalem. The current phase of the Zionist project in the systematic plan to uproot the Palestinian people -- a policy that began in the last century and persists until today -- is about to unleash a new disaster on Palestine through ghettoisation and renewed colonisation. Re- focussing the struggle under these conditions leads us to consider: How will the PA challenge the realities being carved out by the occupation? What do the Palestinian political parties and factions plan to do? Is there a national programme to confront this plan and strengthen the resistance? Is there a national programme to mobilise Palestinians all over the world? Or do we just wait for another Israeli decision to evacuate a few settlements here and there, accepting the new conditions that come along with it? In this critical moment, what we ask from our supporters worldwide is not to find ways to make the Israeli project "less painful" but to follow the lead of the daily grassroots resistance in the struggle for our freedom and the goals of genuine liberation and justice. * The writer is coordinator of the grassroots Palestinian anti-apartheid wall campaign, www.stopthewall.org.
