The Palestinians must guard against complacency and not be overwhelmed by the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, writes Mustafa Barghouti* The dismantlement of the settlements in Gaza and the departure of the settlers have ushered in the beginning of the end of the history of the Israeli occupation. For the first time since 1897 the Zionist dream has had to recoil in the face of relentless reality. Amidst the clamorous rivalry among Palestinian factions to claim this as their victory many have forgotten that the true champions of the hour are the Palestinian people, the ordinary men, women and children who have endured 38 years of torment under occupation and who refused to leave their homeland and never gave up hope in the justice of their cause. These are the people who made the true sacrifices, who formed the backbone of the first and second Intifadas and whose steadfastness ultimately forced the Zionist movement into this first dismantlement of its settlements on Palestinian territory. Henceforward, there is only one direction for the occupation and its settler drive to go, and that is backwards. However, just as we should not minimise the historic significance of this turning point realised through decades of sustained popular resistance, we must not underestimate the magnitude of the dangers that lie ahead. Sharon, who finally came to the realisation that he would have to bend before the unremitting resolve of the Palestinian liberation drive and the unanimous international solidarity with the Palestinian cause, assiduously applied his proficient tactical cunning to ensure that the price he had to pay was as low as possible and to transform this redeployment from Gaza into a means to reverse the clock. The Palestinians thus face three immediate challenges. The first is to thwart the fulfilment of Sharon's tendentious prophecy that the Palestinians will prove incapable of administrating Gaza properly because of ingrained corruption and factional discord, which he hopes will degenerate into civil war. To avert this prospect, we must, firstly, hold fair and free democratic elections to the Legislative Assembly and the municipal councils as soon as possible. Political competition is healthy only when the conditions exist for effective political plurality and when the ballot box is accepted as the ultimate arbiter of political rivalries. Political competition in which force of arms, the purchasing of loyalties and other illegitimate forms of coercion and enticement can only lead to chaos. Experience has proved time and again that democracy and recourse to democratic mechanisms are an indispensable condition for national salvation. We must, secondly, ensure that the sovereignty of law fully extends over the territories vacated by the Israelis. There have been endless rumours over pre-arranged plans for these lands, over the monopolies that have plagued the Palestinians since Oslo and over the designs of certain power magnates to acquire personal title to a portion of these lands. The only way to put these rumours to rest is to subject the handover of these lands and their eventual use to the rule of law and to full accountability and transparency. The second challenge is to thwart all Israeli attempts to turn the disengagement process into no more than a redeployment of forces. As we all know, Sharon's plan is to maintain Israeli control over all borders and crossing points, over Gaza airspace and territorial waters, and, in short, to transform the sector into one enormous prison. We can anticipate any amount of deceptive packaging, reminiscent of the Oslo and Paris accords, to gloss over such ruses as differentiating between the transit of goods versus persons through the ports or using an international monitoring presence as a cover for maintaining Israeli supervision and control. If the Israeli withdrawal is to be anything more than redeployment, the Palestinians must insist on their complete sovereignty over their territory, inclusive of airspace, territorial waters and ports of entry. This, of course, does not obviate the need for a truly international monitoring presence that fully abides to the principle of Palestinian sovereignty. The third challenge is by far the most formidable, which is to thwart the anticipated Israeli attempt to sever Gaza from the West Bank and Jerusalem, and to freeze the so-called peace process. One of Israel's ploys will be to keep attention distracted by the Palestinian, then Israeli, and then American elections, thereby gaining time to continue its annexation of Jerusalem, expand settlement construction in the West Bank and complete construction of the separation wall. It will thereby have laid the practical groundwork for imposing its unilateral solution to all the final status issues, its solution being to cut the Gaza off entirely and to curtail the dream of a Palestinian state to a collection of isolated cantons in the West Bank with about as much autonomy as the similar structures in apartheid South Africa. It is worth mentioning here that the area of Gaza is equivalent to approximately six per cent of that of the West Bank and one per cent of the total area of Palestine. In order to counter this scheme, the Palestinians must quickly work to seize the initiative from Sharon. This is a realistic objective. Although Sharon had gained the initiative by imposing his unilateral disengagement plan on the international community, once the withdrawal of Gaza is completed he will face political bankruptcy, firstly because he has no further alternatives to offer and secondly because he faces at home a complete erosion of support, the prospect of early elections due to the severe rift in his party and the taint of corruption due to his son's financial scandals. Instead of giving him the opportunity to catch his breath and regain his strength, the Palestinians must go on the offensive now with the purpose of rendering the dismantlement of the settlements in Gaza the true beginning of a process that will extend to the settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which in the eyes of international law and the International Court of Justice are every bit as illegal as the Gaza settlements. Taking the initiative entails a three-pronged course of action. The first step is to initiate a drive to hold an international peace conference, which we could call for the sake of convenience Madrid II, to resolve all outstanding final status issues. Such a drive, if successful, would accomplish five immediate objectives. It would forestall the political freeze Sharon wants to impose on the peace process. It would curtail Sharon's ability to dictate the course of the settlement process and force him to negotiate. It would ensure that all final status issues, from the borders and settlements to the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees' right to return, are placed squarely on the negotiating table. It would involve the entire international community in the negotiating process, which Israel has long resisted. Finally, it would place the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict squarely back within the framework of the authority of international resolutions and international legitimacy, which unequivocally uphold the justice of the Palestinian cause. The second step is to appeal to the UN for a resolution based on the ruling of the International Court of Justice on the separation wall and calling upon Israel to halt construction and dismantle those portions encroaching into Palestinian territory, or face the possibility of sanctions. The petition that is currently being circulated towards this end and that already has gathered thousands of signatures constitutes a starting point that Palestinian/Arab diplomacy can build on. The third step is to augment the non-violent domestic and international protest movement against the separation wall and the illegal Israeli settlements. This pacifist form of resistance will enhance the image of the Palestinian struggle against occupation and oppression and, simultaneously, build up a momentum on the ground against the Israeli policy of creating de facto realities. Israel succeeded in absorbing and dissipating the momentum of the first Intifada through the Oslo accord. It took a second Intifada, which exacted a heavy toll from us, in order to come out the other end of that grim Oslo tunnel. We cannot afford to fall into the same trap again. While it is our natural and legitimate right to rejoice at the dismantlement of every Israeli settlement that has been constructed on our land, we must remain constantly vigilant if Gaza is to be the beginning and not the end of a process. It is our national duty to continue the struggle towards liberation, freedom and true independence, towards that day when we have attained truly sovereign statehood with the Palestinian flag fluttering over Jerusalem. Only then will we taste a joy untainted by residual bitterness and lurking guilt over the ongoing injustices perpetrated by the wall and settlement construction against the Palestinian towns and cities that remain under occupation and over the ongoing plight of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. * The writer is secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative.
