Israeli procrastination on the Gaza withdrawal is only strengthening extremist elements, writes Emad Gad The disengagement plan -- Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip -- continued to make headlines in the Israeli press this week. The ongoing debates over the plan are due to several factors. First of all, both the media and Israeli political forces have realised how successful Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been in rebuilding Palestinian-American relations, leading the US to declare that Abu Mazen is a true "partner for peace". Secondly, settlers and their partisans have been working hard to mobilise popular support to end the disengagement plan, and the success of their efforts is clearly visible in recent opinion polls in Israel. Certain Israeli politicians are also acting to postpone disengagement, while some settler groups have even engaged in acts of vandalism on public property as a way of pressuring the government. As a result, the disengagement plan has remained in the limelight over the past week. The mainstream Israeli press has taken a clear line on the issue, stressing the importance of implementing the plan despite settler opposition and encouraging the state to act decisively with the settlers. Some have even taken the opportunity to voice the need to continue the Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories in the West Bank, including areas of Jerusalem, which would allow the holy city to become the capital of both nations. That settler activities to mobilise opposition to the disengagement plan have been at least partly effective is clear in a poll published by Yediot Aharonot on 10 June. The poll found that support for the plan had dropped from 69 per cent in February to 53 per cent by early June. In turn, opposition to the plan rose from 27 per cent in February to 38 per cent in June. Yoel Marcus tried to explain the phenomenon and offer a way to deal with it in an article published in Haaretz on 10 June entitled "Time to cut". Marcus notes that several Likud ministers -- Benyamin Netanyahu and Danny Naveh, for example -- are bolstering the settlers by calling for a further postponement of the plan. He argues that the settlers' objective is to create enough trouble in Jerusalem and Israeli cities to keep the police busy. The settlers will then face off in Gush Katif with the army alone, which Marcus believes will find it difficult to engage in clashes with women and children. Marcus argues that the defence and political establishment has yet to respond to these actions decisively enough, which only seem to justify settler actions and erode public support for the plan. But what else can we do but withdraw, he asks: "Continue the occupation? Wait until the Palestinians turn into Zionists? Aren't the five wars Israel has fought since occupying the territories enough? It's not the implementation but the non-implementation of the disengagement that will bring back terror and inflate it to proportions we haven't seen yet. It's the non-implementation that will strike a fatal blow to our relations with the United States and reinstate us in the eyes of the world as an incurable occupier. "The slide in public backing for the pullout is a consequence of the foot-dragging and waffling of the government on the subject of disengagement... Time is not on the side of broad public support for disengagement. It's time to cut -- and fast." Yariv Oppenheimer goes even further in an article published in Maariv on 10 June, entitled "Disengagement or the end of democracy". Oppenheimer writes that the disengagement alone cannot bring Israel peace and stability; that requires a comprehensive strategy that will lead to a political settlement of the conflict. "There is no question that from a political and security perspective, there are many flaws in the disengagement plan that must be fixed. But the government's foot- dragging in everything related to disengagement -- the refusal to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinian Authority, freezing negotiations on the future of the West Bank, stopping the Palestinian prisoner release, and not handing over control of the Palestinian cities on the West Bank to the PA -- strip the disengagement plan of almost all meaning on the security-political level. Indeed, it may even strengthen extremist elements in the Gaza Strip." Nevertheless, Oppenheimer argues that the plan is of the utmost importance for Israel and its future as a democracy. If the plan is not quickly implemented, the settlers' power will grow, effectively becoming greater than the state, and the minority will succeed in imposing their vision on Israeli society, all at the expense of democracy. Danny Rubinstein wrote an article in Haaretz on 10 June entitled "One Jerusalem for two nations," in which he cautioned Israelis not to be fooled by the apparent calm over the city. "Hardly a day goes by without Palestinian publications and activities warning against Israeli attempts to erase the Arab character of Jerusalem and distance its Arab residents... From a Palestinian perspective, the Israeli facts being determined on the ground now in Jerusalem are completely destroying any chance of East Jerusalem ever serving as the capital of the Palestinian state. And without Jerusalem as its capital, there is no chance of such a state ever being established." Rubinstein notes that Palestinian opinion polls show that the majority of Palestinians still favour the idea of two nations for two peoples. But, he warns, "Eliminating the option of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem means the end of the two-state solution. If any possibility for a solution on the basis of this principle exists, what is being done now in Jerusalem is destroying it." Raising the spectre of an eventual binational state in which Jews will ultimately become a minority, Rubinstein concludes, "and if there are not two nations for two states here, the only other option is one state for two nations. There is nothing else." For more information on debates in Israel society, please visit the website of Arabs Against Discrimination www.aad-online.org.
