In 2005 Ariel Sharon will face the challenge of implementing his disengagement and Mahmoud Abbas that of resisting it, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem Barring 11th-hour hitches the new-year should see Ariel Sharon form his third coalition government. Notwithstanding the inclusion of the main opposition Labor Party, it is not a unity government. It is an ad hoc political alliance designed for a single purpose: the implementation of his plan to re-deploy Israeli soldiers and settlers from most of Gaza and an area in the northern West Bank. This does not mean "disengagement" is a done deal. Having failed to stymie the plan through its allies in Sharon's Likud Party, via a referendum or by new elections, Israel's powerful settler movement is readying for a mass campaign of civil disobedience, raising the spectre of Jew fighting Jew and/or radical settler groups staging provocation attacks on Arab and Islamic targets, including the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Few Israelis believe Sharon would -- or should -- back down in the teeth of such opposition. But fewer believe that his Likud Party is anywhere near as stalwart, or would not act to slow the disengagement should the "schism in the nation" reach a violent breaking point. Fewer yet would deny Sharon's enormous achievement, not only in facing his own domestic opponents but in edging closer to what has always been the strategic goal of his plan: a new partition of the West Bank in which Israel would preserve those areas he deems vital to its security by physically preventing any full withdrawal to its 1949 armistice lines. Sharon surveyed his accomplishments in a speech to Israel's prestigious Herzliya conference on 16 December. It was there in 2002 (he reminded the audience) that he showed how his acceptance of a Palestinian state with "provisional" borders did not contradict his vision of a new long-term interim arrangement for the conflict with the Palestinians. On the contrary, it was the political seal, since the "state" he mapped would comprise no more than 50 per cent of the West Bank. It was at Herzliya also, in 2003, that he unveiled his means to that end. One arm was the Gaza disengagement. The other was the construction of the West Bank wall, the current route of which incorporates around 10 per cent of the West Bank, including the five main West Bank settlement blocs (housing about 70 per cent of all West Bank settlers, minus the 200,000 or so who reside in occupied East Jerusalem). There are some in the US administration who believe all settlements beyond that wall are suitable cases for dismantlement. It is less clear if Sharon does, or where he foresees the wall's final route. But it is clear that neither America nor Sharon will fight over them until Gaza is disgorged and the wall is built. This underscores Sharon's supreme diplomatic achievements, which is what he emphasised at this year's conference. Prime among these was the pledge he received from George Bush in April that, in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians, Israel would not be expected to withdraw to the 1949 lines or accept the return of a single Palestinian refugee to their lands inside Israel. There were others. One is the new warmth in Israeli-Egyptian relations. It was born out of Sharon's need for an Arab partner for his disengagement in the absence of a Palestinian one. But it has since flowered into important trade agreements, renewed cross-border security cooperation, the release from Egyptian prison of the convicted Israeli spy, Azzam Azzam, and President Mubarak's injunction to the Palestinians that Sharon represented their "best hope" for peace. Another is the quiet shift in the European Union's position from supporting the disengagement plan conditional on it being an integral part of the roadmap to supporting it in the hope that it becomes part of the roadmap. For example: the Palestinians want a conference to be hosted by Britain next February to serve as a catalyst for a return to final status negotiations, as specified in the roadmap. The Israelis want it to be concerned solely with Palestinian economic and political reform, as not specified in the roadmap. The Israelis are not attending the conference, the Palestinians are. But it is the Israeli terms that will prevail. The most charitable explanation for this enormous groundswell behind Sharon's plan is that it is an incentive for him to proceed where no previous Israeli prime minister has dared: the actual evacuation of Jewish settlements from occupied Palestinian land. The more realistic is a growing international and regional opinion that it is now futile to expect Bush to pressure Sharon to do anything he does not want to do. Instead the strategy is to accommodate Sharon in the hope that he will proceed with the disengagement and be magnanimous in victory. It is an approach reinforced by the ultimate triumph of Sharon's year -- the death of Yasser Arafat on 11 November and the expectation that this will lead to a moderate Palestinian leadership willing and able to accept what Arafat rejected, whether as a final status deal or a new interim agreement. The expectation rests on the frail shoulders of Mahmoud Abbas, newly anointed chairman of the PLO and almost certainly the next Palestinian Authority president. Will he meet it? So far Abbas has outlined his vision of a final peace agreement in hues identical to those of the late Palestinian leader: full Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to "Palestine" in accordance with UN resolutions. He has also rejected any new partial or interim agreement. Finally, he has refused to coordinate the disengagement with Israel unless it becomes an integral part of the roadmap. Such positions are the consensus across the Palestinian political spectrum, including within Abbas's own Fatah movement. It too views Sharon's vision of another interim deal as mortal to Palestinian aspirations for genuine self-determination, fearing that, under Sharon, the "provisional" borders of the state will be concretised into permanent ones. Others argue that if Abbas is forced to "coordinate" the disengagement in some way then he must at least extract reciprocal Israeli actions such as a freeze on West Bank settlement construction, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, including from the Egyptian border, and the reopening of the Palestinian safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank. For Abbas to have leverage on any of these demands he must, if not disarm the Palestinian militias, then at least domesticate them to accept "one authority, one law, one rifle". There are few signs such domestication will happen. For the last month Hamas and the other Palestinian armed factions have escalated their resistance to the occupation in Gaza. Since Arafat's death -- and despite loud noises about "quiet" -- Israel has killed 50 Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza, several of them Hamas men. But there are other, more domestic reasons for the hike. One is to raise the stakes in Hamas's ongoing negotiations with Abbas to reach a new "national accord" in which the Islamists will observe a ceasefire in return for genuine power sharing and democratic participation in the next PA administration. But another is Hamas's consistent desire to cast Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a south Lebanon-like flight rather than a "coordinated" West Bank-like re-deployment. There are some in the PA who believe the current wave in Gaza will subside and an accord will be reached, perhaps even before the presidential elections on 9 January. But Hamas leaders are talking tough, including the more moderate voices among them. "There is no point talking about a hudna (ceasefire) as long as the occupation is in place and Israeli attacks do not stop," said Hamas West Bank spokesman, Hassan Youssef, on 19 December. Even if Abbas can manage to strike a deal with the Palestinian factions, there are grave Palestinian doubts over the viability of his strategy vis-�-vis Sharon. Put simply this says the Palestinians must end the armed uprising and take "the democratic road to liberation" in the hope that Israel will respond. "If the Israeli side won't reciprocate, this would be the problem of the Israeli people and international community, and they will handle the rejection and not us," says Abbas. It would be nice to believe this were so. But the Israeli people are currently fully behind their leader -- unilateralism, especially as he prepares to do battle with the settlers. As for international community on evidence of 2004 "it appears far more likely to handle Abbas's rejection rather than Sharon's".
