Days of Penitence will turn into nights of the same, writes Samir Ghattas* While the so-called Days of Penitence operation was still taking Palestinian lives in Gaza a storm erupted in Israel over the remarks fired by Dov Weinglass, Sharon's bureau chief, personal lawyer and confidante, published in Haaretz on 8 October. The relationship between Sharon and Weinglass is as close as that between a voice and its echo. The prime minister and his lawyer -- is neither a new relationship, nor is it exceptional in Israeli politics. Netanyahu had a lawyer who was simultaneously engaged in politics. Barak, and even Perez, had their own favourite attorneys-cum-advisers. Could it be, one wonders, that these prime ministers keep their lawyers so close by their side because, even with all the powers and immunities to which their office entitles them, they still fear the hand of justice will come knocking on their door? But Weinglass outstrips his colleagues in the extent to which he is involved. He is Sharon's regular channel of communication with the White House. He calls up Condoleezza Rice at least once a week and meets with her on average once a month. He adds in the interview, "since May 2002, I have met her more than 20 times. And every meeting is a meeting. The shortest one was an hour and a half." Israelis regard Weinglass as the ultimate fixer. Sharon used him to sell the roadmap to his cabinet and now he is using him to sell that same roadmap buried in formaldehyde, as Weinglass succinctly put it. The Weinglass interview triggered an uproar even before it was published. Sharon and his foreign minister were forced to issue hasty statements denying Weinglass's remarks, especially those pertaining to the prime minister's real intentions behind the so- called disengagement plan. "... Arik [Ariel Sharon] never believed in permanent settlements... But when we entered the prime minister's office, he still believed that he would be able to achieve a very long-term interim agreement." By "long-term" Weinglass meant a period ranging from five to 25 years. Sharon went for disengagement, he continues, "because in the fall of 2003 we understood that everything was stuck... Time was not on our side. There was international erosion, internal erosion. Domestically, in the meantime, everything was collapsing. The economy was stagnant, and the Geneva Initiative garnered broad support. And then we were hit with letters of officers and letters of pilots and letters of commandos [refusing to serve in the territories]... The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's [Bush's] formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." The White House was taken aback by the interview, perhaps because of its bluntness and embarrassing timing. Sharon hastened to smooth things over, stating that he was still committed to the roadmap. No one believed him. Weinglass's statements are not the only cause of alarm over Sharon's true intentions. Equally, if not more, telling is the ferocious military offensive that has so far claimed the lives of more than 100 Palestinians. "Days of Penitence" is, in effect, only the opening in a series of military offensives that will continue at least until the end of November 2005. The operation, some commentators suggest, indicates that when Sharon speaks of "full disengagement" from Gaza he really means "full reoccupation". A slightly less pessimistic view has it that ultimately Sharon has to withdraw from Gaza but that he might be forced to reoccupy it in order to be able to withdraw again. Israel claims the offensive is a response to the death of two Israeli children as the result of missiles fired from northwest Gaza into Sderot. Sharon had recently promised the inhabitants there that no more Qassams would be fired on their town. But then Sharon issued a similar promise in 1982 to the residents of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, though on that occasion he spoke of Katushya rockets fired from Lebanon. Soon afterwards he found himself commanding a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, the atrocities committed during which led to his resignation, prosecution and lengthy hibernation. Eventually, however, he emerged from his seclusion to begin his exhilarating climb to power until he was "crowned on the throne of David", as his supporters describe the culmination of the career of King Arik. Of course Days of Penitence is still a modest endeavour when compared to Operation Peace for the Galilee -- the codename for Israel's offensive into Lebanon in June 1982. But then snowballs always start small. It is easy to light the fuse of war, and far less easy to stop it. Unlike many Palestinian and Arab commentators, I believe that Israel will ultimately withdraw from Gaza. But I also believe that bloody confrontations such as that currently being waged in Gaza will continue, perhaps leading to a full-scale incursion into the area from Beit Hanoun to Rafah. The probabilities of this are largely contingent on the interplay between the Israeli and Palestinian positions vis-�-vis the disengagement plan. Sharon remains determined to operate on the premise that there is no Palestinian peace partner, by which he means not just Arafat but any Palestinian, regardless of how flexible and pragmatic. This is not just the conjecture of analysts, such as myself. Sharon has publicly stated and acted on such an opinion. He has stressed the need to prevent the emergence of any unified political representation for the Palestinians. He not only issued the decision to place Arafat under house arrest in Ramallah but also ordered the demolition of the PA security buildings, had Marwan Barghouti arrested and triggered the resignation of the Abu Mazen government. Even in Israel people have asked Sharon why, if he was really looking for an alternative to Arafat, he did not coordinate with Abu Mazen over the decision to withdraw from Gaza. Sharon's determination to deny the existence of a Palestinian partner must lead to a dead end. No amount of violent extortion and collective punishment against the Palestinians will produce a solution. Ultimately, Israel has to reach a settlement and to do this it must deal with the Palestinians directly and not through a third party, such as Cairo, which Sharon is futilely trying to do. What worries Sharon is not just the missiles falling on Sderot but other missiles that might one day fall on Tel Aviv if fired from the West Bank. Then Israel would not just have a military problem, but a strategic one as well. On 6 October Israeli military analyst Ze'ev Schiff revealed that Israel had thwarted several attempts to manufacture missiles in the West Bank. He claimed 60 had been produced in a workshop in Nablus and that 15 of these had been destined for Jenin before they were confiscated. Even if this story was a fabrication concocted in coordination with Israeli intelligence as part of the government's misinformation campaign it is not so farfetched. Days of Penitence is not only intended to stop missiles being fired from Gaza but also to pre-empt any thought of transferring the practice to the West Bank. It is also why Palestinians are destined to see many more, and even longer and more brutal "days" ahead. The Palestinians, meanwhile, are offering themselves as the wood to stoke the fire. Since Sharon declared his intention to withdraw from Gaza the Palestinian factions have been engaged in a feverish race to prove themselves via military operations in Gaza. Their motives are diverse. One is to prove that armed resistance is the only alternative capable of compelling Israel to withdraw, a second to take this as justification for persisting against all objections against the militarisation of the Intifada. However, the third and most important motive is that the organisation or movement that can suggest that it is the one that forced Israeli forces to scamper from Gaza will stand the greatest chance of being able to dominate the political and administrative affairs of Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal. Sharon once lashed out at his predecessor, Barak, for having brought the Israeli army out of Lebanon as though it were fleeing under the cover of darkness. The same words have come back to haunt Sharon today; he hears them from the settlers and their ultra-right supporters. That Sharon, too, will feel compelled to prove his mettle to this camp is yet another factor that lends weight to the prediction that the confrontation in Gaza will continue, and most likely escalate. In this context it is useful to point out that before Days of Penitence the Israeli army waged 11 military assaults in Gaza under the codename Forward Shield. We should also add that Israeli sources have admitted that at the peek of the current operation, Palestinians succeeded in firing 17 missiles into Sderot and the Negev and that Israeli military intelligence estimates that the Palestinians have a reserve of between 100 and 200 missiles. As significant as such details and their ramifications are, it is also important to take stock of the changes that have taken place in the rules of play since the beginning of the fifth year of the Intifada. Above all, there has been a sudden resurgence on both sides in warmongering rhetoric, as though they have reached a tacit agreement to wreak the highest toll upon the other in accordance with the spiralling dynamics of vendetta violence. If nothing occurs to break that vicious cycle the enormous prison that is Gaza will become an even larger bloodbath. * The writer is director of the Maqdis Centre for Political Studies, in Gaza.
