Who Is the Victor?

Almost three months since the removal of the settlements from Gaza and the Northern West Bank and I’m still puzzling over who exactly is the winner here. The mysterious ways and means of international politics and Israel’s domestic politics are very Byzantine. I am constantly trying to unravel them.

Certainly the Settler Movement is not the victor. Their praying for divine intervention and fervent resolve that God would not let them down and would arrange a miracle to save their homes did not happen. The Greater Israel Movement has been dealt a deathblow. And perhaps rightly so. Something had to happen to shatter their ideological/political/religious belief that we were destined to rule over all of ancient Eretz Yisrael. I hope, and this seems to be the case for many of them, that they will redirect their energies positively to settling in the Negev and/or the Galilee. Their incredible resolve, overwhelming idealism and love of Zion, encouraged and directed properly will be only good for the State. Hopefully, the media and history will allow us to remember that half of the Gaza settlers left before the deadline and that the majority of those who stayed after the deadline left peaceably. It is the job of the settler movement to dispel the negative images that left such a bad taste in our mouths, such as the line of teenage girls with Jewish stars on their clothes, arms raised, crying, walking in a line, as if they were prisoners of some foreign army. The connotation to which foreign army is all too clear. Or especially most disturbing for me was the campaign to get soldiers to sign petitions stating that they would not participate in the disengagement. This blatantly oversteps the bounds of protest in a civil society-encouraging dissension and mutiny within the armed forces.

I know that parts of the left consider this a victory, but as the Gaza Strip so quickly succumbs to anarchy, and as Hamas plans to export their style of “resistance” to the West Bank, I’m not so sure. As Amos Oz’s recent article in Haaretz so gleefully pointed out, the settlers were the problem in our midst. The left seem oblivious to the fact that this unilateral withdrawal just might cause a lot more bloodshed. The fact that so many Palestinians consider this a victory and a result of their “resistance” does not bode well. It seems to me that some of the left, whose hatred for the settlers borders on the irrational, wanted to deal a blow to the settler movement, regardless of what the consequences might be. The debate over whether or not to withdraw from Gaza, was typically put into an us verses them, correct peaceful thinking people verses warmongering hateful people, rational secular verses crazy irrational religious, frame of reference. It seems that Israel has been forever trapped in this hateful back and forth.
Ephraim Sneh, a former Health Minister and current Labor member of Knesset published an editorial last spring in a Hebrew daily newspaper basically calling for civil war against the religious settler movement in Israel. One expects that to come from the fringe, not from someone who is supposed to be a respected legislator. Reprehensible as the piece was, what was even more disturbing and unconscionable was that it created not a stir or words of protest from the establishment or the Knesset. But it gives you some idea of the hateful rhetoric coming out of the left.

The Palestinian citizens of the Gaza Strip are not the victors. There is every chance that they will be torn asunder by different warlords competing for power. Just as we abrogated our responsibility to them 12 years ago when we let Arafat in to set up his Fatahland, condemning the Palestinians of much of the West Bank and Gaza to a brutal, corrupt regime, so we have repeated ourselves and done the same yet again, in all of Gaza. We have turned to the Palestinian Authority and said to them, prove that you can rule. Well, haven’t they spent the last 10 years proving that they are really not capable of ruling, not able to initiate and run the basic elements of society and national responsibility? Why would be expect that they would be able to do anything different now?

Is Zionism the victor? Well, a mainstay of Zionist ideology was that having our own sovereign nation would normalize our relations with the world, including our Arab neighbors. Withdrawing from territory and uprooting Jews from their homes, homes they had been encouraged to settle by Labor, Likud and National Unity Governments, without benefit of any type of agreement between us and our Palestinian neighbors runs contrary to this notion. In fact, Palestinians, despite our best efforts to spin it otherwise, have correctly interpreted our unilateral withdrawal and destruction of 22 Jewish villages as victories, both political and military.

It is sad that it has come to this. Zionism is in retreat. We have lost our dignity. Perhaps, the whole settlement enterprise in Gaza (and most of the West Bank) was a shortsighted policy that ended up biting us in the ass. And, yes, perhaps we need to make an exit, but what about statesmanship? What about conducting ourselves as a mature nation with sound policies that conducts a measured campaign of international diplomacy? What about the fact that, as much as we pretend otherwise, we are in a war with the Palestinians. And in war, you don’t just pull out; you don’t give up territory without something concrete in return. You don’t give the adversary an opportunity to claim victory. A state should only be magnanimous in victory. It seems to me that the decision to withdraw from Gaza came out of the innate Jewish instinct to operate in survival mode.

Let’s just hope something good can come out of this.
One can always still hope.

So let’s do that. Let’s hope that, despite signs that the Gaza Strip has sunk into anarchy and warlord conflict, that Abbas stops pleading weakness and asking for international support (hmmmm, sounds strangely familiar) and starts doing something to establish some semblance of a civil society. He has 30,000 men in uniform. Use them. Let’s hope that the Pakistani handshake with our foreign minister and the accolades that Sharon received at the UN in September will benefit Israel diplomatically in the long run and for the long term. Let’s hope that the US will stop pressuring Israel for more concessions, will stand by its letter of April, 2004 and will, instead of giving the Palestinian Authority more and more money (such as the $50 million recent donation), will pressure the Palestinians to become serious about governance and disarming the terrorists. Let us hope that the citizens of the Gaza Strip, will soon get so sick and tired of the fighting between Hamas and the other groups that they will refuse to send their sons and daughters to fight, to be suicide bombers, to build Kasam rockets. Let’s hope that their desire for asupersedeife will supercede the call to Jihad and the destruction of Israel. A call, which has only served to bring them more hardship, death, destruction and injury. And let us hope that Hamas fails in its attempt to import its style of resistance to the West Bank.
Who knows? It all might work out. Stranger things have happened. There are some signs that Europe is showing a least a little less tolerance for the Palestinians excesses and excuses. The UN actually passed an Israel sponsored resolution and on establishing a world Holocaust Remembrance Day no less. Annan cancelled his trip to Iran after the president of that country openly called for Israel’s destruction. Hmm…are we actually moving on up?
Also, sometimes conflicts just exhaust themselves. Let's hope this happens soon. Boy am I tired.