Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is courageously sticking to his plan to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip despite settler opposition and the defection of right-wing gadfly Benjamin Netanyahu from his cabinet. We applaud Sharon and hope the withdrawal gives new impetus to the peace process.
The Israeli government expects two-thirds of the 8,500 settlers to leave by an Aug. 15 deadline in return for compensation for their property. Two days later, Sharon is to begin evacuating settlers who won’t leave voluntarily.
Netanyahu wants to challenge Sharon as leader of the Likud Party, and he resigned last Sunday as finance minister to protest the withdrawal, claiming Gaza may become a base for terrorist attacks. But terrorists have been based in Gaza throughout Israel’s 38-year occupation. Hamas has launched more than 100 rockets from Gaza into Israel in recent weeks.
Rather than counting on continued military rule to suppress terrorism, Sharon realizes that the 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza are an unnecessary source of irritation to the Arab majority and all but impossible to defend against terrorist attacks. Knowing that terrorists in Gaza have been supplied by intensive smuggling across the border from Egypt, Sharon wants to prompt both the Palestinian Authority and Egypt to take more responsible roles in the area.
As a recent article in The Washington Post by David Makovsky noted, Sharon intends to evacuate a part of the external perimeter around the Palestinians – meaning that many will be able to come and go without passing Israeli checkpoints for the first time since 1967. A highly trained force of 750 Egyptian troops is expected to take over security at the border of Egypt and Gaza. A U.S.-led multinational monitoring and observer force (MFO) deployed after the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty remains in the area.
Egypt administered Gaza under military rule from 1948 to 1967 and has an obvious interest in preventing Gaza from becoming a extremist state that could destabilize Egypt itself. Likewise, the Gaza withdrawal gives Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a golden opportunity to take steps that will speed creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as envisioned by the U.S.-backed roadmap for peace.
Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rightly hailed the Gaza pullout as “a potential turning point in the history of the Middle East.” By choosing the path of hope charted by Sharon and rejecting the blind obstructionism of Netanyahu, Israel has taken a bold step toward peace.
