At 3 p.m. yesterday, Israel’s last day in the Gaza Strip, the IDF commander
in Gaza, Brig.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, planned to hand over to Palestinian
Authority officers maps detailing its water, electricity and sewage
infrastructure. The joint ceremony became a unilateral one because the PA
refused to participate, citing a lack of agreement on border crossings.
The lack of a joint ceremony was, writ small, a metaphor for the
relationship between Israel and the PA since that famous handshake on the
White House lawn 12 years ago this week. Since the launching of Oslo, Israel
has been saying to the PA, "Take a state, please." Only now is it beginning
to dawn on the international community that it is the PA, not Israel, which
has been saying no.
The modest handover ceremony that did not happen symbolized both Israel’s
almost desperate desire to hand the Palestinians responsibility for their
own fate, and the PA’s determination not to accept that responsibility.
Five summers ago at Camp David, Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton tried to get
Yasser Arafat to accept a state. If Arafat had agreed, not only all of Gaza,
but almost all of the West Bank would have been handed over peacefully.
Instead, Arafat launched a terror war that took a thousand Israeli lives and
even more Palestinian ones.
Even now, a bizarre debate is occurring in which the PA, much like Hizbullah
in Lebanon after the Israeli withdrawal there, is clinging to the mantle of
"occupation." This argument is being couched in terms of whether Gazans will
be granted full control over contact with the outside world, whether through
the border with Egypt, by sea or by air.
The claim that Israel cannot expect the world to accept it as having left
Gaza while keeping control of all access to this territory is
understandable. So is Israel’s concern that Gaza not become more of an armed
camp than it is already, and that the floodgates of weaponry not be opened
far beyond what has been smuggled in, despite Israel’s efforts, through
tunnels from Egypt.
This circle is being squared, it seems, by agreements in which third
parties, such as Europeans, will be present at border posts to prevent
terrorists and weaponry from flowing into Gaza by the truck-, boat-, or
plane-load.
That Ariel Sharon, the prime minister who in almost every speech emphasizes
Israel’s need to defend itself by itself, is putting such a sensitive
security task in the hands of a third party is a measure of how far Israel
is willing to go to hand over real responsibility to the PA. So is the fact
that Israel is abandoning the Philadelphi corridor between Egypt and Gaza,
which the security establishment long insisted was critical for Israel to
police.
The upshot of all this is that whether Gaza turns into an even more heavily
armed hotbed of terrorism is largely in Palestinian hands. Sharon is not
likely to admit it, but it is hard to argue that third parties will do a
better job of keeping weaponry and terrorists out of Gaza than Israel did,
and Israel was not that successful.
At the one-sided handover ceremony yesterday, Chief of General Staff
Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz said: "The handover of control to the Palestinians
obligates them to enforce law and order and prevent terror. This is their
true test. We will not tolerate their incompetence, we will not ignore their
failures or accept acts of terror.‘ Kochavi said, ’We will leave here
together and lock the gate. The gate we will close behind us is also the
gate that will be opened. I hope it will be a gate of peace and
tranquility – a gate of hope, goodwill and neighborly relations."
Exactly right. If the Palestinians decide to start building the peaceful
state they claim they want, Israel will not only refrain from interfering,
but stands ready and able to do much to help.
Throughout Oslo’s heyday, Israeli ministers cooked up elaborate plans for
economic cooperation through industrial parks and international-financed
joint megaprojects. Under Arafat, the PA would have none of it.
Mahmoud Abbas also seems to be in no hurry to engage Israel economically,
despite claiming that improving Palestinian lives is his top priority.
Regardless of how the border control issues are worked out, it is already
clear that the fate of Gaza is in Palestinian hands. Now we will see if they
are ready to make constructive use of it.
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