Gaza: 'Let's start building'
2005-08-24 09:48
Steven Gutkin
Jerusalem - Now that Israel has redrawn its own borders before the world's eyes, completing with dazzling speed its pull-out from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, it has this message for the Palestinians: We've dealt with our extremists, now you deal with yours.
And the Palestinians are telling Israel: you've proven that withdrawing is feasible, so do not stop.
Both Israeli and Palestinian officials said the evacuation opened a rare opportunity for renewing talks. But militant violence, chaos in Gaza, Israeli politics and big differences on the issues of statehood and borders bode poorly for peace.
Optimistic
On Tuesday, optimism outweighed the misgivings.
"This is a momentous and very important point in history for us," said Rafiq Husseini, the Palestinian presidential chief of staff. "But now we want to start building."
Once the Palestinians begin reining in their militants, said Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Gideon Meir, "we can start to talk about the final status of the territories".
It took the army just six days to clear residents out of all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank - the same amount of time it took for Israel to capture Gaza, the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights during the 1967 Mideast war.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Israel's prime minister and president to praise them for the withdrawal and suggest renewing negotiations. Israeli premier Ariel Sharon agreed to meet soon to discuss it.
Tuesday's evacuation of two hardline settlements in the West Bank was particularly significant because it took place in the heart of biblical Israel - delivering a stinging blow to right-wing zealots who view relinquishing land there as a betrayal of God's will.
Dramatic message
The pull-out has sent a dramatic message that the settler movement, which wielded great power in Israel for decades, is no longer untouchable.
In the West Bank, as in Gaza, Jewish settlers and their supporters failed to achieve their goal of making Israeli withdrawals appear so costly that no future government would dare attempt them again.
Palestinians hope the precedent - that it's feasible to dismantle Jewish settlements - can lead to further Israeli withdrawals and the establishment of an independent state. But they fear Israel, arguing that it has sacrificed enough, will use it to avoid further pull-outs.
Some analysts argue that Israel is unilaterally imposing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without a renewal of peace talks, they say, the conflict will increasingly be defined by Israel drawing its own borders, through unilateral withdrawals and the completion of the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank.
- AP