[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [GushShalom] Will something come of it?

[Alfred Kagan]

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>GUSH SHALOM  pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 www.gush-shalom.org
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>International release
>Tel-Aviv - July 2, 2003.
>
>Will something come of it?
>Evaluation by Adam Keller
>
>"Will it will work this time? Maybe, just maybe". You can hear it from
>Israelis and from Palestinians, from committed peace activists to shop-
>keepers who had voted for Sharon: a mixture of hope and scepticism,
>still prevalent on the third day of the fragile "hudna" - Arabic for "cease-
>fire ", a concept drawn from an ancient Islamic tradition which has in
>the past year entered into day to day Hebrew.
>
>Israelis and Palestinians, we have all seen it before - promising
>ceasefires broken into terrible scenes of bloodshed, partial
>withdrawals which ended with the tanks coming back even more
>brutally, prisoners released and arrested again.
>Can it possibly end differently, this time around?   
>
>The reasons for scepticism are many and obvious. The Israeli military
>commanders make no secret of not having wanted this cease-fire -
>which is potentially more dangerous than the Palestinian rogue groups
>who so far defy the cease-fire. (Ironically, they are not drawn from
>Islamic militants, but from outlying groups of the Fatah organization,
>the central structure of which was all too successfully targeted by the
>IDF.)
>
>There is a fundamental difference of opinion on what the whole thing is
>about. Sharon, his ministers and his generals are stridently demanding
>the disarming and dismantling of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. In this
>demand, which would inevitably entail a full-scale Palestinian civil war,
>Sharon seems to be backed by the Bush Administration. For their part,
>the Palestinians have undertaken to enforce the cease-fire and prevent
>attacks on Israelis, including attacks on soldiers and settlers - which
>was among Palestinians a long-debated point. But they also made
>abundantly clear that they have no intention whatsoever of presenting
>Sharon with the spectacle of bloody battles among Palestinians in the
>streets of Gaza.
>
>Assuming that this major hurdle will be somehow overcome, a far more
>fundamental discrepancy remains unresolved. When Sharon speaks of
>"a Palestinian State", he means a truncated series of enclaves
>embracing no more than half of the the West Bank, and surrounded on
>all sides by Israeli-held territory studded with military camps and
>settlements. Hardly a "viable state" as envisaged in the famous
>Roadmap. In furtherance of that aim, Sharon is continuing full ahead
>with settlement construction, fully authorized by the government and
>paid for from its budget - while the much-trumpeted "dismantling of
>unauthorized settlement outposts" has dwindled into unconvincing
>farce. Moreover, Sharon is busily marking out his version of the
>eventual border in the form of the so-called Separation Fence
>("Apartheid Wall" as the Israeli and Palestinian protesters call it).
>Day by day, as this monster advances across fields and olive
>orchards, Palestinian villagers continue to lose their land and livelihood -
>  notwithstanding the public expression of displeasure by National
>Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.
>
>Why still feel even a bit of hope? Not just because people are alive who
>might be dead otherwise, nor just because some manifestations of the
>occupation such as roadblocks in the Gaza Strip have been moved
>away.
>What is far more significant is the general feeling on both sides that
>the military option has been tried to the full and beyond. No Israeli
>general could point to significant results to be expected from
>continuing to hold down the Palestinian population. Nor can Palestinian
>militants credibly promise any good result of further suicide bombings.
>The two societies are exhausted; the two economies ravaged.
>Palestinian poverty goes much deeper but also more and more Israelis
>are unable to make ends meet.
>
>As many commentators remark, the "War of a Thousand Days" is
>ending - if it is indeed ending - in a stalemate, with no clear victor.
>Considering the enormous discrepancy in economic and military power
>such a result is an enormous tribute to Palestinian endurance and
>steadfastness.
>
>In a way, the very scepticism on both sides could turn out to be a
>blessing. One of the inbuilt failures of "Oslo" was that a preliminary
>agreement which left the most important issues open, was
>ceremoniously presented as peace had already been reached.
>Everything thereafter could hardly be anything but a let-down. This
>time, with expectations extremely low among Israelis and  Palestinians
>alike - any surprises would have to be for the good.
>
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu