ABBA EBAN, a former Israeli Foreign Minister, said of the UN General Assembly that: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the Earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164-13 with 26 abstentions.” Matters have deteriorated since he made that observation. Were there to be a UN motion today that the Earth was flat because Ariel Sharon had sat on it, it would prevail with only Israel itself and the United States voting against — while the British representative would lock himself in the lavatory to avoid the issue altogether.
Such is the spirit in which the Israeli Prime Minister’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip has been received in much of the outside world. An evacuation which would involve the forcible removal of more than 8,000 Jewish religious settlers has been discounted as inconsequential, insincere and insignificant. Yassir Arafat, along with other Palestinian leaders, insists that Israel is leaving Gaza merely to turn it “into a prison”. It could have been he whom Mr Eban had in mind when he noted of a rival that “his ignorance is encyclopaedic”.
Rarely has a political initiative of such importance been treated so dismissively. The reaction to the Sharon proposals in Israel itself does not suggest that it is inconsequential, insincere or insignificant. The very notion of departing from Gaza has already cost Mr Sharon a deep split in the ranks of his Likud Party and the loss of key coalition partners.
Parliamentarians will cast their ballots on his Gaza blueprint tomorrow while surrounded by a vast crowd of angry demonstrators who will make those protesting about the ban on fox hunting here look like a small set of docile Buddhists. Shimon Peres, the leader of the Labour Party, has openly expressed his fear that Mr Sharon, like Yitzhak Rabin nine years ago, will be gunned down by an ideological extremist.
In one sense, Mr Sharon’s opponents are right to be outraged. For Israel to quit the Gaza Strip when there is no reliable partner to hand it to is an extraordinary wager. There is the risk that it will simply become the base for rocket attacks on its soil. And although the number of settlements on the West Bank that will be abandoned soon is admittedly small, the principle conceded is far larger. Mr Sharon’s implicit position is that, if the Palestinians were to produce a plausible political figure with whom he could negotiate, then almost everything to do with the West Bank is up for discussion.
Where his domestic enemies are profoundly wrong is in accusing Mr Sharon of capitulating to terror. As unfashionable as it is to assert, Mr Sharon has, in the course of this year, conducted the most effective counter-terrorism strategy witnessed anywhere in the world. It is this that makes it possible for Israel to exit the Gaza Strip safely and means that the political opportunity which this move will create is greater than it might appear.
Mr Sharon’s drive against terror has had three features. The first is an intensified intelligence effort which has prevented numerous aspiring murderers from reaching their innocent victims. The maxim that “the suicide bomber will always get through” is no longer valid. A few will, inevitably, but it is no longer impossible to stop them.
This exercise would not, however, have borne fruit without two more controversial innovations. Israel’s security barrier might be loathed by international lawyers but wherever it has been erected in full the number of terrorist incidents has declined to negligible levels. No Israeli Prime Minister could now destroy it.
The most decisive measure of the lot, though, is the one that has earned Mr Sharon the deepest hatred beyond his borders. His push to destroy the top echelon of Hamas has been astonishingly successful in its objective. In March, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of that terrorist network was killed and Hamas vowed publicly that Israel had “opened the gates of Hell” against itself. If so, then precious little subsequently has come through them .
A month later Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, the Hamas military chief, died at Israel’s hands and it was pledged that “100 retaliations would follow”. Mr Sharon is still waiting for about 99 of them. On Thursday, Adnan al-Ghoul, a missile specialist, met his fate. The most that Ismail Haniya, the latest Hamas leader and almost the last of the original team, could promise was a “very severe” response, which indicates that bloodcurdling rhetoric may be making way for belated realism.
Tough measures have created a potential diplomatic opening. By the end of this year, the US elections will have concluded, Israel will have started to pull out of Gaza, and the Hamas hierarchy will have been broken beyond repair. It would be worthwhile then for a figure with authority in Washington, Jerusalem and Arab capitals to return to his travels in the region. While Tony Blair is often mocked, sometimes legitimately, for his eternal optimism on the Middle East, he is better placed than anyone else to take the momentum that will come from Mr Sharon’s victory on Gaza and explore what else could be done with it.
How far Mr Blair or any other honest broker might proceed next year will depend on the Palestinians and those who provide them with political counsel. Will they continue to entertain themselves by demonising Mr Sharon or realise that they must reassess him? The paradox of the peace process is that the man who is most habitually portrayed as the principal roadblock to the (over-hyped) “road map” is the only figure who could deliver a credible bargain.
Mr Eban sadly remarked of previous peace efforts that “lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer, but what they miss”. If the merit of a Knesset decision to pull out of Gaza is missed in the months to come, it would be the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who ultimately suffer.
