Gaza Aftershocks

...They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own...

...There were occasional violations, generally in retaliation for the killing of militants on the West Bank by Israeli security forces...

...Now, suddenly, the shooting has almost stopped and on September 15 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon mounted the podium at the 60th United Nations General Assembly to offer the Palestinians their own version of the Balfour Declaration...

...With Israel's withdrawal, the Palestinians of Gaza are their own masters at last, albeit in only a tiny corner of historic Palestine...

...Within an hour, the yeshiva evacuated voluntarily and thus made it clear to everyone that violent rebellion was not an alternative...

...Now they have the opportunity to begin building a viable society and the institutions of a modern nation...

...Now both sides need to ponder a hard lesson of the Gaza evacuation—that they belong to two very different camps, and the gap between them will not be easily bridged...

...The Palestinians will always be our neighbors...

...We reject the possibility that anyone in the Palestinian arena would address the armed struggle on the basis of the American and Zionist positions," he said...

...But we managed to push the rabbi through the masses of students, outside...

...IN the months ahead both the Palestinians and the Israelis will be studying the new situation on the ground and ruminating...

...Genera] Hacohen assigned himself the task of personally bringing out the head of the yeshiva...

...A resumption of armed conflict in the West Bank is a greater possibility, yet there too the Gaza pullout has put the Palestinian militants in an uncomfortable position...

...But given a pathetically weak central government that is unable to impose its will on 20-odd armed factions, the Palestinians' ability to get their act together is hardly certain...

...Tore our clothes...

...When the vote was held September 26, though, the proposal was narrowly defeated...

...Rising through the ranks of the regular Army, he was serving as commander of the 36th Division when assigned to lead one of the task forces designated to implement the Gaza evacuation...

...Threw chairs...

...Little more than two years ago, the region was mired in a ritual pageant of bloodletting—suicide bombings and targeted assassinations—with no visible way out...

...The Strip's prostrate economy, which has relegated 80 per cent of the population to living below the poverty line, is expected to be revived by huge investments from abroad...

...Should the militants attempt to overcome the West Bank security barrier Israel is building by firing mortars and rockets over it at the center of the country, the Israeli Army will almost surely reoccupy the West Bank cities where the weapons are produced...

...Although the Prime Minister had previously spoken of a Palestinian state rising alongside Israel, he had never depicted it as a natural right, only as a compromise necessitated by circumstance...

...Polls in August showed that Netanyahu's maneuver had overwhelming support in the 3,000-member Likud Central Committee...

...The Hamas leadership in Gaza rejected his call out of hand, but Mashal's response from abroad in September was more nuanced...

...It was a powerful incident, so powerful that time must pass before what happened is fully internalized...

...Israel generally responded mildly to avoid escalation...

...It would be difficult for Hamas leaders to run a campaign while dodging rocket-firing helicopters...

...Intentionally or not, Sharon may have outflanked the Palestinians by giving them something to lose...

...No Israeli government, they proclaimed, had the right to give up this wholeness...

...Although religious Zionists constitute about 15 per cent of the population, their representation in officer courses in the Armed Forces is more than twice that figure, a statistic that has come to be viewed as ominous...

...Some Palestinians will doubtless regard developing Gaza as a betrayal of their brethren in Ramallah and Nablus unless there is a firm Israeli commitment to further West Bank withdrawals...

...And at that moment the scales were tipped...

...1 don't think [the Palestinians] can have elections without our help," he said...

...How they resolve this wrenching turn in their lives will constitute drama of a high order, but it will take place out of sight of the general public, in the deep shadows provided by the familiar headlines about Israelis versus Palestinians...

...Targeted assassinations of militant operatives resumed, the Air Force blacked out Gaza City by hitting a transformer, and artillery fired several rounds into the Strip for the first time since the Six Day War, hitting open fields in a clear warning...

...There were weapons there...

...They hoped the general would set an example by refusing his orders, and thereby put in motion a domino effect that would make it impossible for the evacuation to be executed...

...Whether or not this pledge is ignored by rogue groups or violated by the participants themselves, it marked the first time there was such a broad declaration of selfrestraint by Palestinian militants, indicating recognition that there are new rules to the game...

...The decision as to who can participate in the elections is obviously up to the Palestinian Authority," said National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones...

...Most of the heavy thinking will fall to the Palestinians...

...His Majesty's government, wrote Lord Balfour in 1917, viewed with favor "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," as long as it did not prejudice the rights of the Arabs...

...Washington, which terms Hamas a terrorist organization, nevertheless took exception to Sharon's threat...

...Initial signs are not encouraging, but it is too early to draw final conclusions...

...Sharon inserted himself directly into the Palestinian contest by declaring on September 16 that Israel would refrain from cooperating...

...One of the main reasons for Hamas' restraint is that it intends to field candidates—another first— in the Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for Janu ary...

...Hit us...

...But the religious settlers are such a vibrant entity that it is probably safe to assume many will seek a way to renew their alliance with the secular mainstream and resume their productive role in Israeli society, while preserving their own distinctive life style...

...They pushed us...

...Sharon aides termed the move "tantamount to impeachment...

...On the other hand, if the Palestinians demonstrate they can form a durable, efficient political entity in Gaza, it would create pressure on the government here—internally and from the international community—to make West Bank territorial concessions that would permit the establishment of an independent Palestinian state capable of living in peace alongside Israel...

...Lecterns...

...The time has come to go," he said...

...For Hacohen, the point at issue was not the evacuation of the yeshiva but the integrity of the state...

...Whether he does or not, despite all the recent rhetoric about a "victory" over Israel, Hamas is fully aware of how formidable its opponent is...

...they would be regarded as a challenge to its sovereignty by a foreign entity and responded to accordingly...

...Israel Looks Inward Gaza Aftershocks By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem As the last tank emerged from the Gaza Strip on September 12, two Israeli soldiers swung a border gate shut and padlocked it, ushering in a new era in the Middle East...

...I've come to take you out of here.'" With that, Hacohen began to propel the rabbi toward the exit as the students and outsiders who had joined them howled in protest...

...IN Israel, reflection during the months ahead will be largely about itself...

...A bond of trust was broken at Gush Katif...

...But Gaza's principal economic lifeline runs through Israel—both to the West Bank, and to this country's seaports and airports...

...Murky as that statement was, it sounded as if disarmament was not out of the question if it could be framed the right way...

...In the wake of the confrontation, there was speculation that some religious Zionists will now drift toward the haredi non-Zionist world, giving up state-building to immerse themselves in piety...

...He went on to a yeshiva, but at some point abandoned the religious way of life and, as a university student, studied philosophy...

...Senior Army officers said afterward that they would in the future hesitate to recommend religious soldiers for officer training...

...It is doubtful Sharon can carry out his threat if Washington objects...

...For decades their preoccupations have been survival and revenge...

...Sharon's declaration, termed by the newspaper ?a'ariv as "the speech of his life," would have seemed fantasy just a short while ago to anyone familiar with his record...

...To overeager party leadership rival Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon's sharp deviation from Likud's traditional hardline stance provided an opportunity to try to unseat him by having the party primaries advanced to this November, a full year before scheduled elections...

...The national religious sector not only took up the cry but became the most dynamic segment of Israeli society, spearheading the development of settlements for three decades...

...The question confronting them, and the rest of us, at the moment is whether they are capable of forming a stable society and state...

...They had to bow their heads before military power and accept the authority of the State of Israel...

...Sharon went Balfour one better, offering the Palestinians a state in Palestine as long as they did not prejudice the rights of the Jews...

...Others, it was suggested, having had their religious sureties irretrievably broken, wouldjoin the secular world...

...But the Arabs who arrived in the seventh century CE and adopted its name were never sovereign...

...At Gush Katif, however, when for the first time an Israeli government sought to roll back settlements, it became apparent that the settlers took their legitimacy not from the government but from the Bible, at least their interpretation of it...

...He looked me in the eye," Hacohen recalled in an interview with Ha'aretz, "and said, 'Tell me you can't do it.' I said, 'No, the time has come to go...

...When Hamas and Islamic Jihad unleashed more than 40 missiles two weeks later, mostly at the Negev town of Sderot, Israel showed what it meant...

...Many of his old friends were among the heads of the settler movement...

...The chasm that opened around Gush Katif, the main settlement bloc in Gaza, divided those who accepted the authority of the state—namely, the security forces and the bulk of the nation—and the settlers and their supporters who took orders from their rabbis, even when these were in defiance of the state...

...New eras are ushered in with relative frequency in the region as it lurches from war to peace treaty to political assassination to insurrection...

...At the biggest settlement, Neve Dekalim, more than 1,000 yeshiva students who had gathered from far and wide in the school's synagogue worked themselves up to near ecstasy with singing and prayer as they waited for the troops to move in...

...In this instance, however, the appellation seems particularly appropriate: After the click of the lock Palestinian Arabs, for the first time, found themselves holding a patch of land that not only bore their name but that they actually ruled...

...Flowers and spices grown in the hothouses left behind, for instance, will not survive delays on their way to market in Europe via BenGurion Airport...

...Both Islamic militant groups had earlier agreed to a cease-fire thatthey said would terminate at the year's end...

...Even if Gaza is stabilized, the Palestinians' dilemma will remain that most of their promised state, and two-thirds of their population, are still under Israeli rule in the West Bank...

...Three days of being pummeled prompted the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and 11 other militant groups to hold a meeting and agree to call off further attacks against Israel from Gaza...

...The international community is prepared to invest billions in the effort...

...For whatever it is worth, Abbas contends that once Hamas participates in the elections it will take its place in the political order...

...Shutting down the Gaza Strip settlements was one of the most charged episodes in the country's history, revealing a chilling schism between the national religious sector and the Israeli mainstream...

...Their separate worldviews notwithstanding, each side had in the past regarded the other as being within the same Zionist camp—unlike, for example, the ultra-Orthodox haredim or the Israeli Arabs...

...If the PA fails to bring West Bank militants to heel, Israel could throw a spanner in the works by slowing up the passage of goods from Gaza...

...Accompanied by three colonels, he pressed his way through the crowd to the rabbi and put a hand on his shoulder...

...Born to a prominent religious Zionist family, he had as a child seen the Gush Emunim settlement movement founded in his family's living room...

...The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel," said Sharon, "does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land...

...Abraham Rabinovich writes frequently for the New Leader on the Middle East...

...The religious settlers, for their part, feel grossly betrayed and find it incomprehensible that the state and the Army with which they had so closely identified could uproot them and reject the central role Jewish history had, as they see it, clearly defined for this generation: settling the land...

...His latest book...

...Even the left, while deeply opposed to the settler movement, considered it a legitimate political vehicle that was getting its way because it had won the backing of successive Israeli governments...

...A seeming hint of moderation has come from Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal, reacting to Abbas' demands that the militants disarm...

...They were subject to rulers in Damascus, Istanbul, London, Cairo, Amman, and, since 1967, Jerusalem...

...The path that is taken will not be determined by weak Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas but by Islamic Jihad and in particular Hamas...

...Somehow, after six decades of IsraeliPalestinian turmoil, the Middle East script writers manage to keep producing fresh, occasionally stunning, scenarios in a political landscape already worked over by the bulldozers of history countless times...

...The area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River has been referred to as Palestine, in one form or another, since the fifth century BCE...

...The Yom Kippur War, has just been issued in paperback...

...The seed for this divergence was planted by the Greater Land of Israel Movement, founded three months after the Six Day War by religious and secular intellectuals who pledged their allegiance "to the wholeness of the country...

...We are thinking about this matter only in terms of the good of the Palestinian people...

...There was potential for severe violence...

...Upon completing the withdrawal, though, it declared "zero tolerance" toward any attacks from Gaza...

...Committee members bowed to the realization that an ousted Sharon would set up a new centrist party and probably win the next elections decisively, sending Likud to the backbenches...

...The international community expects no new political initiatives vis-à-vis the Palestinians prior to their elections next year, leaving space for thought about internal social and societal issues...

...Brigadier General Gershon Hacohen exemplified in his person the shattering confrontation played out at Gush Katif...

...The organization is attuned to the will of the people, who now prefer to savor their achievement in Gaza and invest their hopes in political momentum rather than return to the hell of the intifada...

...Attacks on Israel's heartland would pose a serious strategic threat, unlike the fire thus far from Gaza on Israel's periphery...

...A network of informers on the ground and unmanned reconnaissance drones circling overhead around the clock permits Israeli intelligence to continue monitoring the Strip closely...