OCTOBER 2005
A Colonial
Disengagement
by Bashir Abu-Mannehİ
August 23, 2005
Z Net.
Israel has created a media spectacle out of a
tactical maneuver. This simple fact can be easily
forgotten when one is daily bombarded by images of
anguished and tearful settlers, their 'painful'
evacuation, and their children's 'youthful' (and
fanatical) devotion to an illegally held land, a land
they believe is theirs for eternity. One thing is clear:
Israel is not relinquishing its control of Gaza, and
Palestinian sovereignty is still as far away as ever.
Talk of the End of Greater Israel (like the euphoric
reporting of al-Quds newspaper) or 'historical
moments' (Abu Mazen) is empty sloganeering which only
adds insult to the daily injuries of continued Israeli
colonialism. A national victory necessarily implies
improvement and freedom (and none will be had from the
Disengagement), and the notion of Greater Israel is much
more resilient than evacuating 8000 settlers out of the
most densely populated place on earth. Land annexation is
an ongoing process in the West Bank, and the draconian
restrictions on land use enforced by the Wall clearly
mean that more land will be annexed in the future.
It is also important to recognize that there is
no peace after the Disengagement and no end to
Palestinian suffering and dispossession. As the
Disengagement Plan clearly states, Israel maintains the
right to conduct military operations in the Gaza Strip,
and will continue to control its access to the outside
world. Nothing will come in or out of Gaza without
Israeli permission. This basically means that Israel will
continue to dominate and strangulate Palestinian life,
only now it will do so from a safer and cheaper distance,
that's all. It is hardly unreasonable to think that as
far as the Palestinians are concerned the Israeli
Disengagement is a cosmetic rather than a structural
change: Israel is merely rearranging the walls of the
Gaza prison camp.
Sharon's unilateral Disengagement was never
intended to be good for the Palestinians. If the
Disengagement is more bad news for the majority of
Palestinians, it is certainly good news for the Israeli
political and military elite. (It is doubtful whether it
is good news for the majority of Israelis, however.
Occupying another people does have its serious moral and
political domestic costs: more militarism, more racism,
and more accepting national brutality as norm, not to
mention Palestinian retaliation and Suicide Bombing). For
the last couple of years, the Israeli elite has been
acutely aware that their war against the Palestinians has
failed: it has neither ended resistance and terror nor
delivered Palestinian submission and total capitulation.
Killing, destroying, humiliating, and demolishing hasn't
pacified the Palestinians nor made them easier or cheaper
to control. In this sense, Palestinian resilience and
steadfastness have been effective, and Palestinian terror
has rubbished the notion of Israeli
security-with-occupation. Israel has also failed in
continuing to coordinate the occupation with a local
Palestinian 'partner': the Oslo days are very much over.
So the question for Sharon has been quite
straightforward: how to realize the Oslo outcome (a
version of the Allon Plan: strategic settlements,
security for Israel, and no sovereignty for the
Palestinians) without a political, negotiated settlement?
[1] His answer has been clear and resounding: Israel will
proceed unilaterally and by force,
and impose the outcome on the Palestinians.
The Disengagement can only make sense in this
context: No more Gaza; more of the West Bank (where the
expanding of settlements continues and the Wall acts as
an instrument of forced land expropriation and control);
full control of borders, airspace, and territorial
waters; and total Palestinian dependency on Israel.
According to Sharon's Plan, settlement expansion in the
West Bank is clearly an intrinsic part of the process of
separating from Gaza. By creating facts on the ground
(that old, tried, and incredibly successful Zionist
tactic), Israel will make any notion of Palestinian
statehood a ludicrous suggestion. As far as Sharon is
concerned, a little bit more than municipal autonomy is
all that the Palestinians may hope for in the future.
So the real import of the Disengagement Plan is political.
It is Israel's response to a growing crisis both at home
and abroad. By disengaging, Sharon kills several birds
with one stone.
Let me start with the domestic function of the
Plan. Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada
dissent at home has been slowly but surely growing.
Politically, it was reflected in the Geneva Initiative,
and militarily (with potentially strong systemic
reverberations) it was expressed in the Refusnik
movement. The domestic objective of the Plan was,
therefore, to kill off both of these initiatives in one
go. No more worrying about elite reserve pilots refusing
to serve and to obey orders, and no more active political
alternatives to government policy: Sharon's Plan would be
only game in town. And the Israeli government would
finally be seen to be implementing a successful policy
(it hopes). For a decade it has been promising its
citizens security while on Israeli streets one Suicide
Bomber has exploded after another. Even Sharon's many
savage military operations have failed on this front.
Losing more popular credibility wasn't an option, nor was
allowing elite dissent to grow: even the army's head of
Military Strategy, it was reported last week, had called
for a military withdrawal from Gaza several years ago.
Something, therefore, had to be done in order to regain
political control and momentum, and avert a brewing
internal crisis at home.
There were also signs of external pressure:
world opinion once again weighed even more heavily on
Israel. The Palestinian position against the occupation
became the commonsensical one in Europe. Boycott was on
many people's minds. Most of the world came to see Israel
for what it really is: a permanent and brutal offender
and executioner. The notion that Israel doesn't want
peace was also reaffirmed by the Saudi Peace Plan of
2002, which again flaunted the readiness of the Arab
world to normalize relations with Israel if it withdraws
to the 1967 borders. The Road Map was also launched to
rebuild the Oslo 'partnership'. And even though the US
stood solidly behind its strategic ally and continued to
affirm its rejection of the right of Palestinian
self-determination (with Bush officially accepting the
permanent existence of settlements in the West Bank), the
US continued to publicly call for the negotiated (albeit
unjust) political settlement outlined by the Road Map.
This Sharon couldn't really accept. A negotiated peace
settlement, however advantageous to Israel, simply wasn't
on Sharon's agenda. So something had to be done on the
diplomatic front to regain political initiative and, as
his advisor Dov Weisglass put it, 'freeze' the peace
process.
The third reason for Sharon's Disengagement Plan
is directly related to the settlers. Here as well control
had to be reaffirmed, and Dalia Sasson's report on
Illegal Outposts was an early warning shot to the
settlers: the settlement project had to be managed more
strategically, it concluded. The power of Messianic
Zionism had, therefore, to be tackled and reduced. The
objective here has been to weaken and control it,
subsuming it again under the wider strategic
considerations of the Israeli state. As much was even
admitted by the head of the Disengagement Administration
himself, Yonatan Bassi, in an interview to Haaretz
(8 July 2005):
"I think one of the most important results
of the disengagement is that it will force the religious
Zionist movement to go back to making rational
considerations.... I see my role in the Disengagement
Administration as a mission. The mission is to reduce the
trauma [sic], but also to call on my friends to diminish
the metaphysical component in our worldview and to expand
the realistic component."
Realism here is defined by the Israeli state; to
be rational is to accept state authority. And that is
another crucial component of the Plan. The settlers will
have to learn and internalize this important lesson about
their relationship to the state and their role and place
in Israeli society. As far as the state is concerned,
General Allon's strategic colonialism has to take
precedence over Rabbi Kook's messianic colonialism in
order for Israel to continue to be effective domestically
and internationally. The settlers have to come to
understand that they are a function of state interest not
the reverse: they neither hold state power nor does the
state exist to cater for their every need. Among the
scuffles, screams, and shouts of the evacuation, state
primacy was gradually but surely being reaffirmed. The
settlers were being tamed by their masters.
So for Sharon the consolidated achievement of
the Disengagement Plan is fourfold: deny both Palestinian
national rights and any peace partnership with the
Oslo-created Palestinian Authority; curb internal dissent
and fragmentation; sideline international diplomacy and
restore Israel's reputation as a strong, cohesive, and
effective state; and weaken the pressure of messianic
Zionism on Israeli state and society.
Whether Sharon succeeds in all of his policy
objectives is not a predetermined outcome. It depends on
what the Palestinians will do. The Israeli left does of
course have a role to play in all this, but it remains
(with the significant exception of Ta'ayush and
other small leftist groups) in a state of collective
paralysis and has, even worse, come to see Sharon as a
redeemer: so nothing serious as yet can be expected from
their complicit quarters. It remains up to the
Palestinians to forge ahead on their own (with
international solidarity as support). As a people,
Palestinians have proven to be exceptionally capable of
withstanding the most oppressive and life-denying
conditions. They have exhibited a powerful collective
will and a strong capacity to mobilize in order to
achieve their national goals of independence and justice.
The first intifada is still our most cherished
historical resource in this regard.
But mistakes and failings have also been
abundant. I will mention two in particular which have
been especially disastrous for the liberation struggle:
Suicide Bombing and the collaboration of the Palestinian
Authority with the occupation regime. Suicide Bombing has
been very counterproductive politically. Though a
military nuisance to Israel, puncturing Israel's security
logic, it has been very costly for Palestinian society
itself. As a symptom of popular political de-mobilization
and desperation, it has also reinforced people's
disengagement from collective struggle. If liberation is
the main aim of the resistance, then Suicide Bombing
needs to be totally abandoned. As the Disengagement
shows, it can only lead to tactical withdrawals not
strategic reversals. Another important reason for ceasing
to target Israeli civilians has to do with the potential
role that Israeli society can play in ending the
occupation. The Israelis will never be able to come to
actively support decolonization if they 
continue
to live in fear and insecurity. Abandoning Suicide
Bombing and communicating with Israeli society directly
and clearly about the legitimate and just aims of the
Palestinian struggle may very well help in awakening it
from its cruel apathy and political passivity.
Considering their strategic weaknesses, this is not an
option that the Palestinians can afford to ignore.
The second major failing has been with the PA.
Palestinians have been far too tolerant of the PA's
political capitulation. As a comprador leadership, which
has effectively surrendered its political will to the
Americans, the PA has proven to be a national catastrophe
for the Palestinians. It has been singularly incapable of
even stopping one inch of the annexationist Wall in the
West Bank let alone of formulating an independent
political programme for decolonization. The PA has,
therefore, either to be restructured as a tool for
fighting the occupation or go. Political and economic
opportunism should have no place in a society struggling
to be free from the longest occupation in recent history.
The Palestinian future will very much depend on making
their elite's surrender a thing of the past. Only then
can we begin to hope that the Israeli Colonial
Disengagement may be overcome.
Note
1. In all versions of the Allon Plan, Gaza is always relinquished because of its lack of strategic value for Israel.
Bashir Abu-Manneh teaches English at Barnard College, New York.