I'm back from Israel, so lets talk about the Gaza disengagement plan

Anyway, the Gaza plan. I read some Israeli government guy in Ha'aretz talking about how the whole point of it was to get rid of Gaza and one or two isolated West Bank settlements as a way of strengthening Israel's hold on the rest of the West Bank. So eh, I don't know.

One of the big questions with Israel and Palestine is whether Sharon is a master strategist or just some bozo who reacts to events in an irrational manner. If he is the former then the whole Gaza showdown thing is very convenient, and allows him to say to the world "Look how hard it was for me to pull a few thousand of those guys out of Gaza... you can't seriously expect me to uproot a couple of hundred thousand in the West Bank, can you?". On the other hand, if the settlers in Gaza act like total cockfarmers they might piss off Israeli public opinion to such an extent that it turns decisively against anyone living on illegal settlements anywhere beyond the Green Line. I can dream.

Sorry about the slight thread derailment.

I read some Israeli government guy in Ha'aretz talking about how the whole point of it was to get rid of Gaza and one or two isolated West Bank settlements as a way of strengthening Israel's hold on the rest of the West Bank.

This is hardly news. However, given how much hand-wringing was involved in the Gaza plan, any predictive policy statements, even from Knesset officials, may not have any correlation with what will actually end up happening.

But there's a difference between having those extremist attitudes, and taking up arms against the army. Yeah, there is a not insignificant faction that feels this way and regularly organizes anti-disengagement rallies attended by 200K people. But I can't believe that these people are about to seriously rumble with the army over this.

I don't like Sharon much, but I've given up on trying to read his mind. The fact is, eventually, one way or another, some settlements need to be pulled out, and no matter what Sharon's ultimate motivation is, I'm happy that it's going to happen. In the long run, if it works, I believe that it will make further pullouts more possible.

As for Israeli public opinion, I think a lot of secular Israelis already hate the settlers, as they do religious extremists in general (I heard a fair amount of bitching about the Rabbinate and its refusal to recognize more progressive branches of Judaism, recognize non-Jewish weddings, etc.) My girlfriend always tells me how much a lot of the soldiers she served with hated defending places like Hebron.

Mind-in-Rewind: I think the Hamas elections are probably a lot harder for the Israeli media to cover, but you're right. I heard very little talk of that in the week I was there. Everyone likes the drama of the pullout -- it's historically unprecedented, and it's a Jew vs. Jew story. The racism adds to things -- many Israelis are shocked by what they're hearing.

OTM. In Israeli politics, which are much more volatile than US politics, Sharon has a very difficult balancing act -- he has to appear to be both working toward peace and behaving completely indifferently to the Palestinians.

pain is good.

It's funny how unguarded the Israeli media can be (even more so in Hebrew, I hear). If some non-Israeli journo published an opinion piece like that the pro-Israeli people would be down their throat for bias and suchlike.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Unguarded? Israel has a free press. Haaretz is a left-leaning newspaper. It's no more surprising to see this editorial than it is to see criticism of the Iraq war in the New York Times -- perhaps even less so, since Haaretz generally has a better track record.

Wha? Can you cite me some examples of "the left, especially in America" saying this?

I'm pretty sure Abbas has said those kind of things.

Both Abbas and Qorei strongly condemned the Tel Aviv bombing in February.

But Abbas has been playing a deft game of political footsie with regard to terrorism in general. He's been taking credit for the lull in violence, but I don't think he has had much to do with it, rather, Hamas et al are choosing to keep things quiet in order to further legitimize themselves in the lead-up to the elections.

With the election, Hamas finally has a real oppurtunity to grab legitimate power, so they're not going to risk it by getting overly trigger happy. And Abbas doesn't want to try and clamp down on them because that'd boost their popularity leading into elections, which would significantly hurt Fatah. Hence, we have a "cease fire", and Abbas can claim that terrorism is down by 90% or whatever number he's been throwing around.

Well, for one thing that's a little different than shrugging it off with a "What would you do?" as alleged above. But even at that, I'd like to see an actual instance of suicide-bomb apologism being advanced by "the left, especially in America." I don't doubt that some anonymous Indymedia poster has yahooed the "martyrs" now and then, but I hardly think that's a common position on "the left, especially in America." It sounds like a specious statement to me. I know a lot of people who would more or less fall on the left -- especially in America -- and while I haven't taken a straw vote, I'm pretty sure they're all anti-suicide-bombing.

I'm weary of discussing Israel-Palestine politics, but I was interested by a report on a downloadable computer game produced by an Isreali peace group to mobilise opposition to West Bank settlers. Read about it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4095364.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40628000/jpg/_40628436_game203.jpg

I'm hoping they don't find their Yigal Amir while I'm in the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/2005_GAZAPULLOUT_GRAPHIC/index.html

Interestingly, all the people on the block are at least paying lip service to the idea of staying until forced out, but most of them seem in fact resigned to leaving. I wonder if there's kind of a need to make a ceremonial protest so as not to be spit upon by your neighbors.

shout out to PA and (especially) IDF for their relative professionalism, civility and restraint. let's hope it keeps up.