Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who meets with President Bush at the White House today, is putting the final touches on a plan for Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Under the disengagement plan (details of which are due for release on Sunday), Israel is expected to dismantle settlements in Gaza, where 7,000 Jews live among 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs. Mr. Bush said Monday that the Gaza disengagement plan gave Israel freedom to operate against terror. He’s right, and that’s an important reason why Israel would be better off without the Gaza settlements.
Regardless of whether they remain in Gaza, the territory is likely to remain an anarchic, violent place for the foreseeable future, dominated by terrorist groups. The terrorists — to one degree or another — are receiving support from Hezbollah and Iran. These groups maintain bomb-making factories in Gaza and routinely seek to smuggle arms from Egypt into Gaza for use against Israelis — whether they live in Gaza or in Israel. Mr. Sharon apparently has concluded that the presence of 7,000 Jewish settlers, many of them families with small children, in the middle of this war zone surrounded by more than 1 million hostile Palestinians makes little strategic sense. We agree.
As Mr. Sharon points out, if at some future time, there is a Palestinian leadership capable of making peace with Israel, it is inconceivable that these Gaza settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty. In short, Mr. Sharon — a man frequently caricatured as an incorrigible hardliner — has made a solid political and strategic move by laying the groundwork for the end of Israel’s 37-year occupation of Gaza.
But right now, Mr. Sharon faces intense opposition from settler activists and their allies on Israel’s political right, who will fight the prime minister’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza (and likely future decisions to withdraw from some West Bank settlements as well). On May 2, Mr. Sharon’s Likud Party will hold a referendum on this question, and the prime minister’s political future may hang in the balance. The good news is that Mr. Bush is likely to give Mr. Sharon some much-needed support, in the form of guarantees that Israel will not be forced to withdraw all the way to the 1949 Armistice Line, and that Washington will support Israel’s actions against terrorists who attempt to stage attacks from the areas it withdraws from. What’s needed now is a new, responsible Palestinian leadership capable of taking yes for an answer and accepting an independent state next to Israel.
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