Israel Matzav

Disengagement lessons

At Ynet, columnist Sever Plocker is urging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to re-think his disengagement convergence expulsion plan. With good reason. Eight months out from the expulsion of Gaza's Jews, nothing has worked out the way it was planned. Doing the same thing in Judea and Samaria will simply put a lot more inviting targets within Kassam range.

Eight months after the withdrawal from Gaza, or what was referred to as a "unilateral disengagement," things are not developing according to the early scenario marketed to the public.

Almost nothing has materialized in the way pullout supporters promised us would happen.

The Gaza Strip did not calm down and the Palestinian Authority did not take matters there into its own hands in order to establish the Middle Eastern Hong Kong. Gaza is a no-man's land, the country of nobody. The Strip lacks a civilian regime, no currency, no enforcement of law and order, and most of the system tasked with providing the population with basic services is paralyzed, aside from the one run by the United Nations.

Armed gangs rule the narrow, derelict refugee camp streets. The only manufacturing activity is the industry of flying iron tubes that are launched to short distances. The point of launching them at Israel is unclear to anyone, including the launching cells themselves.

Yet when you have nothing to do and you're young and filled with energy, and since your birth had only known poverty, occupation, and unemployment, you find an outlet in belonging to those ridiculous "Qassam cells."

The handing over of the border crossing with Egypt to Palestinian control also failed to lead to the expected results. The border is rather porous, checks are inadequate, and smuggling is rampant. There too, the Palestinians failed to implement their sovereignty.

Egyptian Border Guard troops received one kind of order: Preventing at any price the turning of Gaza into part of Egypt. They're carrying out this job, but nothing beyond.

The Palestinian Authority did not use the months between Israel's withdrawal and the general elections in order to reinforce its hold among Gaza residents. It was busy with internal power struggles. The elections were decided in favor of Hamas.

Fatah's armed spine was broken, some of the senior security officials left to the Gulf, and others quickly changed their political loyalty. For a while Gaza became Hamas land. Now, it's not even that: In fact, even the official Hamas has given up in the face of Gaza's collapse and left it to face its destiny.

And Israel, even though it removed its army and settlements, and even though it closed down the crossings to the movement of goods, is still stuck with Gaza as if it was a huge bone in its throat.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:58 PM