August 24, 2005
Gazeta.ru
MosNews
Photo: A bulldozer demolishing a home in Gaza / Photo: Natalia Mozgovaya
How predictable is the current situation with the evacuation of the settlements, and how will the events develop further?
It’s too early to talk about what is happening and how the Israeli evacuation from Gaza will end. It’s a very difficult process, painful, and with many long-term consequences. It’s clear that Ariel Sharon will complete it. The left-leaning establishment has long provoked the right and the settlers to start what can be called a local civil war – provoking them to physically start opposing the army and the police. Fortunately, there is not any major violence now.
What do you mean by provocations?
The attitude of the press, the attitude of Israeli politicians provoked clashes between the settlers and law enforcement authorities. Another issue is the actions of the counter-intelligence. But this situation will become public only once the smoke has cleared over the battlefield and the Israeli press is able to talk about it. Because the press in Israel is left-wing, it will not speak out on any issue – including the issue of corruption in Sharon’s family. A major reason for the evacuation of settlers from the Gaza sector is the fact that Sharon’s career is coming to an end, and everything that is happening surrounding the evacuation significantly helps his career, as well as the career of his children. It has nothing to do with Israeli security.
How will domestic policy in Israel change?
There is no longer a traditional dichotomy between the left and the right in Israel. Everything has become confused. Having come to power as a party leader, Sharon is not popular either among Likud members in the Central Committee, nor among regular members. Sharon cannot win a Likud election were it held today. He is supported by Avoda, Shimon Perez, the left leaning press and the left leaning prosecutors, which in the past considered Sharon their foe. Even Israel’s communist party isn’t criticizing Sharon.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long left the government, did so just ahead of Likud’s defeat. His challenge is to either retain the title of Likud for the group that he plans to head, or unite those who are willing to follow him. In reality, Israelis today are split along the following lines: 25-30 percent support Sharon’s actions in evacuating settlers, about 25-30 percent categorically oppose them, while about 40 percent understand that there’s nothing left to be done in Gaza but who categorically do not agree with the way that Sharon is evacuating the settlers.
These are not the right and the left. It is a completely different configuration. Old leaders of Likud and Avoda, who are about 80 years old, are ending their political careers. They are leaving behind a political vacuum.... We can’t rule out that in the near future we will see a fundamental transformation of the party scene. And right now we can’t even imagine what it will look like. The traditional orientation of rich Ashkenazi Jews towards the Labor party and the orientation of poor Sephardi Jews towards Likud has changed. Today there are rich, high-placed Sephardi and poor, though educated, Ashkenazi. And this completely changes the traditional picture.
In a situation like this, is it possible to talk about a successor policy?
Sharon’s course is his own personal course. There is no cause for optimism in any dimension. There are no guarantees that terrorism will decrease after the Israelis leave Gaza. Territories in Israel’s south will be vulnerable to missile strikes. By leaving the Philadelphia Corridor the Israelis will permit the shipment of weapons into Gaza through Egyptian territory. An intifada on the West Bank of the Jordan is inescapable. Terroristic activity will grow stronger inside the green line. All this will provoke the Israelis to deliver a massive strike on the Palestinians. Abu Mazen is also a very old man, and there is no reason to believe that he has one successor who will formally rule Palestine. Most likely, it will break apart into conflicting enclaves headed by regional field commanders.
Under such conditions, it was be very adventurous to count on Sharon’s policy, so closely tied up with his personal and family interests. There are considerable groups that force Israel to act against its interests under U.S. pressure. The “Road Map,” the Iraqi constitution, the democratization of Afghanistan – these are political experiments that can end positively only after a long span of bloody mistakes. We can already see how these experiments turned out for Iraq. The country does not exist today as a state.
American pressure on Israel will lead to a regional catastrophe.
Tensions are building up in Lebanon that can evolve into a civil war. The fact that Syrians left Lebanon has ruined the hopes of the generals on salaries for their children, making the Syrian regime unstable, while it is the only thing holding the country together. Egyptian and Saudi regimes, headed by aging leaders, are facing serious Islamist pressure. All this means that in the next five-seven, ten years at most, the region will suffer global, catastrophic changes.
You say that this was Sharon’s personal plan, but according to polls, a lot of people supported him.
Right now, the supporters are already a minority – 45 percent against 55 percent. Moreover, what does “support” mean? In the Soviet Union, referendums would ask people whether they wanted to live in a wealthy, united, free, democratic country called the Soviet Union? Everyone wants to live in a country like that.
It’s no accident that Sharon categorically rejected a national referendum on the pullout from Gaza. Moreover, he lost the referendum in his party, where, according to his own estimates, he was supposed to win. And there’s no doubt that he would have lost it on a national level. Israelis and many settlers believe that they will not be able to keep Gaza in the long run, but concessions are still concessions. The question is how you retreat. There is no peace process right now between Israel and Palestine. There is a war going on.
Any military retreat is seen in the Middle East as a signal that you need to be pursued and destroyed. It doesn’t mean anything else.
The intifada that has taken thousands of both Palestinian and Israeli lives began after Barak withdrew from Lebanon. He promised the same thing as what Sharon promises now. I remember how Barak said that if a single strike is made by Lebanon on our territory, we will have our hands free to destroy their infrastructure, and we will have the support of the international community. None of that happened. Lebanon is a still a very dangerous zone, far more dangers that when the Syrians and the Israelis were dividing it.... The same thing is happening in Palestine.
A system of a single Palestinian government controlling the militants does not exist. Remember the Khasavurt retreat of Russian troops from Chechnya and talk about how Aslan Maskhadov’s government is controlling the militants? But no one was controlling Maskhadov, and that was what sparked the events that followed [the invasion into neighboring Dagestan in 1999 — MosNews]. No one will control terrorist groups in Gaza, no one will be able to control them if they are invaded by militants from refugee camps in Lebanon.
http://www.mosnews.com/interview/2005/08/24/gaza.shtml