Middle Eastern Role Reversal (Updated)

Lots of stories today regarding renewed possibilities for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

The USA Today (not my news source of choice, by the way) reports "glimmers of hope have materialized in the Holy Land." The article points to Arafat's death in November, planned Palestinian elections on Jan. 9th (with moderate Mahmoud Abbas the front-runner), and Israeli PM Sharon's efforts to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza.

In the Israeli Ha'aretz digital edition, there is renewed hope that Likud and Labour's compromise to secure power will enable the government to remain strong in the face of settlers' protests. The article reports scathingly on previous government collusion with settlers:

Had the state come down hard on the settlers' law-breaking in the past, it might be easier to convince them today that violent opposition to the evacuation will send them to jail. But for years, law enforcement agencies turned a blind eye to settler violence against Palestinians, policemen and soldiers, and even to genuine pogroms, as well as to the seizure of Arab property and the illegal expansion of settlements. The most blatant evidence of this blind-eye policy is the 100 outposts that are growing and flourishing throughout the West Bank, even though they have been declared illegal. The demand that settler leaders be indicted immediately for words that are construed as incitement, after years of ignoring actual illegal acts, smacks of too little, too late.

In another article from the Ha'aretz, the Israeli police commisioner laments that planned protests and civil disobedience by settlers threatens Israeli democracy:

"It doesn't matter what any of us think about the disengagement plan or the evacuation. That's not the point. The fact that a state or government makes a decision and then it cannot implement it is dangerous to our very existence in the state of Israel and to any democratic country."

Israeli difficulty in controlling settlers combined with Palestinian frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas's call to abandon the current intifada against Israel could lead to an interesting reversal. What if Abbas manages to consolidate power and put an end to the intifada at the same time Israel loses control of its settlers and is forced to fight the same sort of chaotic quasi-civil war the PA has gone through for the past few years?

From the Times Online:

ISRAEL yesterday faced the growing threat of civil war after militant Jewish settlers supported the call for a campaign of disobedience against Ariel Sharon’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip next year.

On the eve of Tony Blair’s visit to the Holy Land, where Britain will offer to help to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the peace efforts now look set to provoke a new struggle within the Jewish state.

Last night the Yesha Council — an umbrella group representing 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — supported the call by a militant leader for a campaign of mass resistance.

Bentzi Lieberman, the chairman of the council, insisted that the settlers were not calling for a civil war, but there were fears that this could be the outcome if his heavily armed members follow the advice of Pinchas Wallerstein, one of the more militant leaders.

“I am calling (on you) to break through army roadblocks, violate orders declaring territory (around settlements) a closed military area, and to barricade yourselves in your homes if necessary,” Mr Wallerstein wrote in a letter to fellow settlers.

I'm sickened by the tactics both sides in this conflict have employed over the past few years. What has typically drawn me to support Israel has been the extent to which voices of protest have been allowed to emerge - as they inevitably do in a democracy. If Israel tears itself apart over the government's efforts to enfore the LAW, I will be left with little hope for peace in the region. Settlers in Gaza and the West Bank just don't seem to get it. If there is ever going to be ANY chance of peace between Israeli and Palestinian, large portions of both occupied territories (if not all of them) will have to be returned to Palestinian control. If that can be done while there is a Palestinian government actively working to quell violence, then it establishes negotiation as more valuable than violence. If Israeli settlers throw this aside, then withdrawal will come at the point of a gun.

10 Jan Update:

Thomas Friedman elaborates on Israeli settlers and their refusal to cooperate with the planned Gaza pullout:

In Israel the theocratic-nationalist settler movement has already begun to make its move. Last Thursday, four battalion commanders and 30 other officers, all residents of West Bank Jewish settlements, published a statement in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, declaring that they would not obey any orders to evacuate Jewish enclaves in Gaza or the West Bank. This is an open rebuke of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet-approved plan to withdraw all Israeli forces and settlements from Gaza and a small part of the West Bank.

This is obviously far more serious than voices from rabbis or angry settlers shouting vague threats about refusing to move. An actual refusal to obey orders from military leadership is a very bad sign indeed. Friedman continues, drawing a connection between the voices of protest in the Israeli settlements and the voices of protest coming from Iraq:

The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that the main council of West Bank and Gaza rabbis issued a statement Thursday urging all Israeli soldiers to openly defy the state and declare their opposition to the disengagement plan, saying: "The order to dismantle settlements goes against the laws of the Torah and human morality. One should not assist this act." The Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar reported that thousands of Jewish zealots - and Christians, too - are waiting in the United States for the call to join the struggle alongside the settlers in Gaza.

Sound familiar? It should. The week before, the Muslim militant group Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq called for all Iraqi Muslims to boycott Iraq's voting booths, decrying them as "centers of atheism," and added the warning that "the Mujahedeen will be attacking polling stations." Hamas and Islamic Jihad are boycotting today's Palestinian election, just as the main Sunni political movement in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has vowed to do there. Osama bin Laden, for his part, declared that the laws of Iraq are "infidel" laws, and "therefore everyone who participates in this election will be considered infidels."

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