Over at Cahiers, Josh is hopeful; I look up to him for this. From down here at sugarhigh!, it seems that the Gaza pullout is four parts smoke to three parts mirrors. According to my favorite resource for geopolitics, the numbers in the Strip are:
Population: 1,324,991
note: in addition, there are more than 5,000 Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip (July 2004 est.)
Compare this to the West Bank:
Population: 2,311,204
note: in addition, there are about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2004 est.)
I fear it's all too easy to suspect that Gaza, which houses only a tiny number of Israeli settlers (minuscule when counted in ratio to the, uh, settled), is being used as a temporizing tactic; the inter-Israeli sturm und drang makes it seem like a big deal, a historic moment — without the history. This dumbshow will serve to forestall history, to postpone infinitely the far-more-substantial pullout from the West Bank.
The miracle we'll need is, I would suggest, a fundamental change in the United States' geopolitical investments. There'll be no homeland for the Palestinians, and no withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, as long as the US requires a secular client state in the Middle East. As the managed spectacle of Gaza unfurls, it's probably worth recalling that, of the last fourteen vetos in the UN Security Council (dating back to 1995), eleven were used by the United States. Of these eleven binding, non-overrideable vetos, ten concerned Israel. Some resolutions the United States found intolerable:
• on the killing by Israeli forces of several United Nations employees and the destruction of the World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse
• on establishing a UN observer force to protect Palestinian civilians
• on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian-controlled territory and condemning acts of terror against civilians
...and on and on, the hypocrisies and absurdities piling one on the next. The last veto listed above, blocking a condemnation of terror against civilians, came 94 days after September 11th.
The difference between Israel's two factions, between Sharon and "the hardliners," is not between the side that wants to do the right thing and the side that doesn't; this is a Manichaean fantasy (one, I would argue, particularly appealing with United States liberals, for obvious reasons). It's between those prepared to act strategically, and those committed to acting absolutely. What we are seeing isn't the beginning of peace, it's the sacrifice of a knight, maybe a bishop.
Posted by jane at August 15, 2005 11:13 AM | TrackBack