Gain Independence, Not Pennies, In Gaza
September 16, 2005Geoffrey Aronson, The Daily Star
Recent reports on the post-disengagement economic and security arrangements for the Gaza Strip-Egypt border region raise troubling questions about both Israeli and Palestinian intentions for Gaza's future. A Palestinian decision to be party to an agreement that endorses a decisive Israeli role in vetting goods coming into Gaza from Egypt and elsewhere is a cardinal error that makes a mockery of Palestinian pretensions to end the occupation. This concession of course also has a security dimension, and not only one limited to the reported agreement to install cameras linked to Israel at the Rafah border terminal between Egypt and Gaza. Palestinian agreement to a pre-eminent Israeli status in economic and security issues along borders not its own - in return for the maintenance of an outmoded customs regime - are the core issues now being finalized.
There has been no attempt, however, to identify the critical elements of the customs envelope Palestinians are so desperate to preserve, and to offer a framework for maintaining it by means that enhance rather than preclude Palestinian sovereignty; no attempt, also, to win a complete Israeli retreat from Gaza's border with the outside world; and no attempt to establish precedents for the independent operation of Gaza's seaport and airport.
The customs regime that Palestinians and many in the international community consider so critical to Palestinian economic prospects, and to unity between Gaza and the West Bank, will in any case be undermined by Israel. The Israelis have made it abundantly clear that they have no need for such a union, which was established in 1994. Their threat to end Gaza's participation in the union if Palestinians insist on denying Israel a commanding role over Gaza's imports betrays the souring Israeli view of the agreement, which makes no sense to them in an era of disengagement.
The Palestinians' willingness to let ill-conceived assumptions about the economic value of a withering economic arrangement trump the political imperative of winning freedom from Israeli control reflects the sorry state of the Fatah-led Palestinian "revolution." This willingness to fatally compromise the prospect of the exercise of Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza (and let no one suggest the stakes are anything less than this) will undermine the dwindling prospect the Palestinian Authority (PA) has to rehabilitate itself and demonstrate to a rightly skeptical Palestinian public that it is more than a subcontractor for continuing occupation.
The PA's decision to award Israel a controlling role in deciding who enters Gaza may also raise pointed questions from Hamas about participating in a system in which Israel continues to exercise effective security and economic control. Take the case, for example, where a Hamas official like Khaled Meshal might be refused entry into Gaza. What would happen then? (Though from the perspective of the PA and Fatah, such exclusions may be regarded as useful.)
It is ironic that as long as Israel and the PA refrained from a dialogue on disengagement, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon marched single-mindedly toward the goal of ending Israeli rule in Gaza. This dynamic is now imperiled by discussions which have highlighted Israel's still healthy desire to control Palestinians and a Palestinian phobia of taking on both the advantages and costs of genuine self-rule. If Sharon succeeds on the border and custom issues, Israel loses by fatally compromising its aim to end the occupation. (The international community has already decided that Gaza's occupation is over, and good luck trying to argue otherwise.)
The Palestinians, in turn, with the support of the international community, are making it possible for Israel to surrender to its worst instincts. The problem is that this comes at a moment when, for the first time, there is a real prospect of forcing Israel to fully surrender the keys to Gaza and of creating the minimal conditions needed for the exercise of Palestinian independence on at least part of a liberated homeland.
Palestinian sovereignty and independence are matters too important to be left to well meaning envoys and hired accountants. Independent Palestinian control of the border with Egypt should not be bartered away for the questionable prospect of a few pennies more.
Geoffrey Aronson is director of research and publications at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.