RAMALLAH, West Bank - As
Palestinian factions vie for credit for Israel's disengagement from Gaza,
many forget that the success really belongs to the ordinary men, women and
children of Palestine who have remained in their homeland during 38 years
of devastating occupation and clung to the belief in the justice of their
cause. The disengagement is a direct result of their patience and
resilience, and now the occupation has only one direction to go -
backward.
Serious risks and challenges lie ahead, however. Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon of Israel has learned that there is a price to pay for oppressing
and dispossessing the Palestinian people. But instead of embracing a
negotiated peace based on international law, he has used limited tactical
unilateral actions to deflect attention in other directions.
His tactics have laid three main challenges in front of the Palestinian
people.
First, Palestinian mismanagement of the Gaza Strip would encourage critics
to claim that Palestinians are unfit for self-rule.
We can avoid this by holding fair democratic elections in the legislative
council, municipalities and all representative bodies, making sure
competition between factions is expressed only through the ballot box, in
a peaceful and pluralistic manner. Forcing opinions on people using
violence, intimidation, favoritism and patronage must be avoided at all
costs.
Rumors that the evacuated lands might be monopolized by influential
members of the Palestinian political establishment can easily be dispensed
with if the Palestinian Authority follows the rule of law with complete
transparency when allocating the lands. Privately owned land must be
returned to its rightful owners, and public lands must remain under public
domain to be used for the public good.
Second, many fear that Israel's "disengagement" is nothing more than a
redeployment that will render Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza impossible.
If Israel removes its settlers and soldiers but maintains control over all
access to Gaza by land, sea and air, the strip will remain an isolated,
impoverished prison. Palestinians must insist on complete Palestinian
control over the Gaza coastline and the border with Egypt, with no Israeli
interference or supervision.
Third, Sharon's attempt to use the disengagement to cut Gaza off from the
West Bank and freeze the peace process indefinitely presents the biggest
challenge.
Further delay gives Sharon time to impose more facts on the ground [in the
West Bank] that prejudice final-status negotiations. By continuing to
build the Wall, expand settlements and slice East Jerusalem off the
political map, Sharon is attempting to impose a unilateral final
resolution that is unacceptable to the Palestinian people and at odds with
international law.
Sharon's vision of bartering Gaza for East Jerusalem and vast and vital
areas of the West Bank would destroy the dream of Palestinian statehood
and replace it with a nightmare of isolated, impoverished cantons, similar
to the bantustans that black South Africans rejected under apartheid. It
could mean a third intifada.
After the disengagement, Sharon faces a precarious internal political
situation. Those who seek peace must immediately act to ensure that the
redeployment from Gaza transitions into a comprehensive withdrawal from
all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. International law
unequivocally states that the settlements in Gaza have no legitimacy. The
settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are held under the same
illegal belligerent occupancy and must likewise be dismantled and
evacuated.
To become agents of our own destiny, Palestinians must follow three steps.
The first is to call for an international peace conference like the one
held in Madrid in 1991. This will end the political freeze that Sharon is
trying to impose. It will open for discussion critical issues such as the
East Jerusalem settlements, final borders and the rights of refugees. It
will engage the international community in the negotiations, which Israel
has long sought to prevent. And, most important, it will re-establish
international law as the basis by which the Palestinian/Israeli conflicts
must be solved.
The second step is to take the International Court of Justice ruling that
Israel's Wall is contrary to international law to the United Nations and
demand that the ruling be enforced by nonviolent means such as sanctions
until Israel complies.
Finally, the nonviolent struggle against the Wall and settlements must
continue in Palestine and around the world in order to maintain strong
grassroots and civil society pressure against Israel's illegal policies.
Today we and all who have stood with us in our struggle for peace and
freedom celebrate the removal of illegal settlements from Gaza. But we
must remain vigilant in order to harness the momentum of this process and
take it to its logical conclusion - a sovereign Palestinian state in the
West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
(Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, general secretary of the Palestinian National
Initiative, was a candidate in the Palestinian presidential elections in
January. )
