Gaza: Moving Forward by Pulling Back
Article Summary and Author Biography
Despite widespread calls to rush to a final-status agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it would be a mistake to reach for so much so soon. The parties must first restore trust after four and a half years of violence, above all by making sure that Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip proceeds smoothly, leaving peace and security in its wake.
David Makovsky is Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. This article is based on the forthcoming study Engagement Through Disengagement: Gaza and the Potential for Middle East Peacemaking, published by the Washington Institute.
THE OPPORTUNITY
After four and a half years of terror and violence, the proverbial stars seem to be aligned for a new push for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Unlike his predecessor, the newly elected Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, stresses the importance of peaceful problem solving and has condemned suicide bombing (in Arabic and in English) as counterproductive. On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the onetime architect of the settlement movement, is leading the drive to evacuate all settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank. At Sharm-el-Sheikh earlier this year, he and Abbas committed to a cease-fire, an important step even if rejectionists on both sides are certain to try to exploit it. In Washington, meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice is as close to the commander in chief as any secretary of state has been since James Baker teamed up with George W. Bush's father, guaranteeing that she speaks with the president's authority.
But even under such relatively favorable conditions, it is wrong to assume that the Israelis and the Palestinians can simply return to the summer of 2000, when Washington thought that an end to the conflict was within sight. Since then, trust between the parties has been shattered by violence, and rebuilding it will not be quick or easy. Reaching for too much too soon will turn the current opening into one more lost opportunity.
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