Making the Gaza Risk Pay Off

The Israeli parliament’s vote Tuesday to remove Israeli settlers from Gaza is a step toward a lasting peace between the Jewish state and the Palestinians. But much more is required: the actual evacuation of those settlers and many more in the West Bank, plus a Palestinian commitment to establish a stable, moderate government in Gaza as a building block to an independent state.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- an architect of the settlement movement after the 1967 Middle East War, in which Israel seized Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan -- took risks to attain his parliamentary victory. Many legislators from his party and its coalition partners voted against him, forcing him to seek help from more liberal opposition parties. An unprecedented security detail surrounded him as he entered the Knesset because of death threats from those accusing him of treason.

Sharon’s plan proposes evacuation of about 8,200 settlers from Gaza, where they live among 1.3 million Palestinians. More votes are required before the evacuations begin next year and Israeli troops protecting the settlers are removed. Several hundred other settlers will be removed from the West Bank under the plan, but more than 200,000 Israelis will remain -- a major stumbling block to the peace process.

The withdrawal offers Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority the opportunity to govern Gaza and show the world whether it can contain the terrorists based in the seaside strip. But Israel should not just toss the keys over the fence and leave. The government should work with the Palestinians to let them cross into Israel for the jobs they need; Gaza is heavily dependent on foreign aid, with more than half the population living on $2 a day or less.

Israel should also agree to demolish more West Bank settlements. President Bush reversed decades of bipartisan U.S. policy in April when he recognized Israeli claims to keep major settlements. Many nations believe all of them are illegal because they were built on land seized in the 1967 war, and this territory is needed for a functioning Palestinian nation. Before the Bush administration, U.S. presidents called for the settlements to be evacuated, although they tacitly agreed that not every one would be emptied.

In the months after Sharon announced his evacuation plan, Israeli soldiers battled Palestinians in Gaza, anxious to be perceived as withdrawing voluntarily rather than being forced out. A number of terrorist leaders were killed, but so were many civilians. Sharon, a veteran of all of Israel’s wars, said at the start of the two-day parliamentary debate that he regretted the loss of innocent Palestinian lives, an important olive branch from a man known as one of the country’s warriors.

However, Israel’s refusal to discuss the evacuations with the Palestinians and its barrier-building between the occupied territories and Israel make the involvement of the U.S. in the peace process more urgent. Only Washington can push Israel toward talks with moderate Palestinians. The Bush administration has been too willing to let Sharon do what he wants, regardless of the effect. A Gaza withdrawal offers an opportunity for the United States to return its attention to the Palestinian state that Bush has endorsed and Israelis say they will accept.