Gaza Exit Plan to Be Tested in Knesset

Israel’s tumultuous and long-running internal debate over whether to give up the Gaza Strip comes to a crucial juncture this week when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal initiative faces its first -- and likely its most fateful -- parliamentary test.

The Knesset, or parliament, is widely expected to approve the plan Tuesday, setting in motion the exit from Gaza, the narrow tract of seaside territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. That would mean relocating, probably sometime next year, about 8,000 Jewish settlers who live among Gaza’s nearly 1.3 million Palestinians.

Although most pollsters and political analysts expect Sharon to secure at least 67 of the 120 votes, giving him a relatively comfortable margin of victory, those in the prime minister’s camp concede that the contest is so hard-fought -- and the resulting backroom political alliances so convoluted -- that a last-minute reversal cannot be ruled out.

The vote and its outcome are being portrayed by both sides as nothing less than a struggle for the nation’s soul. The choice, commentators say, is a stark one: Either begin giving up land settled by Jews to fulfill a biblically rooted vision of a “Greater Israel,” or signal Israel’s intent to continue ruling a restive and fast-growing Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza -- which could in the long run make it impossible for Israel to retain its fundamental character as a Jewish state.

“The decision ... may be seen as the seventh day of the Six-Day War,” analyst Shalom Yerushalmi wrote in a somber opinion piece in Kol Hazman magazine. In that dramatic struggle 37 years ago, Israel preempted a coordinated attack by its Arab neighbors and ended up seizing the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights from Jordan, Egypt and Syria respectively.

Not since Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979 and returned the thinly populated Sinai Peninsula has an Israeli prime minister moved so forcefully to make a territorial transfer of this magnitude.

Many of the more than 225,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank believe a handover of Gaza to full Palestinian control would be a prelude to dismantling their much larger communities, and thus have fought the pullout plan as furiously as their Gaza counterparts.

Through aides, Sharon has sought to reassure the right wing that if the Gaza pullout goes ahead, Israel will have a much stronger argument for hanging on to large settlement blocks in the West Bank. But the settlers -- infuriated by what they see as betrayal by their onetime champion -- refuse to believe him.

Israelis across the political spectrum have become alarmed by the raw and passionate tone of the debate, finding it reminiscent of the violent rhetoric unleashed in the months leading up to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a young ultranationalist Jew.

“The intensifying protests of settlers and their supporters against the [withdrawal] has not eroded the broad and stable support for this move,” Tel Aviv University professors Ephraim Yaar and Tamar Herman wrote in their latest “Peace Index” survey, a respected barometer of Israeli public opinion.

But they added that “many in the public agree that there exists today a danger of civil war in Israel, and a risk of the assassination of the prime minister.... A small but not negligible minority, in fact, favor taking measures of civil rebellion, including the use of weapons.”

Security surrounding Sharon has been steadily tightened in the year since he first hinted at the outlines of the withdrawal plan. Shrugging off death threats, the Israeli leader has joked that he does not wear a bulletproof vest because he cannot find one tailored to his girth.

The vote is seen as a decisive test for Sharon, who for months has been fighting off a rebellion within the conservative Likud Party that he helped found. He overwhelmingly lost a party referendum on the withdrawal plan in May and has been bedeviled by the machinations of a bloc known as the “Likud rebels,” who account for nearly half of his party’s 40 Knesset seats.

In advance of Tuesday’s vote, settlers and their supporters have staged an all-out battle for lawmakers’ hearts and minds -- and threatened their jobs. Aided by a list of parliamentarians’ private cellphone numbers published on a settler website, the anti-withdrawal lobby has been inundating wavering parliamentarians with warning calls.

“Only those opposing this plan will make it into the next Knesset,” said an open letter to lawmakers published in Israeli newspapers last week and signed “Likudniks who know how to settle a score.”

Opponents of the withdrawal have announced plans to surround the Knesset building with waves of demonstrators, including sign-waving settlers’ children and a convoy of slow-moving cars -- forcing lawmakers to run a gantlet in order to vote.

The Gaza settlers contend that their communities constitute a line of defense for the country, absorbing attacks by Palestinian militants that would otherwise be directed at towns and cities within Israel. The website for Gush Katif, the main Gaza settlement block, has an interactive feature that tracks the hundreds of mortar rounds fired at the settlements by Palestinian militants. A user clicking on the latest tally hears a thunderous explosion.

Supporters of the pullout say that holding on to Gaza harms, not enhances, Israel’s security. Dozens of young soldiers have been killed defending the Gaza settlements, and field commanders regard some as nearly impossible to secure. Shuvi, a grass-roots organization spearheaded by mothers of soldiers who served in Gaza, refers to the territory as the “Death Strip.”

Tuesday’s vote won’t be the Knesset’s last word on the withdrawal initiative. Various aspects of the plan, including its financing and timing, will be the subject of legislative action in coming weeks and months.

Despite the rebellion in his party ranks, the prime minister, whose nickname is “The Bulldozer,” has been able to win pledges of support from some prominent Likud figures unhappy with the pullout plan. On Sunday, his Cabinet approved guidelines for compensating the Gaza settlers by a resounding 13-6 majority.

Sharon has moved ahead with the initiative only because of the safety net provided by the left-leaning Labor Party. All 21 of its Knesset members are expected to back the pullout plan -- some still rubbing their eyes in disbelief at having turned into supporters of their longtime nemesis. Smaller political parties also find themselves eagerly courted by both sides.

The 11 lawmakers affiliated with the conservative religious party, Shas, are expected to follow the directive of their spiritual leader, the frail and aging Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz last week gamely paid the venerated rabbi a visit, donning a yarmulke as a sign of respect.

The rabbi was later said to have been unswayed by the appeal.

For Israelis, Sharon’s travails have made for riveting political theater, a drama almost Shakespearean in scope. On a daily basis, the prime minister is pilloried as a traitor by those who were previously his closest political allies -- the leaders of the settlement movement that he has nurtured throughout his decades-long political career.

“A man of 76, who has known many disappointments and defeats, in the twilight of his life has adopted a plan that is totally contrary to everything he said and preached his whole life,” commentator Yossi Verter wrote in the Haaretz daily.

The fierce outbreak of internal dissent over the Gaza initiative has been disorienting for many Israelis. Through much of the current conflict with the Palestinians, now in its fifth year, the sense of siege arising from suicide bombings by Palestinian militant groups helped forge a strong sense of national unity. Sharon’s Likud was the prime political beneficiary of that; in the last national elections, the party’s strength nearly doubled.

With the drop-off in attacks inside Israel, however, old political divisions -- between religious and secular Jews, and supporters and opponents of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians -- have again surged to the forefront.

Palestinians, who gained semi-autonomy in Gaza during interim peace accords in the 1990s but saw that control all but vanish during the current conflict, fear that if Gaza is handed over, Israel will face little pressure from the United States or the rest of the international community to cede more territory.

Most observers say a Sharon defeat Tuesday would trigger early elections and perhaps a complete realignment of the country’s major political parties.

Heading into the vote, the prime minister has sought to project an air of calm detachment, coupled with unflagging determination. “I am at peace with the decision to evacuate Gush Katif,” he told Likud activists last week about the block of settlements. “It’s the right move, and we will carry on with it to the end.”