Israel leaves but Gaza is hardly free

PALESTINIANS CELEBRATED as Israel redeployed its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip last week. The move offers some relief to the people of Gaza after 38 years of brutal military occupation.

But, given its unilateral disconnection from any framework for a genuine peace, the withdrawal does nothing to address Palestinian aspirations. Palestinians will gain greater freedom of movement within Gaza’s borders, but it seems inevitable that the territory will remain as isolated from the outside world (not to mention the West Bank and Jerusalem) and as subject to Israeli domination as before.

Quite apart from the question of Palestinian self-determination -- which hinges on ties between Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem -- the withdrawal also will do nothing to alleviate the social and economic crisis produced by the Israeli occupation.

A 2004 World Bank study revealed that, since the intensification of the occupation in 2000, average Palestinian incomes have declined by more than one-third. Nearly half of all Palestinians live below the poverty line of $2 a day. The World Bank’s assessment of the cause of this dramatic deterioration in Palestinian living standards is unequivocal. “The precipitator of this economic crisis has been ‘closure,’ a multifaceted system of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods, which the government of Israel argues is essential to protect Israelis in Israel and the settlements. Closures, including the Separation Barrier, prevent the free flow of Palestinian economic transactions; they raise the cost of doing business and disrupt the predictability needed for orderly economic life.”

Until the Israeli use of closure as a form of collective punishment became routine in the 1990s, it was possible for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation to move among the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and Israel. Israeli policy then was to use the Palestinians as a source of cheap labor and the occupied territories as a captive market. Between a third and a half of the Palestinian workforce supported their families by working in Israel.

All this ended with the elaborate calculus of occupation devised at Oslo between 1993 and 1995, which severely restricted Palestinian movement. Today, only 15,000 Palestinians from the occupied territories are allowed to work in Israel. Unemployment in the territories is between 25% and 30%; some estimates place unemployment in Gaza at about 80%.

Obviously, for Palestinians to have a chance at creating and sustaining an economy, Gaza must be able to connect freely with the outside world. Israel, citing the usual security concerns, does not want that to happen.

Gaza is a narrow strip, bounded by the sea, Egypt and Israel. Even after the withdrawal, Israel wants to control land access to the territory; and, by virtue of its military power, it also will control approaches to Gaza by air and sea.

Now the only crack in the wall that Israel effectively forms around Gaza is the crossing at Rafah, which straddles the border with Egypt. Israel long ago asserted its control there by clearing away Palestinian homes close to the border. Two-thirds of the 2,500 homes wantonly demolished by the Israeli army in Gaza since 2000 (leaving about 25,000 Palestinians, many already refugees twice over, homeless once again) were in Rafah. Most were destroyed to clear lines of sight and space for patrols on either side of the dismal border terminal that allows passage between Egypt and Gaza.

Because Rafah has no point of contact with Israel, Israeli forces are supposed to leave it as part of the withdrawal. But Israel now says it will redeploy its army away from the Egypt-Gaza border -- later, not now -- only if it is satisfied with the way that Egypt secures its side of the border. This is a major loophole in the disengagement plan.

Moreover, shortly before the Gaza withdrawal got underway, the Israeli government announced that if it does withdraw from Rafah, it ultimately wants the point of entry there closed so that it can instead open -- and control -- a new three-way crossing, where the borders of Egypt, Israel and Gaza meet. If Egypt doesn’t agree to this plan, and instead decides to maintain its own border crossing, Israel has threatened to suspend agreements with Gaza that allow for goods to pass to and through Israel without fees. That would throttle what remains of Gaza’s economy and further isolate the territory.

So long as Israel can control all access to Gaza, it cannot be said to have truly disengaged. It will still be an occupying power there, as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Which means that Gaza must be recognized for what it is: the world’s largest prison.