DISENGAGEMENT AND AFTER: WHERE NEXT FOR SHARON AND THE LIKUD? Middle East Report N°36 – 1 March 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. OVERVIEW.................................................................................................................... 1 II. THE LIKUD'S LONG JOURNEY ............................................................................... 3 A. BACKGROUND.......................................................................................................................3 B. THE DISENGAGEMENT PLAN AND THE LIKUD........................................................................4 III. MAKING SENSE OF THE PLAN ............................................................................... 6 A. WHY THE DISENGAGEMENT? ................................................................................................6 B. WHY UNILATERALLY?..........................................................................................................9 IV. DISENGAGEMENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS...................................................... 12 A. WHO ARE THE LIKUD OPPONENTS? ....................................................................................12 B. WHAT DO THE REBELS STAND FOR?...................................................................................14 V. CONCLUSION: DISENGAGEMENT AND THEN WHAT? ................................. 16 APPENDICES A. MAP OF ISRAEL...................................................................................................................19 B. MAP OF WEST BANK...........................................................................................................20 C. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP .......................................................................21 D. CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFINGS ON MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA ................22 E. CRISIS GROUP BOARD OF TRUSTEES ...................................................................................24 Middle East Report N°36 1 March 2005 DISENGAGEMENT AND AFTER: WHERE NEXT FOR SHARON AND THE LIKUD? I. OVERVIEW him at all. This is a case in which familiarity breeds ignorance".1 That so much depends on something about which we apparently know so little is one of the striking On 20 February 2005, the Israeli cabinet voted paradoxes of the current reality. overwhelmingly to approve the unilateral evacuation This briefing, based on months of interviews with of settlements in Gaza and parts of the northern West Likud members and insiders, attempts to map the Bank. Obstacles still remain -- the government may Prime Minister's and his party's respective trajectories, not survive the pending budget vote; violence in the explore possible reasons behind the shift to unilateral occupied territories may scuttle the disengagement disengagement, and assess how far they eventually plan; Likud rebels may engineer delaying tactics and might go. Several important conclusions emerge: impose a referendum; and Prime Minister Sharon could be the victim of an assassination attempt. But Although Sharon undoubtedly will continue to face the significance of the vote ought not be underestimated. resistance within his party, the ideological battle in If, as widely expected, it is implemented during the the Likud over disengagement appears to be over. second half of 2005, it would represent the first time Even sceptics are bowing to the inevitability of that Israel has evacuated settlements established in the what once would have been considered heretical, occupied Palestinian territories. The unilateral nature and many now accept its political wisdom, of Sharon's initiative -- Israel is prepared to coordinate completing the evolution of a party once beholden its implementation with the Palestinians, not to negotiate to the dream of Greater Israel. The remaining its parameters -- also signals a radical departure from Likud rebels seem to be waging a rear-guard fight, the bilateral mode of Israeli-Palestinian interaction. fuelled by a mix of ideological conviction and political ambition. In just over a year since he announced his intention, Ariel Sharon has confounded friends and foes alike. For Sharon and his supporters, the unilateral aspect Despite having lost a May 2004 referendum on the of the plan is at least as significant as its disengagement component, for it represents a disengagement plan within his own Likud party, fundamental departure from the logic of persistent and stiff opposition within the party negotiations and reciprocity that governed Israeli- leadership, and the fact that its supporters cannot Palestinian relations from the outset of the peace agree on where disengagement should lead, he has process in 1991 and was most recently confirmed in overcome one hurdle after another. the Roadmap. Although originally justified by the absence of a Palestinian partner and, in particular, Speculation as to Sharon's intentions is rampant. Some by Yasser Arafat's leadership, unilateralism reflects see a shrewd and so far successful attempt to unburden a deeper trend which is likely to continue even with Israel of the Gaza Strip in order to consolidate its hold a new Palestinian leadership and despite the over East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank with possibility of renewed partnership. As an Israeli Washington's blessing. Others perceive a fundamental journalist remarked, the logic of reciprocity has not strategic transformation on the Prime Minister's part that so much been abandoned as altered; the quid pro ultimately may lead to a viable two-state solution. Most quo is not with the Palestinians but with the U.S. interpretations fall somewhere in between, and a not administration, which has endorsed the concept of insignificant number are convinced that Sharon has settlement blocs in the West Bank. Sharon is "the launched a process whose endpoint even he does not first to agree to evacuate settlements inside Eretz know and, no less importantly, may not be able to control. In the words of an Israeli observer, "Those who know Sharon too well are guilty today of not knowing 1 Crisis Group interview, Washington, December 2004. Disengagement and After: Where Next for Sharon and the Likud? Crisis Group Middle East Report N°36, 1 March 2005 Page 2 Yisrael, the Biblical land of Israel. He is the first to Gaza and the northern West Bank has been completed, hand over territories without a formal agreement; it will be impossible to ignore the fundamental but he is also the first to get American backing for strategic divide that separates Sharon's preference the establishment of facts over the Green Line".2 for a long-term interim arrangement from Palestinian President Abu Mazen's goal of a comprehensive The secret to Sharon's success has been his paradoxical ability to be both supremely decisive agreement, and foolhardy not to do anything about it. and supremely vague. Moving with determination, The challenge for the international community is to be he has carefully avoided shedding light on his fully supportive of Israel's path-breaking evacuation strategic objectives, allowing him to present his while remaining mindful of what comes both with plan to the Likud and other sceptics as a means of and after it. Endorsing the withdrawal should not defeating the Palestinian national movement and mean endorsing either construction of the separation ensuring permanent Israeli incorporation of West barrier beyond the 1967 lines, consolidation of West Bank settlement blocs and to Labour as well as the Bank settlements in the absence of a negotiated international community as a means of jump- agreement, or developments in East Jerusalem that starting the moribund peace process. preclude the establishment of a viable Palestinian While Sharon's intentions may remain unspoken, state. President Bush's recent statement emphasising interviews suggest his actions are based on a series the need for a viable, sovereign state, and in particular of assumptions: first, that he cannot achieve his assertion that "a state of scattered territories will through negotiations an agreement acceptable to not work",3 are welcome words that, one hopes, will him; secondly, that he could not maintain the status be accompanied by U.S. diplomatic action. quo indefinitely because pressure would have built for far greater compromises along the lines of President Clinton's parameters or the Geneva Accords; and therefore, thirdly, that he has to dispense with what is dispensable in order to retain what is strategic. In that sense, he appears to have abandoned the idea of restricting a Palestinian state to the meagre 42 to 50 per cent of the West Bank that had long been assumed to be his goal and so to have gone beyond what many in the Likud are prepared to accept today. The disengagement plan (which includes the evacuation but also the building of the separation barrier taking in some 7 per cent of the West Bank) seeks to create a situation that in Sharon's view will take the sting out of the conflict's tail and thus make it manageable -- improving Palestinian daily lives, establishing a Palestinian state with provisional borders that encompasses perhaps 80 per cent or more of the West Bank; and protecting what he considers Israel's vital interests within the occupied territories. As such, unilateral disengagement must be understood as an attempt to stabilise the Palestinian situation while creating powerful political insurance against international efforts to end the conflict on the basis of the current broad international consensus