US political pundits are touting the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as an historic step towards the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have just returned from a month-long visit to the area and can honestly report that such a glowing assessment is not only erroneous and misleading but plays nicely into the hands of Ariel Sharon’s unilateralist policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Sharon’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians is borne out of his fear that only international law can be the basis for such negotiations. International law dictates that lands acquired by force are to be returned to its original owners and that the occupier may not move its own population into these occupied areas. Israel alone should be made to pay for its 38 -year-mistaken policy of settlement expansion on illegally occupied Arab lands.

Although Israel plans to dismantle its illegal settlements and military bases in the Gaza Strip, it will still maintain a full-scale sea, air, and land siege of the territory. The 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza will remain an open-air prison under Israeli control, preventing Palestinians from exercising their right to freedom of movement and from engaging in economic activity.
In late 2004, the World Bank reported that both poverty and unemployment will rise following the "Disengagement" even under the best of circumstances because Israel will retain full control over the movement of goods in and out of Gaza, will maintain an enforced separation of the West Bank and Gaza preventing the residents of each from visiting one another, and will draw up separate customs agreements with each zone severing their already shattered economies Under these conditions, Israel will still in effect be occupying the Gaza Strip, according to international law.
Significantly Israel has allowed the construction and expansion of settlements and outposts in the West Bank to proceed at an alarming rate, confiscating over a hundred acres every day- in contravention of the US sponsored 2003 Road Map to Peace,
The Prime Minister's top advisor added fuel to the fire when he commented to Haaretz last year that the significance of the disengagement plan "is the freezing of the peace process. ... Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda ... All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."
As such, Israel's plan to "disengage" from the Gaza Strip fails to meet even the minimum expectations articulated by the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated, "When the Israelis withdraw from Gaza it cannot be sealed or [an] isolated area, with the Palestinian people closed in after that withdrawal. We are committed to connectivity between Gaza and the West Bank, and we are committed to openness and freedom of movement for the Palestinian people."
According to international law and agreements signed by Israel and the PLO, the Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem) is a single territorial unit, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. The "disengagement" plan is a smokescreen to further isolate one Palestinian area from the other to create apartheid-like Bantustans. While Israel "disengages" from Gaza, it will continue construction of the illegal Wall in the West Bank, expand illegal settlements there, and confine the Palestinians to ever shrinking parcels of land. This "Bantustanization" of Palestinian land effectively denies the Palestinian people true self-determination and the right to return to their homeland.
Israel is asking for US aid to the tune of $2.2 billion, to relocate settlers from the Gaza Strip to areas in the Galilee and the Negev for "development" where Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute a majority and a large minority, respectively. This threatens to dislocate more of these remaining Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes and lands. Already “development" has been used to remove hundreds of Bedouin families in the Negev and to destroy their crops.
Will Israel be asking the US to compensate Palestinian refugees whom Israel evicted from their homes in 1948? Will Israel even admit to its moral and legal responsibility for the disposition of these people who now number close to 6 million? After all, these people owned the lands from which they were evicted unlike the Jewish settlers who were not conveyed any title to the lands on which their home were built.
Unconditional US military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel's 38 year-old military occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip has resulted in the de-development of the Palestinian economy and the destruction of its infrastructure. Rather than rewarding Israel for maintaining the Gaza Strip as an open-air prison after the "disengagement", the United States should provide money for the re-development of the Palestinian economy.
The world community needs to be actively engaged to ensure that steps that will give Israelis and Arabs long-term security and stability follow the pullout. The biggest player in this international process by far is U.S. President George W. Bush, who said during his second-term inaugural address: "The goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace is within reach - and America will help them achieve that goal." His promise to help Palestinians and Israelis achieve this dream means that his credibility and reputation are now at stake in the region. We are all left wondering whether Bush will now promote peace or turn a blind eye while the Israelis, through their settlement project, plant the seeds of perpetual war.
If there is, any positive assessment to be made, it is the realization by Israeli leaders that the dream of biblical Israel is no longer realizable. Almost equal number of Jews and Arabs inhabits the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan. Israeli demographers point to a time in the near future when Arab will constitute a majority in historical Palestine. In an interview on the British TV program, Newsnight, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon's deputy prime minister and the leader of Israel's Labor party, repeated an often-overlooked truth. "We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography," he said. The desire to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel is seen by most Jewish Israelis as a liberal aspiration, rather than a racist one, as it would appear elsewhere.
Moreover, the use of settlements as frontiers for both military and security needs and Jewish expansion has failed the test of time and both their political and economic cost can no longer be justified.