Any informed assessment of the future direction of events in the West Bank must take as its point of departure a review of the main elements of current Israeli and Palestinian policies.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has adopted a wide-ranging and dynamic policy that makes no reference to Palestinians or the Oslo framework. This spirit of unilateralism has long been a central feature of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, an advocate of nonviolence, hopes to assert the leadership of the PA over Palestinian factions and their violent resistance to continuing occupation in an effort to convince Israel to resume negotiations on final status issues and restore territorial and security attributes lost during the intifada.

Many analysts think Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza because of the Palestinian “demographic threat” to Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. But Sharon, who has dismissed demographic concerns in the past, made his decision primarily for security reasons.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s belief that Israel must retain strategic control of the West Bank to protect its security, by keeping most of its settlements and forces there after its planned withdrawal from Gaza in August, 2005 is at odds with Israel’s own experience and the lessons of history.

Ma’ale Adumim stands out as one of the most important achievements of Israel’s settlement campaign. In the century-old battle between Arab and Jew, this town has amassed two of the conflict’s winning ingredients, land and population.

The election of President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan, a cease-fire, and President Bush’s renewed support for a viable contiguous Palestinian state are welcome developments. 

After almost five years of grim determination and little but promises of “blood, sweat, and tears,” Israelis and Palestinians sense the beginning of a new phase in their struggle. For the moment, dialogue and handshakes have replaced threats and armed confrontation. Yet Israelis and Palestinians have learned from hard experience that smiles and vague proclamations can conceal radically different agendas.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “disengage” Israel from the Gaza Strip and a small part of the northern West Bank achieved political and operational critical mass in late 2004.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ravaged by defections in the Likud and the ruling coalition, is proceeding undeterred along its established timetable for the evacuation of all 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank by the end of 2005. 

President George W. Bush himself still seems convinced that the democratic bone fides of a Palestinian regime, rather than its territorial dimensions, are the key point of departure for U.S. policy.

If disengagement is to succeed, the occupation of Gaza must end. The disengagement plan as currently structured will not satisfy this standard–one that the Sharon government itself has established and the international community supports.

An Israeli “evacuation lite” does not accommodate basic elements of Palestinian sovereignty–safe passage, air and seaports, and an Israeli withdrawal from the “Philadelphi” border strip. It risks perpetuating a situation in the occupied territories of extraordinary levels of international aid without development, undermines any possibility for the establishment of effective Palestinian governing institutions supported by the Palestinian public, and assures continuing violent confrontation in Gaza.

“By the end of 2005, not one Jew will remain in the Gaza Strip,” declared Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon three days before the June 6 cabinet endorsement of his plan to evacuate all 7,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip and less than 1,000 from four settlements in the northern West Bank.

The endorsement came only weeks after Likud activists rejected Sharon’s initial evacuation plan. In the wake of this embarrassing setback, minor elements of the plan were modified. The new plan reaffirms Sharon’s strategic intention to end Israel’s occupation of Gaza, splits the evacuation during 2005 into four stages, calls “in general” for the physical demolition of settlement housing, and states explicitly Israel’s intention “not [to] cede the right to a permanent military presence in the territorial area of the Gaza Strip” and the northern West Bank.

The quest of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon for a diplomatic framework to modify, if not to end, Israel’s continuing rule over the occupied territories has moved into high gear. The publication of Sharon’s draft disengagement plan in April, accompanied by an exchange of letters between the Israeli leader and U.S. president George W. Bush has refocused international attention on a new approach to address Israel’s continuing occupation and the Palestinian rebellion that is now well into its third year.