Abu Ala attacks disengagement `illusion'

In the letter, which was also addressed to Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign policy figure, Abu Ala expressed concern over the possibility that the AHLC conference to be held next week in Oslo, "may have the effect of reinforcing Israel's unilateral acts and further harm prospects for a viable solution to the conflict by focusing on short-term needs in the Gaza Strip without sufficient attention to the West Bank."

"We are also concerned that the AHLC meeting as planned will create the illusion that the disengagement plan, with certain fixes, will lead to economic recovery and renewal of the political process," Abu Ala also wrote.

Abu Ala wants the donor countries to support a territorial link between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as to allow control by Palestinians over their air and sea ports, both of which are in the Gaza Strip. "The territorial link between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip should be for both goods and people, with a system to assist its creation put into effect immediately."

These statements are indicative of a new crisis. The representative of the World Bank in the territories, Nigel Roberts, confirmed yesterday that the Israeli government has declared its desire to transform the Gaza Strip into a separate customs zone, different from the system in force now in the territories, which will continue to be in force in the West Bank. In other words, Prime Minister Sharon is seeking to disengage the Gaza Strip from the Paris Protocol, signed after the Oslo Accords and according to which Israel levies customs on goods destined for the territories and transfers them to the Palestinian Authority. This money comprises about two-thirds of all PA income. Clearly, the imposition of differing customs systems on the two Palestinian areas would have more than economic implications. Particularly in an atmosphere of suspicion, it will have far-reaching political ramifications.

A senior Israeli official, who confirmed that Israel has made such a demand, said it is based on the claim that with the transfer of control over the border between Gaza and Egypt to foreign hands, Israel will lose the ability to prevent the import of cheap and inferior goods into the Gaza Strip, and from there to the West Bank and Israel. At present Sharon has rejected the World Bank's proposal to fund the services of a company, a kind of sub-contractor, to manage the customs office at the Philadelphi border crossing during a transition period until the Palestinians have a trained customs unit. Roberts says that a similar model is working in other countries, among them Mexico, Indonesia, Kenya and Mozambique. The next chapter has yet to be told.

The tragicomic play put on at the Labor Central Committee meeting in Tel Aviv on Tuesday was but another episode created by the national disengager, Ariel Sharon. In the first act, his disengagement plan drove a wedge through the heart of the right-wing camp. It separated the National Union-Yisrael Beitenu from the coalition and transformed the Yesha Council of Settlements from a friend to an enemy.

The second act took place in Sharon's party. What is left of the Likud today is its name. There is more dividing Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert from Uzi Landau and Michael Ratzon than uniting them. The prime minister is not lifting a finger to pacify the two deposed rebels. Almost five weeks have gone by since the minister and the deputy minister were forced to part from their offices, and positions have not been found for them on any committee. They wander around the Knesset building like UFOs, with plenty of time to weave plots against the disengagement plan and its initiators.

And even among the rebels, Sharon has managed to sow confusion. They are also in no hurry to bear the mark of Cain on their foreheads as the ones responsible for moving up the elections, and perhaps even responsible for losing the reins of government. Landau, who is toeing a less aggressive line, has recommended waiting for the results of negotiations with Labor. Perhaps Amir Peretz or Yuli Tamir will do the work for them.

Disengagement has poured oil on the fire of the National Religious Party and turned it into a two-tribe party. It is harder for Zevulun Orlev to sit in a faction meeting of the NRP, chaired by Effi Eitam, than it is for him to sit in a cabinet meeting chaired by Sharon.

The bulldozer has not skipped over the left side of the political map. The decision by Yahad chair Yossi Beilin to support Sharon all the way to disengagement, and beyond, which is how the bill passed, did not improve his standing in the movement. Yair Bottinger, Yahad's student coordinator and deputy chairman of the youth branch of the party, demonstrated together with Meretz representatives in the Histadrut labor federation against Yahad's decision, and he is spreading an invective letter against the chairman of the party. Dr. Menachem Klein, one of the signers of the Geneva Accord and a former leader of Meretz, wrote to Beilin, "Opposition should be fighting .... Disengagement has become a general issue in which Yahad invokes coalition discipline .... If it were a matter of the Geneva Accord in exchange for a Thatcherite policy, there would be a dilemma, but it is only a matter of the Weisglass plan." Klein expressed surprise that Yahad's voice fell silent in the face of the revelation by the mass-circulation daily Maariv that a year ago Sharon had rejected an overture by President Assad to come to Jerusalem.

Disengagement is now manufacturing the weapons for Labor's new faction war. The grabbing of the microphone was a mere promo to the battle over the party's joining the disengagement government. Distrust among faction members is growing day by day. Omri Sharon's visit to faction chairman Dalia Itzik's office at the height of the no-confidence vote increased suspicion that the Likud-Shinui crisis had been fashioned by Papa Sharon and that the director's assistant was Shimon Peres. Even if Sharon manages to garner the votes of his private rebels in swearing in Labor ministers, Peres and his camp members will have to overcome a battalion of their own rebels, consisting of the Ehud Barak company on the one hand, and the Amir Peretz company on the other. It is not certain whether a new map of Israel, minus the Gaza Strip, will emerge from all this. The new political map is already here.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/508724.html