Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): A gift of dust and bones

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday June 2

A gift of dust and bones
Sharon's plan for a pullout owes more to demographic shifts than a belated conversion to peace-making
By Jonathan Freedland in Gaza

It is hardly the Mediterranean's shiniest pearl. And yet this strip of land - cramped, dusty and overrun with poverty and squalor - currently stands at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether the near-dead peace process twitches back into life will depend on it; the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon could fall over it. All eyes are on the Gaza Strip.
It is Sharon who has given this benighted sliver of land - simultaneously pocked with refugee camps and blessed with a coastline that, anywhere else, would be a major tourist destination - its sudden prominence. His Operation Rainbow, bulldozing home after home in the Rafah refugee camp, put the place back on the TV news. Meanwhile, his "disengagement" plan, which calls for a phased Israeli withdrawal from the strip over the next year, has replaced the roadmap as the Middle East initiative of the hour.
He first launched the idea in February and all sides - including Sharon's own Likud party - have been trying to fathom its meaning ever since. Some believe it is little more than a trick. They say the PM is still the same super-hawk of old - just one smart enough to realise that occasionally it pays to dress up as a dove. On this theory, Sharon has no intention of giving up an inch of Gaza or anywhere else, but knew it would look good if he was seen to try. This is why, say the sceptics, he put his Gaza pullout plan to a referendum last month of Likud voters - the one group guaranteed to reject it.
It's an appealing theory, but I don't buy it. If this was a deliberate bit of stage-managed self-sabotage, it badly backfired. Sharon is now fighting for his political life, wounded by the referendum rebuff and fending off a cabinet revolt. The buzzards are already circling, eyeing up Sharon's job, with former PM Binyamin Netanyahu first in the pack.

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