Disengaging Resistance

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by Mika Minio-Paluello

Sharon continues to push his ‘Gaza disengagement plan’ despite obstinate opposition from within the Likud. The defeat by his far-right constituency in the party referendum on May 2 was a further indicator that Israeli party politics is beholden to the extremists of the extreme.



Despite this early setback, Sharon’s plan retains the support of the majority of Israeli Jews and will continue rolling. On Saturday 29th May he launched the ‘revised’ version of his plan. Largely identical to the original proposals, this garnered the necessary cabinet support on June 6th by postponing the decisions on which settlements to evacuate.



Left-wing critiques have failed to call attention to the full implications of Sharon’s plan. Most critical commentaries on Sharon’s plan and the Likud party referendum have focused on the unilateralism and inadequacies within the small print. Others have concentrated on the extent to which Israeli politics remains hijacked by the fundamentalist settler movement.



Yet to understand the existential threat Sharon’s plan poses to a just resolution for the conflict, it must be seen as one of a series of Israeli ‘peace’ proposals intended to legitimize, reinforce and increase the efficiency of control within the Israeli sphere of dominance. While superficially the plan appears as a break with Sharon’s past, examining its deeper implications show that it fulfils many of the same principles and goals that have defined his military-political career.



In its finality, its discursive victory, its completion of occupation by remote control, Sharon's disengagement plan threatens to unilaterally truncate the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Isolated and dependent on Israeli goodwill and humanitarian aid handouts for survival, Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza will remain imprisoned in their walled-in enclaves, with the world turning a blind-eye to a 'successfully resolved conflict'.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5724