The Gaza Trip

Perhaps Abe Lincoln was right when he said that you can't fool all the people all the time -- but a lot of people can surely be fooled for a long, long time. Just look at Ariel Sharon.

From the start, the Gaza "Disengagement Plan" was an exercise in deceit. But the world is eager to be deceived. The world's statesmen take it seriously, it causes violent storms in Israel, the media have a ball. All this for a plan with neither hands nor feet.

So what is the purpose of all the mayhem? Cynics might say: the mayhem itself. It puts Sharon in center stage where he can continue to play the master of events. Now the commotion has reached a climax.

The main aim of the exercise is to satisfy George Bush. The president demanded a plan which will show him doing something for peace. The more he gets sucked into the Iraqi quagmire, the more he needs to prove that he is achieving something in Israel. Especially since his last baby -- the "Road Map" -- has died in its cradle.

Bush demanded that Sharon come up with a plan. No problem. Hocus pocus, here is a plan, with a fine promising name: "Disengagement." Speeches, meetings, a visit to the White House, exchanges of documents, state visits, emissaries, Mubarrak, Abdallah, disputes, compromises, and finally even a full-blown cabinet crisis. All this for a balloon full of hot air.

The plan claims to have three aims: to get the settlers out of Gaza, to turn the Strip over to Palestinian rule and to destroy the "terrorist infrastructure" there.

This week, Sharon himself defined the first aim in an unequivocal manner: "By the end of 2005, not a single Jew will remain in the Gaza Strip!"

A resolute, bold and strong-willed statement, as befits a great leader.

In fact, this statement has a faintly anti-Semitic ring. If the Palestinian government wants to invite peaceful Jews to live there, why shouldn't they? Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to say: "No settler will remain in the Gaza strip"? But never mind.

The key words in the statement are "by the end of 2005." They are reminiscent of the classic Jewish joke about the Polish nobleman who threatens his Jew with death if he does not teach his beloved horse to read and write. The Jew asks for three years to accomplish such an arduous task. When his wife hears of it she exclaims: "But you know you cannot teach that to a horse!" The Jew calms her: "Three years is a long time. By then, either the horse or the nobleman will have died."

In Israel, eighteen months are half an eternity. The situation changes by the week. Before the end of 2005, many things may happen: Bush may lose the election, catastrophe may overcome Iraq; in Israel, events may reach such bloody proportions as to obliterate any memory of the "plan."

Events this week made clear the central role that time plays in the "plan." Tzipi Livni, the Minister for Immigration Absorption, worked hard to engineer a compromise between Sharon and his opponents. She reinvented the egg of Columbus: The government will officially adopt the plan, but not the implementation of the plan. For some nine months, only "preparations" will be made. Not a single settlement will be evacuated. After that, the government will decide whether to evacuate any settlements at all, and, if so, which ones. (The opponents then demanded that the government continue to pour money into the very settlements which are supposed to be evacuated.)

The fact that everybody treated this proposal seriously speaks for itself. A plan that is supposed to be implemented next year may as well be postponed to next century.

But let us examine the plan on its merits, as if Sharon really intended to put it into practice. He evacuates the settlements and demolishes them, the army leaves the Gaza Strip, some kind of Palestinian administration takes over.