Public opinion surveys show 80 percent support levels for full Israeli withdrawal from the Katif bloc and the Gaza Strip. At last, the fog has lifted and the public understands that what happens in Netzarim is not the same as what happens in Kibbutz Negba, and certainly not the same as what happens in Tel Aviv (speaking personally, as a member of Negba, the comparison to a Gaza settlement drawn by the prime minister was both mendacious and infuriating).
Yet, despite this unequivocal public support for withdrawal from all of the Katif bloc and converting the international border into a permanent one, I believe that a unilateral pullout without an agreement will seriously damage Israel's interests, and is liable to strengthen our most problematic enemies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Time after time we proceed on our national march of folly, without anyone crying "the emperor has no clothes." Just recently we awarded Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah prizes for inhumane behavior. In exchange for the bodies of three of our soldiers and a citizen who was kidnapped under problematic circumstances, we agreed to release more than 400 Palestinians. A few months earlier we refused, on security grounds, to relay those same prisoners to then Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who was begging for a political achievement that might help him build an alternative power base to Arafat's. The outcome of this sequence of affairs is clear - the message is that the only way to talk with Israel is to use force.
That conclusion is reached by the Palestinian public, and the goods are delivered by the radical, not the moderate, organizations. It is no wonder that Hezbollah has in recent months grown much stronger on the West Bank. The danger posed by the scenario of a unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip is similar. Hamas will regard such withdrawal as a great victory. Prospects of initiating negotiations with a reasonable-minded Palestinian partner will sink and, once again, we could find ourselves facing a cycle of terror and military responses.
There is an alternative: negotiations should be started with Mohammed Dahlan for the transfer of the entire Gaza Strip to his control. In exchange, Dahlan, who today has control of the most significant military force on the Gaza Strip, would be obligated to ensure complete quiet along the border. Dahlan has the potential of becoming the leader who establishes orderly rule in the Gaza Strip, and who provides security. For Israel, this alternative is better than any scenario in which a vacuum is created.
Clearly, Dahlan isn't operating alone. Within the Palestinian leadership there are other figures with whom direct, practical talks can be pursued. Five members of the Palestinian cabinet, headed by Yasser Abed Rabbo and Kaddoura Fares, signed the Geneva Accord and Abu Mazen, who sulks angrily in his home, his heart bitter about Arafat and about Israel, is waiting for an opportunity to return to politics. There are also Jibril Rajoub, who for years represented a pragmatic approach until, in our wisdom, we compromised and needlessly undermined his situation during Operation Defensive Shield and Prof. Sari Nusseibeh, who is leading another peace initiative, the People's Voice, with Ami Ayalon, and many others.
Instead of reinforcing the extremists, and proving to them and to ourselves that there is no partner and that the name of the game is power, the time has come after three and a half years of armed intifada violence, which has claimed 1,000 lives and wounded thousands of others on our side, for us to define what we really want. The time has come to define what we are fighting and dying for. Since there is agreement among three-fourths of the population that we have nothing more to seek in the Gaza Strip and that the continued holding of the Katif bloc, which sits on close to 20 percent of the Strip's land, is pointless and damaging, it would be wise to look for a partner with whom an agreement can be forged. In peace, as in war, it takes two to tango. Israel must find a partner, and treat it with complete seriousness. During the 1950s, France was bogged down deeply in the mud of Vietnam. The country's prime minister, Pierre Mendes-France, declared that some arrangement was to be worked out within 40 days. He worked out such an arrangement on the eve of this self-imposed deadline.
Though Ariel Sharon is neither Mendes-France nor de Gaulle, we are the ones who pay the price for his decisions. The time has come for the public to force his government to choose the right policy path, one that leads to a bilateral agreement. That's a hard road to follow, but it can be done.
The writer is a Meretz MK.
