"For one thing", says Khatib, "everybody knows that if Israel withdraws but keeps restrictions on movement [in and out of the Strip], the economic situation will not improve. Rather, it will deteriorate."
For another, Khatib assumes that Sharon will use the planned withdrawal from Gaza and four small settlements in the northern West Bank to "consolidate the occupation" in the rest of the West Bank and to bypass a wider diplomatic peace process, increasing the political burden on the already feeble PA. Though Israel formally accepted the peace plan known as the Road Map, backed by the "Quartet" of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, it has long raised objections on following it through.
The internal situation does not bode too well either. The Palestinians have had a taste of the potential for anarchy with recent violent confrontations on the streets of Gaza between Hamas militants, the PA security forces and members of rival Fatah-affiliated armed gangs. The show of force by the fundamentalist, power-hungry Hamas opposition and its brazen challenge to the Authority, punctuated by an intense spate of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, led PA civil affairs minister and Gaza strongman Muhammad Dahlan to declare, in an interview to the Ha'aretz daily, that Hamas was attempting a military coup, and that given the weakness of the PA, he was surprised it had not already collapsed.
Thinking positively, the PA recently completed a regional land-use plan regulating the potential exploitation of the empty areas of the Strip. There are three major rehabilitation projects in the works for private housing and public and commercial facilities. In addition, there are plans for a coastal road running the length of the Gaza Strip, a sea-water desalination project and a rehabilitation program for the water network, as well as job-creation programs and a social safety net project to aid the most disadvantaged elements of the society.
Contrary to recent reports that the Palestinians intend to construct high-rise housing for hundreds of thousands of the Strip's 1.3 million residents in the evacuated areas of Gush Katif, the settlement bloc in the south of the Strip where most of the 8,500 settlers have been living in single-family homes, the PA has no plans for urban expansion there. Instead, says Khatib, the sand dunes of Gush Katif, which sit along a pristine stretch of coastline, are slated for tourism and agricultural development. Ironically, the early settlers of the Gush often relate that when they arrived, the locals told them the sandy earth was "cursed" and not fit to grow anything until they proved otherwise, building up flourishing hothouse businesses producing "miracle" cherry tomatoes, lettuce and chives. The PA also intends to establish a "fast track" court to deal with private individuals' claims on land in the evacuated areas that Israel had expropriated.
The PA Finance Ministry and the World Bank are working together on how to involve the private sector in developing Gaza, while former World Bank president and Quartet special envoy James Wolfensohn is trying to raise funds for some of the projects.
The problem is that while the settlers' agricultural success was based on export, with the main destination Europe, the Palestinians have no idea if they will be able to get their goods out reliably, by their own means or via Israeli ports. "This is one of the unknowns that we can't get answers to," says Khatib. On questions relating to the reopening of the Gaza international airport, for example, Israel tells the Palestinians they will discuss the issue after the withdrawal. The Rafah crossing into Egypt is a matter the Israelis will discuss only with Egypt, and the Egyptians are telling the Palestinians that there is no agreement as yet. Permission for a Gaza seaport is not yet on the agenda.
When it comes to the link between Gaza and the West Bank, Khatib says Israel is insisting on maintaining the same permit system as before for the movement of people and goods via the Erez crossing at the northern end of the Strip. Israel has so far refused a World Bank proposal to start building a sunken road across its territory, providing a free and secure "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank. For the time being, the back-to-back system of transferring goods from Palestinian to Israeli trucks at the crossing points will remain in place, though Israel has promised to increase the number of traffic lanes to reduce the waiting time.
But Khatib is as aware as anyone that in addition to Israel's role, there are other threats from within to Gazan stability and growth. The recent internal strife started when Abu Mazen came to Gaza to beseech the Palestinian armed factions to maintain the cease-fire following the July 12 suicide bombing in Netanyah that killed five. As he crossed through the Erez checkpoint, Hamas unleashed a barrage of mortar and rocket fire against the settlements and into Israel, killing a young woman while she was sitting on her porch at nearby Moshav Netiv Ha'asarah.
With Israel poised to launch a large-scale military operation in the Strip, the PA security forces took steps to curb the militants, sparking a round of armed internecine clashes. Two bystanders are known to have been shot dead; there are no known figures of how many militants and police were killed or wounded.
Hamas claimed two justifications for ratcheting up the violence: first, that Israel had violated the cease-fire by reentering the West Bank city of Tul Karm and resuming the killing of terror operatives in the wake of the Netanyah bombing, warranting a Palestinian response; and second, Hamas said it was responding to a top-secret document it claimed to have obtained from the office of Gen. Nasser Yusuf, the PA interior minister and commander of the security apparatuses, instructing his security chiefs to stop the firing of rockets by all means, including force.
Khatib laments the fact that there is no third-party monitoring of the current cease-fire, and says that in this respect, the recent visit to the area of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a disappointment, offering the Palestinians nothing new.
The PA has been putting on a brave face in its response to the challenge to its grip on Gaza. "I think the PA stood up to the challenge in an impressive and serious way," says Khatib, who happened to be in Gaza during the confrontations. "It gave the message to all of Palestine that the PA is not prepared to give up on its authority."
Adds Ziad Abu Amr, an independent Gaza representative in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the PA parliament, who acts as a mediator between Abu Mazen's PA, Fatah and Hamas: "I think that both sides realize the gravity of taking that route in dealing with one another. We are now seeing initiatives to regulate the internal rift between Hamas and the PA." A committee has been formed as a mechanism for containing incidents as they take place in the field, with representatives from both sides and three independent members, one of whom is Abu Amr. And the two sides have resolved to work on the issues that Abu Amr says gave rise to the clashes in the first place - issues relating to the PLC elections due to be held in the first quarter of 2006 and Hamas's participation in them, the truce, and internal questions relating to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
For the time being, there are no PA plans to crack down on Hamas, as Israel demands. "You can't 'crack down' on Hamas," says Khatib. "They represent probably 35 percent of the society." As for violators of the truce, Abu Amr says they will be "left to the committee to handle." And in theory, the committee will decide collectively whether there should be a Palestinian response to what are seen as Israeli truce violations or not, so that such actions will "no longer be in individuals' hands."
In the meantime, there have been no reports of arrests by the PA following the recent flare-up in Gaza. Local sources say that Abu Mazen is reluctant to fan any flames in the run-up to the withdrawal.
At best, Palestinian establishment figures such as Khatib and Abu Amr are hoping that Hamas will indeed decide to become integrated into the political system, and will then only try to take over through legitimate political means. "You can't be part of the legitimate order and at the same time have your own armed wing," Abu Amr says.
Logical as this assumption may be, however, in the chaotic reality of the Gaza Strip it might not hold sway. Gaza sources speak of rumors that Hamas has bought thousands of military uniforms and dozens of jeeps. "They are preparing for after the withdrawal," says one local journalist. "There are rumors that they are going to try to break in and seize some of the evacuated settlement lands."
Hamas, the veteran journalist says, was not in the least deterred by the clashes with the PA, for which it felt it had public support, and only began worrying about losing that support once Fatah militants got involved and started getting hurt. "That was a red line for people. They may not mind Hamas firing at the 'corrupt' PA, but when it comes to the armed gangs fighting each other, it is different. The people see them all as heroes of the intifada."
That is when radical Gaza Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, who usually shuns the cameras, appeared smiling on Arabic TV channels, trying to repair his movement's image and engage in damage control. The latest round of internal violence is now over, but the feeling in Gaza is that the troubles could resume any time.
Abu Mazen finds himself in a tough bind. The Palestinian public wants law and order, but at the same time, any harming of the militants, the heroes of the intifada, is considered taboo. Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal will prove a tough testing ground for the PA's ability to rule. "We will do our best," says Khatib.
In the meantime, the Strip waits for answers on key issues such as freedom of movement and teeters between inter-necine violence and an internal political accord.
Gaza is the Litmus Test
The Jerusalem Report, August 22, 2005 issue
On the eve of the Israeli withdrawal, the future of the Gaza Strip hangs in the balance, between development and rehabilitation or poverty and chaos. Even Palestinian Authority officials do not seem too hopeful about the prospects.
Isabel Kershner
In late July, Palestinian Authority head Mahmud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, moved his center of operations from the administrative capital of Ramallah in the West Bank to Gaza City, in order to be on site for the duration of the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
Slated to start in mid-August, Prime Minister Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan will either mark the beginning of the Abu Mazen era of Palestinian state-building, or spell the unraveling of a coherent Palestinian national home before one has even been born.
PA Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib would like to think of the first alternative as the more likely one. "Planning-wise," he says, speaking to The Report by phone from Ramallah, "I think we are in good shape." Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of success, acknowledges Khatib, a veteran political analyst and independent politician. So far, he argues, the disengagement from Gaza is not so much an opportunity as a "punishment to the PA - at least in the way it is being done. Coordination is taking place [between Israel and the PA], but with no results. Israel is insisting on things that are going to make life very difficult for the Palestinian Authority."
"For one thing", says Khatib, "everybody knows that if Israel withdraws but keeps restrictions on movement [in and out of the Strip], the economic situation will not improve. Rather, it will deteriorate."
For another, Khatib assumes that Sharon will use the planned withdrawal from Gaza and four small settlements in the northern West Bank to "consolidate the occupation" in the rest of the West Bank and to bypass a wider diplomatic peace process, increasing the political burden on the already feeble PA. Though Israel formally accepted the peace plan known as the Road Map, backed by the "Quartet" of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, it has long raised objections on following it through.
The internal situation does not bode too well either. The Palestinians have had a taste of the potential for anarchy with recent violent confrontations on the streets of Gaza between Hamas militants, the PA security forces and members of rival Fatah-affiliated armed gangs. The show of force by the fundamentalist, power-hungry Hamas opposition and its brazen challenge to the Authority, punctuated by an intense spate of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, led PA civil affairs minister and Gaza strongman Muhammad Dahlan to declare, in an interview to the Ha'aretz daily, that Hamas was attempting a military coup, and that given the weakness of the PA, he was surprised it had not already collapsed.
Thinking positively, the PA recently completed a regional land-use plan regulating the potential exploitation of the empty areas of the Strip. There are three major rehabilitation projects in the works for private housing and public and commercial facilities. In addition, there are plans for a coastal road running the length of the Gaza Strip, a sea-water desalination project and a rehabilitation program for the water network, as well as job-creation programs and a social safety net project to aid the most disadvantaged elements of the society.
Contrary to recent reports that the Palestinians intend to construct high-rise housing for hundreds of thousands of the Strip's 1.3 million residents in the evacuated areas of Gush Katif, the settlement bloc in the south of the Strip where most of the 8,500 settlers have been living in single-family homes, the PA has no plans for urban expansion there. Instead, says Khatib, the sand dunes of Gush Katif, which sit along a pristine stretch of coastline, are slated for tourism and agricultural development. Ironically, the early settlers of the Gush often relate that when they arrived, the locals told them the sandy earth was "cursed" and not fit to grow anything until they proved otherwise, building up flourishing hothouse businesses producing "miracle" cherry tomatoes, lettuce and chives. The PA also intends to establish a "fast track" court to deal with private individuals' claims on land in the evacuated areas that Israel had expropriated.
The PA Finance Ministry and the World Bank are working together on how to involve the private sector in developing Gaza, while former World Bank president and Quartet special envoy James Wolfensohn is trying to raise funds for some of the projects.
The problem is that while the settlers' agricultural success was based on export, with the main destination Europe, the Palestinians have no idea if they will be able to get their goods out reliably, by their own means or via Israeli ports. "This is one of the unknowns that we can't get answers to," says Khatib. On questions relating to the reopening of the Gaza international airport, for example, Israel tells the Palestinians they will discuss the issue after the withdrawal. The Rafah crossing into Egypt is a matter the Israelis will discuss only with Egypt, and the Egyptians are telling the Palestinians that there is no agreement as yet. Permission for a Gaza seaport is not yet on the agenda.
When it comes to the link between Gaza and the West Bank, Khatib says Israel is insisting on maintaining the same permit system as before for the movement of people and goods via the Erez crossing at the northern end of the Strip. Israel has so far refused a World Bank proposal to start building a sunken road across its territory, providing a free and secure "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank. For the time being, the back-to-back system of transferring goods from Palestinian to Israeli trucks at the crossing points will remain in place, though Israel has promised to increase the number of traffic lanes to reduce the waiting time.
But Khatib is as aware as anyone that in addition to Israel's role, there are other threats from within to Gazan stability and growth. The recent internal strife started when Abu Mazen came to Gaza to beseech the Palestinian armed factions to maintain the cease-fire following the July 12 suicide bombing in Netanyah that killed five. As he crossed through the Erez checkpoint, Hamas unleashed a barrage of mortar and rocket fire against the settlements and into Israel, killing a young woman while she was sitting on her porch at nearby Moshav Netiv Ha'asarah.
With Israel poised to launch a large-scale military operation in the Strip, the PA security forces took steps to curb the militants, sparking a round of armed internecine clashes. Two bystanders are known to have been shot dead; there are no known figures of how many militants and police were killed or wounded.
Hamas claimed two justifications for ratcheting up the violence: first, that Israel had violated the cease-fire by reentering the West Bank city of Tul Karm and resuming the killing of terror operatives in the wake of the Netanyah bombing, warranting a Palestinian response; and second, Hamas said it was responding to a top-secret document it claimed to have obtained from the office of Gen. Nasser Yusuf, the PA interior minister and commander of the security apparatuses, instructing his security chiefs to stop the firing of rockets by all means, including force.
Khatib laments the fact that there is no third-party monitoring of the current cease-fire, and says that in this respect, the recent visit to the area of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a disappointment, offering the Palestinians nothing new.
The PA has been putting on a brave face in its response to the challenge to its grip on Gaza. "I think the PA stood up to the challenge in an impressive and serious way," says Khatib, who happened to be in Gaza during the confrontations. "It gave the message to all of Palestine that the PA is not prepared to give up on its authority."
Adds Ziad Abu Amr, an independent Gaza representative in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the PA parliament, who acts as a mediator between Abu Mazen's PA, Fatah and Hamas: "I think that both sides realize the gravity of taking that route in dealing with one another. We are now seeing initiatives to regulate the internal rift between Hamas and the PA." A committee has been formed as a mechanism for containing incidents as they take place in the field, with representatives from both sides and three independent members, one of whom is Abu Amr. And the two sides have resolved to work on the issues that Abu Amr says gave rise to the clashes in the first place - issues relating to the PLC elections due to be held in the first quarter of 2006 and Hamas's participation in them, the truce, and internal questions relating to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
For the time being, there are no PA plans to crack down on Hamas, as Israel demands. "You can't 'crack down' on Hamas," says Khatib. "They represent probably 35 percent of the society." As for violators of the truce, Abu Amr says they will be "left to the committee to handle." And in theory, the committee will decide collectively whether there should be a Palestinian response to what are seen as Israeli truce violations or not, so that such actions will "no longer be in individuals' hands."
In the meantime, there have been no reports of arrests by the PA following the recent flare-up in Gaza. Local sources say that Abu Mazen is reluctant to fan any flames in the run-up to the withdrawal.
At best, Palestinian establishment figures such as Khatib and Abu Amr are hoping that Hamas will indeed decide to become integrated into the political system, and will then only try to take over through legitimate political means. "You can't be part of the legitimate order and at the same time have your own armed wing," Abu Amr says.
Logical as this assumption may be, however, in the chaotic reality of the Gaza Strip it might not hold sway. Gaza sources speak of rumors that Hamas has bought thousands of military uniforms and dozens of jeeps. "They are preparing for after the withdrawal," says one local journalist. "There are rumors that they are going to try to break in and seize some of the evacuated settlement lands."
Hamas, the veteran journalist says, was not in the least deterred by the clashes with the PA, for which it felt it had public support, and only began worrying about losing that support once Fatah militants got involved and started getting hurt. "That was a red line for people. They may not mind Hamas firing at the 'corrupt' PA, but when it comes to the armed gangs fighting each other, it is different. The people see them all as heroes of the intifada."
That is when radical Gaza Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, who usually shuns the cameras, appeared smiling on Arabic TV channels, trying to repair his movement's image and engage in damage control. The latest round of internal violence is now over, but the feeling in Gaza is that the troubles could resume any time.
Abu Mazen finds himself in a tough bind. The Palestinian public wants law and order, but at the same time, any harming of the militants, the heroes of the intifada, is considered taboo. Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal will prove a tough testing ground for the PA's ability to rule. "We will do our best," says Khatib.
In the meantime, the Strip waits for answers on key issues such as freedom of movement and teeters between inter-necine violence and an internal political accord.
Posted by Ted Belman at August 15, 2005 01:43 PM