Boxing In Palestinians

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza has begun to seem inevitable. Settlement evacuation, including the compensation packages to be received by each family, has been meticulously worked out. The fallback lines for the army on the Israeli side of the Gaza border have been determined. As each new detail emerges, the Israeli public becomes a little more convinced that Sharon, despite fierce opposition from within his own party, means business.

Ironically, Sharon is now being branded a traitor by those who were his closest allies. The right-wing hero has turned renegade, so much so that Avi Dichter, the head of Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, recently warned that radical elements in the settler movement might do to Sharon what their compatriot, Yigal Amir, did to left-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated after he signed the Oslo peace accords.

Clearly, if Sharon does withdraw all of Israel's troops in Gaza and if he does evacuate the settlements there, it will be an important first step. Credit would be due to him for taking bold, long-overdue action after his predecessors had failed. But even then, to suggest that this amounts to a true disengagement, a transfer of control and sovereignty to the local Palestinian authorities, would be far from the truth.

In the first place, Israel intends to retain control of all the borders -- the land border between Gaza and Israel, the maritime boundary in the Mediterranean Sea and the Philadelphi line separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Gaza would become little more than a densely populated enclosure, cut off from the outside world, making it even harder for the beleaguered Palestinians to carry out basic activities.

Nor does Israel plan to let the Palestinian Authority construct its own airport or seaport facilities in Gaza; the absence of such facilities makes contact with the outside world totally dependent on the Israelis. Acts of terrorism or violence would be met with total closure of the region, causing further economic and social hardships.

And let's not forget that much of the physical infrastructure in Gaza is entirely dependent on the Israeli system. The electricity and phone services, part of the water supply and other basic needs can be cut off at a whim. Perhaps the residents of Gaza would benefit from the roads that served the Israeli settlements, but a road system that leads nowhere -- to an armed guard at a sealed border -- is not of much use.