The Gaza Withdrawal: Comments by Pavel Shub

MIDDLE EAST ASSIGNMENT 5
by: PAVEL SHUB

Posting 1

Now that Israel has completed its withdrawal from Gaza and Western donors have began funneling funds into the Palestinian Authority, optimists believe themselves justified in seeing these developments as the beginning of a viable Palestinian state. Similarly, pessimists observe the expansion of existing Israeli settlements in the West bank and increased Israeli presence in East Jerusalem as yet another example of Israeli duplicity condoned by the “Imperialist West” bent on the seizure of the valuable petrochemical resources so prized by Arab nationalists. While pundits and demagogy debate which of these views is more correct than the other, the PA is concluding deals with the usual array of French, German, and Russian, arms dealers to supply it with armored vests, armored amphibious personnel carriers, infantry weapons of all calibers and sizes, and enough ammunition to engage even the best armed military. Purely offensive in nature, these weapons signal the imminent escalation of tensions within Gaza that will prompt ever greater responses from the IDF.

According to the PA all of this firepower is necessary to enable it to effectively combat Hamas and Hezbollah radicals who continue to attack Palestinian police and its supporters within the PA. While Mahmoud Abbas continues to call for a cessation of violence at home and more aid from abroad for the construction of viable infrastructure for the new Palestinian state, potential donors and would be neighbors are frightened by the rising provenance of Islamic extremists who use Marxism-Stalinism to justify their wanton rampages through Palestinian towns and the recently abandoned Israeli settlements.

Given that the current phase of the U.S.-led war on terror will not subside for at least two more years and that economic aspirations will continue to supplant ideological considerations among the citizens of the disparate Arab states, it is not implausible to consider the possibility of a bi-lateral PA engagement of Israel within the very near future. At the moment roughly two thirds of the Palestinian population are 25 or younger almost equally divided between men and women. While most of these youths lack the skills necessary to readily assume their place within a modern high tech economy, the presence of such an economy and the requisite educational institutions within Israel could aid in the requisite deradicalization of the Palestinian public. Should the Palestinians discard the destructive ideologies of the past and finally direct their energies toward the much wanting reconciliation of the differences among the disparate Palestinian factions, the goal of peace within the Middle East would be much closer to reality than it had ever been before.