Sharon sees the light on Gaza Strip

By URI DROMI
KNIGHT RIDDER
JERUSALEM -- One of the problems a columnist faces, apart from merciless deadlines and angry e-mail messages from people who disagree with him, is that his columns remain -- either on paper or in Internet sites. People can always tease him for changing his mind, contradicting himself or, worst of all, repeating himself. Indeed, come to think of it, there are things I should have written differently or not at all. Therefore, I keep a rule never to look back at old columns I wrote. Why aggravate myself?
This week, however, I made an exception. On Sunday, tens of thousands of Israelis formed a human chain stretching all the way from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza Strip withdrawal plan. Since December, when Sharon announced that he planned to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of September 2005, there was a lot of heat from settlers and hard-liners -- so much so that Sharon fired two Cabinet ministers who were bitterly critical and is now searching for a new coalition. The human chain was indeed an impressive show of force, but as much as it reflected the strength of the opposition to the plan, it also betrayed the concern of the settlers that Sharon was serious, that implementation was imminent.
Which brings me back to my old columns. I remembered vaguely that three years ago, I wrote a piece advocating a pullout from Gaza. Sure enough, on Aug. 24, 2001, in a column headlined Start with Gaza Strip, I wrote: "I belong to those who believe Israel shouldn't be ruling 2 million Palestinians (trust me, we Israelis hardly rule ourselves). This is morally wrong and practically impossible. We have accomplished so much since the early efforts of the first Zionists; now it's time to consolidate our gains. We'll have to partition this land between us and the Palestinians. We then will have a state with a border, and if attacked, we'll know how to defend ourselves. Right now, we are bogged down by the struggle with civilians, and we have difficulties in using our force effectively."
Brutality of fighting
To me, it looks as valid as it was three years ago, and even more so. In the meantime, many more Palestinians have been born, and every day the brutality of the fighting takes a heavier toll on both sides.
I read on: "Most Israelis don't attach any strategic importance to this area the Gaza Strip. It is viewed as a pack of insoluble problems, for which Israel is held responsible. From a biblical viewpoint, few Israelis feel attached to it. Few Israelis live there, in small settlements, a far cry from Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim, the bustling cities in Judea and Samaria. It would be wiser to start with the Gaza Strip and see how things develop. If the experiment fails, how much worse can the situation be? If it works, it could lead us to further moves in the direction of disengagement."
I know that The Miami Herald is an important paper, and during the years, I got the impression that some people read my stuff. But not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine that Sharon, the man who years ago had put those settlements in Gaza himself, would one day bump into my 2001 column and yell Bingo! No, there is a limit to arrogance. The man probably has arrived at the logical conclusion by himself.
Buzz
But who knows? Maybe, words that are printed in this part of the world somehow travel over oceans and create a buzz here in the Middle East. And who knows, perhaps at some point, by a most mysterious way, they just help things happen.
Maybe I should write something about the need for Israel to dig for oil. If three years from now oil erupts in the Negev, the Southern part of Israel, remember where you had read about it first.
X Uri Dromi is director of International Outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem and a columnist for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.