Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Israel’s disengagement plan is widely hailed by the international community, led by the United States, as a first step toward the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. This essay is a refutation of that view. After presenting the current situation of Gaza as the result of deliberate Israeli policies of economic integration, deinstitutionalization, and closure, the author demonstrates how provisions of the plan itself preclude the establishment of a viable economy in the Strip. Examining the plan’s implications for the West Bank, the author argues that the occupation, far from ending, will actually be consolidated. She concludes with a look at the disengagement within the context of previous agreements, particularly Oslo—all shaped by Israel’s overwhelming power—and the steadily shrinking possibilities offered to the Palestinians

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand, and they had the land
—Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya

On 9 June 2005, the last legal hurdle to implementing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement from Gaza was cleared when the Israeli High Court approved the plan and its removal of all the Jewish settlements there. The settlers, though angered by the decision, were not surprised and vowed to oppose their coerced departure with all means possible. Considerable media attention in the United States has been devoted to the suffering of the Jewish settlers and the personal costs for them of the disengagement. This attention has served to thaw and then humanize the often violent and zealous settler population, and in so doing, to illustrate and amplify the sacrifices Israel is making for peace.

By now a great deal has been written about the disengagement plan by both supporters and opponents. Many of the arguments in favor focus on the redeployment as an opportunity to break the near five-year-old political impasse between Palestinians and Israelis and usher in a new era of stability and peace. In April 2005, for example, President Bush stated that Israel's withdrawal will allow the establishment of "a democratic state in the Gaza" and open the door for democracy in the Middle East. Tom Friedman was more explicit, arguing that "[t]he issue for Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there—a Dubai on the Mediterranean. Because if they do, it will fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank."

Embedded in both statements are a set of assumptions: that Palestinians will be free to build their own democracy, that Israel will eventually cede the West Bank (or even consider the possibility), that Israel's "withdrawal" will strengthen the Palestinian position in negotiations over the West Bank, that the occupation will end or become increasingly irrelevant, that the gross asymmetries between the two protagonists will be redressed. Hence, the Gaza disengagement plan—if implemented “properly”—will provide a real (perhaps the only) opportunity for resolving the conflict and creating a Palestinian state. It follows that Palestinians will be responsible for their success, and that if they fail to build a "democratic" or "decent mini-state" in Gaza, the fault will be theirs and theirs alone.

Dubai on the Mediterranean?

It would be useful to consider what the Palestinians in Gaza have to work with to achieve success.

Today, there are over 1.4 million Palestinians living in the Strip. By 2010 this number will reach close to two million. The Gaza Strip has the highest level of fertility in the region—5.5–6.0 children per woman—and the population grows at a very high rate of 3–5 percent annually. Fifty years ago, 80 percent of the population had not yet been born. Fifty percent of Gazans are 15 years old or younger, with rapidly declining access to health care and education. The half of the territory in which the population is concentrated has one of the highest population densities in the world. In the Jabalya refugee camp alone, there are 74,000 persons per square kilometer, compared with 25,000 persons per square kilometer in Manhattan.

Palestinians are currently experiencing the worst economic depression in modern history, according to the World Bank, primarily caused by long-standing Israeli restrictions (especially closure) that have dramatically reduced Gaza’s trade levels (especially exports) and virtually cut off Gaza’s labor force from their jobs inside Israel. This has resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment ranging from 35 to 40 percent. Some 65 to 75 percent of Gazans are impoverished (compared to 30 percent in 2000), and many are hungry.

In 2004, a Harvard study concluded that the increase in Gaza’s population by 2010 will require the “creation of some 250,000 new jobs . . . to maintain current employment rates at 60 percent and the establishment of an additional 2,000 classrooms and 100 primary healthcare clinics annually to bring access to education and public health services at par with the West Bank.” Yet, the disengagement plan states that Israel will further reduce and eventually bar Palestinians from working in Israel. Researchers on the same Harvard study also stated that in a few years, Gaza’s labor force will be “entirely unskilled and increasingly illiterate.” As for educational services, between 1997 and 2004, student-teacher ratios declined by 30 percent, with 80 students per class in government schools and 40 per class in UNRWA schools. Test scores for Palestinian children are well below passing, currently under 50 percent, and the majority of 4th graders fail to advance to the next grade.

About 41 percent of Gazans are now assessed by the World Food Programme (WFP) to be “food insecure,” defined as lacking secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development; in five areas of Gaza, the figure exceeds 50 percent. An additional 30 percent of the population is “food vulnerable,” which places them under threat of becoming food insecure or malnourished.

Since 2000, the economy of the Gaza Strip and West Bank has lost potential income of approximately $6.3 billion. In addition, the economy has suffered over $2.2 billion worth of physical damage by the Israeli army, which means, in effect, that the “occupied Palestinian territory has lost at least one fifth of its economic base over the last four years as a consequence of war and occupation.”

Yet, despite these conditions, the plan states: “The process of disengagement will serve to dispel claims regarding Israel's responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." This idea rests on another powerful assumption of the Gaza plan and the discourse surrounding it: that Gaza’s agony is a recent phenomenon borne of the last five years of intifada, and that the return of the land taken up by military installations and settlements—anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the territory—will easily redress the situation. Under this widely held notion, the context for understanding the disengagement begins in 2000, not in 1967. Israel's primary role in creating Palestine's misery and decline over nearly four decades is quite simply expunged from the narrative.

- There is no doubt that the destruction wrought by Israel over the last five years has been ruinous for Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip—the demolition of homes (some 4,600 between 2000 and 2004), schools, roads, factories and workshops, hospitals, mosques, and greenhouses, the razing of agricultural fields and the uprooting of trees, the further undermining of the economy, the spatial imprisonment of the population and denial of access to education and health services resulting from near total closure. But one need only look at the devastated economy of Gaza on the eve of the uprising to realize that the devastation of Gaza is not recent. By the time the second uprising broke out, Israel’s closure policy had been in force for seven years, leading to levels of unemployment and poverty that were, until then, unprecedented. Yet the closure policy proved so destructive only because of the near 30-year process of integrating Gaza’s economy into Israel’s, which undermined the local economic base by making it deeply dependent on Israel. As a result, when Gaza was severed from Israel through closure, the means for self-sustenance no longer existed. Thus, closure and the destruction caused by the intifada occurred on a foundation already undermined by thirty-eight years of deliberate Israeli policies of expropriation, integration, and deinstitutionalization that had long ago robbed Palestine of its developmental potential, insuring that no viable economic (and hence, political) structure could emerge.

The destruction of Palestine’s present (and any strategy for addressing it) can only be understood as part of its destroyed past. The damage—the de-development of Palestine—cannot be undone by simply “returning” Gaza’s lands and by allowing Palestinians freedom of movement and the right to build factories and industrial estates. Enlarging Gaza’s sliver of land—or Palestinian access to it—cannot solve Gaza’s myriad problems when its burgeoning population is confined within it. Density is not just a problem of people but of access to resources, especially labor markets. Without porous boundaries allowing for the migration of workers to job markets, which the disengagement plan does not address and in effect denies, the Strip will remain an imprisoned enclave, precluding any viable economic solution. Yet, it is the opposite idea—that with disengagement development is possible—that Israel is striving to instill, since it will absolve it of any responsibility for Gaza’s desolation, past and present.

The Terms of Disengagement

Leaving aside Israel’s primary responsibility for what Gaza is today, the plan itself cannot possibly initiate any real development process. It states that Israel will evacuate the Gaza Strip—except for the 100-meter-wide Philadelphi corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt—and redeploy outside it. Israel subsequently agreed to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor in favor of Egyptian military control, but the terms are still being deliberated, with strong opposition from within the Israeli cabinet and parliament. Pending the final disposition of the corridor, the Israel Defense Forces has begun to erect a wall along the 12 kilometer long corridor that will consist of “8 meter high concrete plates, [that] could easily be removed. . . . The new wall will be interspersed with observation posts and a new road for heavy armored vehicles is being paved on its southern side.”

But whether or not Israel eventually withdraws from the Philadelphi corridor (or gives Palestinians control over their own seaport and airport, as is also being discussed) is ultimately irrelevant to Palestinian development over the longer term. For even with these changes, the plan still gives Israel “exclusive authority” over all air space and territorial waters, which translates into full control over the movement of people and goods into and out of the Strip. Israel will also “continue, for full price, to supply electricity, water, gas and petrol to the Palestinians, in accordance with current arrangements.” In other words, Gaza’s continued economic dependency, and Israel’s continued security, political, and economic control of the Strip, are assured.

As for the perimeter separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, a second fence is already under construction. This new fence

is being constructed to the east of the existing fence on Israeli territory and creates a buffer zone around the Gaza Strip 70 kilometers long and several hundred metres wide. The fence will be augmented with a series of optical and electronic sensors that will indicate any attempts to cross it. “It will enable us to better prevent illegal entries of Palestinians from Gaza,” an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) source [stated] . . . “We are witnessing an increase in attempts to cross the existing fence around Gaza, though mostly by workers seeking employment rather than terrorists[.]”

There is no reference in the disengagement plan to linkage with the West Bank, though there has been some discussion of a rail line between the two territories. Based on Israel’s total disregard of Oslo’s affirmation that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are “one territorial unit,” it seems clear that Israel will not tolerate a genuine territorial linkage, despite the fact that there are only forty-eight kilometers (thirty miles) separating Gaza and the West Bank. With the plan, then, the population of Gaza will be effectively sealed in, and the national dismemberment of the Palestinians, long a cornerstone of Israeli policy, will arguably have been achieved, at least with regard to the West Bank and Gaza.

The part of the plan that relates to the West Bank calls for the evacuation of four of the 120 Jewish settlements in “an area” to the north of Nablus, allowing for territorial contiguity for Palestinians there. However, in a July 2005 decision by the Israeli security cabinet, Israel will “retain security control of the territory around the four West Bank settlements and keep existing military bases in the area,” which translates into Israel’s continued control over the northern West Bank after the evacuation of the four settlements. In other regions of the West Bank, the plan states, Israel will “assist . . . in improving the transportation infrastructure in order to facilitate the contiguity of Palestinian transportation." This “contiguity of transportation” will have to accommodate the following conditions:

• A planned 620 kilometer wall (of which 205 kilometers have been built) made of nine meter high concrete slabs and impermeable fences, constructed on confiscated West Bank lands; at best, Palestinians will have access to only 54 percent of the West Bank once the wall is completed, deepening the dispossession and isolation of Palestinian communities;
• Twenty-nine settler highways or bypass roads spanning 400 kilometers of the West Bank, explicitly designed to provide freedom of movement for 400,000 Jewish settlers while imprisoning three million Palestinians in their encircled and isolated enclaves;
• Twenty-four planned tunnels in the West Bank (of which seven are completed) that will connect Jewish settlements to each other and to Israel;
• The planned construction of 6,400 new settlement housing units in the West Bank;
• The isolation of East Jerusalem—the commercial and cultural heart of the West Bank—from Ramallah and Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank;
• The separation of the northern and southern West Bank; and
• The separation of Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Salfit, Nablus, and Jenin.

None of these elements is in any way mitigated by the plan; on the contrary, their persistence is assured. The territorial fragmentation institutionalized by the plan ends any hope of Palestinian territorial and national unity and contiguity, and it can only accelerate Palestine’s gradual depopulation, continuing what the Oslo process had begun. Yet, despite its brutality, the Gaza disengagement agreement—like Oslo, Camp David, and Taba before it—is surrounded by an almost seamless and comforting silence that is shattering in the facts it conceals.

Whatever else it claims to be, the Gaza disengagement plan is, at its heart, an instrument for Israel's continued annexation of West Bank lands and their physical integration into Israel. This is all but spelled out in the plan itself. Thus, "[i]n any future permanent status arrangement, there will be no Israeli towns and villages in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand [and here, Israel is atypically transparent], it is clear that in the West Bank, there are areas which will be part of the State of Israel, including major Israeli population centers, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel." In all but the evacuated area in the northern West Bank, Israeli settlement in the West Bank can continue unimpeded. Throughout, whether under Labor or Likud, Israel has engaged in a zero-sum struggle for control of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, and with the Gaza disengagement plan it clearly believes this struggle can finally be won. Far from paving the way for more concessions and withdrawals, the unilateral disengagement can only consolidate Israeli control, bringing Palestinians greater repression, isolation, and ghettoization. How, given all this, can the current plan represent a political or policy departure from previous ones or an act of Israeli courage or magnanimity, as many have argued? Why should disengagement be regarded as a new opening or opportunity, let alone a watershed event?

“Disengagement” and Occupation

The international community, led by the United States, would like to weave the disengagement plan into the road map, believing it to be a first step toward a comprehensive solution for the Palestine problem involving a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. Yet under the terms of disengagement, Israel's occupation is assured. Gazans will be contained and sealed within the electrified borders of the Strip, while West Bankers, their lands dismembered by relentless Israeli settlement, will continue to be penned into fragmented geographic spaces, isolated behind and between walls and barriers. Despite this terrible reality, the word "occupation" has been removed from the political lexicon, as would an insult or obscenity. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, an architect of Oslo, never once used the word "occupation" in any of the agreements he helped draft. Yet, it was the gap between Oslo's implication that the occupation would end, and the harsh reality that emerged instead, that led to the second Palestinian uprising. At the Sharm al-Shaykh summit between Abbas, Sharon, and Bush in February 2004, again the word “occupation” was not mentioned.

The final version of the Gaza disengagement plan makes no reference to it either, but the original 18 April 2004 version is explicit about what clearly is one of the plan’s main goals: upon completion of the evacuation of the Gaza Strip, the plan states, "there will be no basis for claiming that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory." The fact that the clause was omitted from the 6 June 2004 revised plan by no means indicates a change in Israeli priorities. Indeed, one of the most striking elements of Geoffrey Aronson’s revealing technocratic study of the plan, commissioned by an international donor and based on a series of interviews with Israeli officials, is Israel’s obsessive focus on legally ridding itself of occupier status in the Gaza Strip. It would appear that this intensity is really about obtaining international acquiescence (however tacit) in, and vindication of, Israel’s full and unquestioned control over the West Bank—and eventually Jerusalem—even while retaining control over the Strip in a different form.

With the Gaza plan, it is possible that Israel may, for the first time and with pressure from the international donor community, be able to secure Palestinian endorsement of what it is creating. In this regard, the disengagement plan can be seen as yet another in a long line of Israeli attempts to extract from the Palestinians what it has always sought but has so far been unable to obtain: total Palestinian capitulation to Israel’s terms coupled with the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Israeli actions. This is what former Prime Minister Ehud Barak demanded of Yasir Arafat at Camp David in July 2000 when he insisted on an end-of-conflict/end-of-claims clause, and this is what Sharon, in his own way, is insisting on as well: almost total Palestinian surrender to Israeli dictates and the suffocating reality they have created, formalized in a plan that would recognize those dictates as justified. Tragically, the Palestinian leadership continues to view the Gaza disengagement as a first step in a political process toward the resumption of negotiations for final status talks, refusing to accept that the disengagement from Gaza is the final status and that the occupation will not end.

As for the international community—particularly the foreign donors—almost the entire focus has been on "developing" the Gaza Strip. This attention is painfully reminiscent of some of the analytical and structural mistakes of the Oslo period, particularly with regard to three key assumptions: (1) the preexisting structures of occupation—Israeli control and Palestinian dependency—will be mitigated, perhaps even dismantled; (2) Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will create a political, economic and bureaucratic opening that will shift, if not change, the priorities of the protagonists from issues of territory and security to the economic interests of entrepreneurs and nations; and (3) innovative modes of thinking with respect to economic cooperation will lead to political stability and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. Economic cooperation, and the tangible benefits that result, will build trust and create a template for peace.

If these assumptions proved so utterly unfounded with regard to the Oslo agreements (where, at least initially, there was a modicum of bilateralism and cooperation), how will they fare under a unilateral disengagement plan that makes no secret of being a diktat, and at a time when the structures of occupation and Israeli control are far more deeply entrenched? Furthermore, given Israel's continued occupation and control over Gaza’s borders, and the plan’s declared aim “to reduce the number of Palestinian workers entering Israel to the point that it ceases completely,” there is good cause to expect that the Israeli authorities will use economic pressure to ensure control and extract political concessions much as they did during the Oslo period. Despite this—arguably because of it—international donors are again displaying the same unwillingness to politically confront the occupation and its most pernicious measures as they did ten years ago. Rather, they seem resolved to mitigate the damage, aiding the Palestinians even if it means the imposition of an unjust solution, whatever their private reservations may be. In so perverse an environment and in the absence of a more activist political posture aimed at challenging Israel's structure of control, international assistance will not eradicate poverty but simply modernize it. In so doing, donor aid—despite its critical importance—will solidify the structures of occupation by simply ignoring them. Under this scenario, how could Palestine ever become a producing society?

The Shrinking Contours of Agreement

With the international community eager to be rid of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, Palestinian powerlessness is arguably more acute now (with Gaza disengagement) than before (with Oslo). As with the losses incurred during the Oslo period, the Palestinians' continued dispossession is regarded as the price of peace, not as a reason for conflict. So defined, Palestinian legitimacy, at least for parts of the international community, no longer derives from the justice and morality of its cause but from Palestinian willingness to concede to terms largely if not entirely imposed by Israel. Thus, with the Gaza disengagement plan, the Palestinian quest for minimal justice entailing a state in 22 percent of their homeland, once dismissed as utopian, is now derided as short-sighted and selfish. Within this construct, the asymmetries between occupier and occupied are not only sanctioned but their institutionalization is lauded as progress, removing any possibility that could meaningfully end Israeli domination.

There is an appalling sameness about Israel’s plan to disengage from Gaza when compared with earlier agreements, notably Oslo: a common thread runs through all of them, molding the terms, predetermining the outcomes. Like its predecessors, the disengagement plan is hailed as an act of courage, as yet another example of Israel’s desire for peace, its willingness to make concessions and sacrifices without demanding equivalent concessions of the Palestinians who are the real aggressors, repeatedly refusing Israeli generosity. In this "peace" initiative, as in others, Israel seeks, and will no doubt secure, control over Palestine while ceding all responsibility for it.

Another common feature is the sheer weight and accepted legitimacy of Israeli unilateralism: the power of Israel to impose its own terms virtually unchallenged by domestic or international forces. In the case of the disengagement plan, however, Israeli unilateralism becomes open and explicit: even the fiction of consultation is dispensed with; as a unilateral plan, rather than an agreement, it is unapologetically imposed. This is a nuance, however, and the earlier agreements, too, were drawn up to preclude the possibility of negotiations on substantive issues where Israel was unwilling to make any concessions. Similarly, the disengagement initiative makes explicit, in a way that Oslo did not, that Israel is really negotiating with the United States, not with the Palestinians, over how far it can go in dispossessing them. Despite Bush's promises to Abbas regarding the contours of the Palestinian state and how it will be established, the United States will, in the end, accept, as it always has, what Israel wants and does. According to Aaron Miller, a former State Department official who was deeply involved with the Middle East peace process, during his near twenty-five years in government there never was “an honest conversation about what the Israelis were actually doing on the ground. Nor were we prepared to impose, at least in the last seven or eight years, a cost on the Israelis for their actions.”

Finally, Israeli unilateralism is evident in another, more subtle, way having to do with the starting point for negotiations. History, to which Israel and the Jewish people cling so tenaciously, is denied to the Palestinians, whose mere invocation of it is decried as obstructionist and unhelpful. Thus Palestinians are rendered mute, and their historic compromise of 1988—when they conceded 78 percent of the country where they had constituted two thirds of the population and owned all but 7 percent of the land in order to settle for a state in the West Bank and Gaza—is rejected (if remembered at all) as a legitimate point of departure. Rather, the Palestinians must begin negotiations at whatever point Israel (backed by the United States) says they should, a point that keeps contracting in line with the diminished realities Israel has imposed on the Palestinians. The result of Israel’s ever shrinking “offers” is that compromise becomes more difficult if not impossible, and Palestinian violence is more likely to erupt. With the Gaza disengagement plan, Israel’s generous offer has gone from a weak cantonized entity in the West Bank and Gaza to the encircled and desperately impoverished enclave of the Gaza Strip—1 percent of historical Palestine. In this regard, the plan to disengage from Gaza (while encircling it and absorbing the West Bank) is the starkest and most extreme illustration to date of Israel's power to determine and reduce what there is left to talk about.

A Concluding Thought

Of course, it is better for Israel to leave Gaza than to remain there and for some sort of renewal to begin. As the analyst Jennifer Loewenstein has argued, "All of us should support the evacuation of the settlements from Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the Strip on the grounds that international law demands them. But equally, we should oppose Sharon's Disengagement Plan for the cynical motivations that inspired it and the reality its execution is going to create."

Israel’s "withdrawal" from Gaza aims yet again to create practical realities that will contain and fragment Palestinians and diminish their collective and personal aspirations—now through a Palestinian mini-state in Gaza. In a context so politically attenuated and devoid of meaning and purpose, historical memory recedes and with it the notion of a national identity and the sense of purpose and attachment to which it gives rise. Must Palestinians withdraw from the future and from the past into a present that lays waste, and be grateful?

Today in Gaza and the West Bank, ideas and discourse have given way to a devastating internecine conflict. People seek power over philosophy, order over liberty, and for many, death over life. Israel and the United States worry that the Islamists will ascend politically. But the real threat lies deep within society, with the waning of resolve, injury to being, disabling of families and communities, and disintegration of youth—where the whole of society is rapidly ceding to its wounded and afflicted parts. Can the Gaza disengagement plan, with its promise of restricted and externally controlled autonomy, be expected to redress any of this?

For Palestinians, the taking of their land has always been the primary issue distinguishing Israel's occupation from earlier ones. Although the problem of land is often presented in political terms, its impact on the individual and society is profound, shaping not only the way people live but who they are and how they define themselves. By taking so much more away from Palestinians than has any other agreement since the occupation began, the disengagement plan will prove disastrous for everyone, including for Israel. Seldom has a political decision so sealed the fate of an entire people as cruelly as this one.

Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, has worked on Gaza for two decades and is the author of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (IPS, 2d edition 2001), among other works. Her new book, Between Extremism and Civism: Political Islam in Palestine, will be published by Princeton University Press.

Recently at Harvard University, a Jewish student, using an assumed (gentile) name, began posting anti-Semitic statements on the weblog of the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice (HIPJ), an anti-war, pro-Palestinian group on campus.

The student, it turned out, is the secretary of Harvard Students for Israel - which dissociated itself from the incident - and had previously accused the HIPJ of being too tolerant of anti-Semitism. He now went undercover as part of a self-appointed effort to monitor anti-Semitism on campus. In one posting, he referred to Israel as the "AshkeNAZI state."

Incidents of this kind, which are becoming commonplace on American campuses, reflect a wider determination to monitor, report, defame and punish those individuals and institutions within academia whose views the political right finds objectionable. The campaign is directed at area studies generally, but the most virulent attacks are reserved for those of us in Middle Eastern studies whose ideas are considered anti-Israel, anti-Semitic or anti-American.

The relationship between Israel's hard-line supporters and the Arab professoriat, as we have been called, has been tense for a long time. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the right accused Middle East academics in particular of extremist scholarship and intellectual treason. Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done about It, a report published in November 2001 by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit organization founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the US vice-president, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, effectively accused the academy of being unpatriotic and anti-American, a fifth column providing intellectual support for global terrorism. In evidence it cited over a hundred statements by academics (and others) calling for a more critical examination of the causes of the events of Sept. 11 and the role US foreign policy may have played.

Another indictment of Middle East studies appeared in Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, published in October 2001 by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Kramer, who teaches Arab history and politics at Tel Aviv University, claims that Middle East studies in the US are dominated - indeed, crippled - by pro-Arab and anti-American sentiment. The academy, he believes, failed to anticipate and may even have concealed the growing Islamist threat that resulted in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Middle East studies, he claims, have devoted too much attention to historical and cultural subjects that are of no use to the state and its national security imperatives, and may even harm them. What is needed, he says, is a new approach to the study of the Middle East that has at its core "the idea that the United States plays an essentially beneficent role in the world."

There is no let-up. September 2002 saw the establishment of Campus Watch, a website whose primary purpose is to monitor Middle Eastern studies faculty in departments across the US for signs of anti-American and anti-Israel bias. Campus Watch is the invention of Daniel Pipes, a colleague of Kramer's and director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank devoted to promoting American interests in the Middle East.

"I want Noam Chomsky to be taught at universities about as much as I want Hitler's writing or Stalin's writing," Pipes said to an interviewer. "These are wild and extremist ideas that I believe have no place in a university," he added.

Not only does Campus Watch monitor universities for signs of sedition - views on US foreign policy, Islam, Israeli policy and Palestinian rights - that Pipes considers unacceptable, it encourages students to report on professors whose ideas they find offensive. Recently, US President George W. Bush appointed Pipes to the board of directors of the US Institute of Peace, "an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by Congress to promote the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts."

Given that the political climate here is in good part determined by an alliance of right-wing supporters of Israel and members of the neoconservative establishment, it isn't surprising that the attack on area studies may soon be enshrined in law. On Oct. 21 last year, the House of Representatives passed the International Studies in Higher Education Act. The bill is part of the Higher Education Act reauthorization known as Title VI, which dates back to 1959 and mandates federal funding of international studies and foreign languages. Title VI renews international education and language-training programs and has made several important improvements, but it also contains provisions that would impinge on curricula, faculty hiring and course materials in institutions that accept federal funding.

A key figure behind the act is Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate of Kramer and Pipes. Testifying before the House in June 2003, Kurtz accused scholars of the Middle East and other areas of abusing Title VI support with their "extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy." He believes that the basic premise of post-colonial theory is that "it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power" and cites Edward Said's work in this area as the most pernicious. Kurtz's testimony was accepted by Congress without debate and many of his recommendations for "repairing" the damage were adopted by the House.

Potentially the most onerous of these recommendations is the establishment of an international higher education advisory board to ensure that government-funded programs "reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages and international affairs."

The board would have seven members: three appointed by the secretary of education, of whom two will "represent federal agencies that have national security responsibilities;" two appointed by the speaker of the House of Representatives; and two by the president pro tempore of the Senate. One of the board's functions will be to recommend ways "to improve programs ... to better reflect the national needs related to homeland security."

The board's recommendations will not be subject to review or approval by any officer of the federal government, including the secretary of education. And, although the bill states that the board is not authorized to "mandate, direct or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum or program of instruction," it is authorized "to study, monitor, apprise and evaluate" a sample of activities supported under Title VI. This amounts to the same thing: unprecedented federally mandated intrusion into the content and conduct of university-based area studies programs.

There is a great deal at stake for American higher education and academic freedom. If the proposed act becomes law - the Senate will review the bill next - it will create a board that monitors how closely universities reflect government policy. Since the legislation assumes that any flaw lies "with the experts, not the policy," the government could be given the power to introduce politically sympathetic voices into the academic mainstream and to reshape the boundaries of academic inquiry. Institutional resistance would presumably be punished by the withdrawal of funds, which would be extremely damaging to Middle East centers especially.

The International Studies in Higher Education Act contains other provisions that are equally outrageous. It requires Title VI institutions to provide government recruiters with access to students and student recruiting information. The bill even directs the secretary of education and the advisory board to study - spy on - communities of US citizens who speak a foreign language, "particularly such communities that include speakers of languages that are critical to the national security of the United States."

What all this boils down to is an attempt to silence criticism of US policy and put an end to disagreement with the neo-conservative agenda. It is not diversity that is being sought but conformity.

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the author of several works on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This article first appeared in The London Review of Books, with whose permission it is published in THE DAILY STAR

Recently, at Harvard University where I am based, a Jewish student, using an assumed (gentile) name, began posting anti-semitic statements on the weblog of the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice, an anti-war, pro-Palestinian group on campus. The student, it turned out, is the secretary of Harvard Students for Israel - which dissociated itself from the incident - and had previously accused the HIPJ of being too tolerant of anti-semitism. He now went undercover as part of a self-appointed effort to monitor anti-semitism on campus. In one posting, for example, he referred to Israel as the 'AshkeNAZI state'. Incidents of this kind, which are becoming commonplace on American campuses, reflect a wider determination to monitor, report, defame and punish those individuals and institutions within academia whose views the right finds objectionable. The campaign is directed at area studies generally but the most virulent attacks are reserved for those of us in Middle Eastern studies whose ideas are considered anti-Israel, anti-semitic or anti-American.

The relationship between Israel 's hardline supporters and the 'Arab professoriat', as we have been called, has been tense for a long time. After 11 September, the right accused Middle East academics in particular of extremist scholarship and intellectual treason. Defending Civilisation: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done about It , a report published in November 2001 by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a non-profit organisation founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, effectively accused the academy of being unpatriotic and anti-American, a fifth column providing intellectual support for global terrorism. In evidence it cited over a hundred statements by academics (and others) calling for a more critical examination of the causes of the events of 11 September and the role US foreign policy may have played.

Another indictment of Middle East studies appeared in Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America , published in October 2001 by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Kramer, who teaches Arab history and politics at Tel Aviv University , claims that Middle East studies in the US are dominated - indeed, crippled - by pro-Arab and anti-American sentiment. The academy, he believes, failed to anticipate and may even have concealed the growing Islamist threat that resulted in the attack on the World Trade Center . Middle East studies, he claims, have devoted too much attention to historical and cultural subjects that are of no use to the state and its national security imperatives, and may even harm them. What is needed, he says, is a new approach to the study of the Middle East that has at its core 'the idea that the United States plays an essentially beneficent role in the world'.

There is no let-up. September 2002 saw the establishment of Campus Watch, a website whose primary purpose is to monitor Middle Eastern studies faculty in departments across the US for signs of anti-American and anti-Israel bias. Campus Watch is the invention of Daniel Pipes, a colleague of Kramer's, and director of the Middle East Forum, a think-tank devoted to promoting American interests in the Middle East .

'I want Noam Chomsky to be taught at universities about as much as I want Hitler's writing or Stalin's writing,' Pipes said to an interviewer. 'These are wild and extremist ideas that I believe have no place in a university.' Not only does Campus Watch monitor universities for signs of 'sedition', i.e. views on US foreign policy, Islam, Israeli policy and Palestinian rights that Pipes considers unacceptable; it encourages students to inform on professors whose ideas they find offensive. Recently, Bush appointed Pipes to the board of directors of the US Institute of Peace, 'an independent, non-partisan federal institution created by Congress to promote the prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts'.

Given that the political climate here is in good part determined by an alliance of right-wing supporters of Israel and members of the neo-conservative establishment, it isn't surprising that the attack on area studies may soon be enshrined in law. On 21 October last year, the House of Representatives passed the International Studies in Higher Education Act, HR 3077. The bill is part of the Higher Education Act reauthorisation known as Title VI, which dates back to 1959 and mandates federal funding of international studies and foreign languages. Title VI renews international education and language-training programmes and has made several important improvements, but it also contains provisions that would impinge on curricula, faculty hiring and course materials in institutions that accept federal funding.

A key figure behind HR 3077 is Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate of Kramer and Pipes. Testifying before the House on 19 June 2003 , Kurtz accused scholars of the Middle East and other areas of abusing Title VI support with their 'extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy'. He believes that the basic premise of post-colonial theory is that 'it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power' and cites Edward Said's work in this area as the most pernicious. Kurtz's testimony was accepted by Congress without debate and many of his recommendations for 'repairing' the damage were adopted by the House.

Potentially the most onerous of these recommendations is the establishment of an international higher education advisory board to ensure that government-funded programmes 'reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages and international affairs'. The board would have seven members: three appointed by the secretary of education, of whom two will 'represent federal agencies that have national security responsibilities'; two appointed by the speaker of the House of Representatives; and two by the president pro tempore of the Senate. One of the board's functions will be to recommend ways 'to improve programmes . . . to better reflect the national needs related to homeland security'.

The board's recommendations will not be subject to review or approval by any officer of the federal government, including the secretary of education. And, although the bill states that the board is not authorised to 'mandate, direct or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum or programme of instruction', it is authorised 'to study, monitor, apprise and evaluate' a sample of activities supported under Title VI. Which amounts to the same thing: unprecedented federally mandated intrusion into the content and conduct of university-based area studies programmes.

There is a great deal at stake for American higher education and academic freedom. If HR 3077 becomes law - the Senate will review the bill next - it will create a board that monitors how closely universities reflect government policy. Since the legislation assumes that any flaw lies 'with the experts, not the policy', the government could be given the power to introduce politically sympathetic voices into the academic mainstream and to reshape the boundaries of academic inquiry. Institutional resistance would presumably be punished by the withdrawal of funds, which would be extremely damaging to Middle East centres especially.

HR 3077 contains other provisions that are equally outrageous. For example, it requires Title VI institutions to provide government recruiters with access to students and student recruiting information. The bill even directs the secretary of education and the advisory board to study - i.e. spy on - communities of US citizens who speak a foreign language, 'particularly such communities that include speakers of languages that are critical to the national security of the United States'.

What all this boils down to is an attempt to silence criticism of US policy, and put an end to disagreement with the neo-conservative agenda. It is not diversity that is being sought but conformity.

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the author of several works on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

From the time I started researching the Gaza Strip almost two decades ago, I have encountered two recurring themes in Palestinian-Israeli relations: Israel’s desire to rid itself of any responsibility for Gaza, while maintaining control over it; and its desire to “exchange” Gaza for full and internationally (read “American”) sanctioned Israeli control of the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent proposal to evacuate 17 of the 20 settlements in Gaza ­ but leaving Israel with direct control over all of Gaza’s borders, its air space and waters, and the settlement of Gush Katif ­ is simply the latest expression of longstanding Israeli policy that will keep Gaza an imprisoned canton. Sharon’s proposal, which is one part of his unilateral separation plan, would effectively complete implementation of Oslo’s 1994 “Gaza and Jericho-First” plan, which similarly aimed to create a provisional Palestinian state in Gaza, allowing Israel to pursue, in one form or another, the de facto annexation of the West Bank, which it very successfully did during the seven years of the “peace” process.

In fact it was the physical changes to the West Bank imposed by Oslo, notably its division into areas A, B and C, that are now facilitating Sharon’s usurpation of Palestinian lands and their incorporation into Israel.

The Gaza disengagement plan, while a reversal of Sharon’s policies, should be understood as part of the same political continuum created by the Oslo process (and indeed by Israeli policies since 1967, beginning with the Allon Plan). It should also be understood as serving the same goals: to maintain full Israeli control ­ direct and indirect ­ over all Palestinian lands and resources; consolidate and institutionalize direct and permanent military and political control over a majority of the West Bank (primarily through continued settlement expansion, the concentration of settlers in main settlement blocs, control over the Jordan Valley and the building of the separation barrier); secure, to the extent possible, demographic separation with the Palestinians, and thereby guarantee a Jewish majority within Israel (which may now include transferring some Arab-Israeli citizens to a future Palestinian state); and ensure that if a Palestinian state is declared, it will be weak, diminished and highly dependent on Israel ­ a condition Sharon believes the Palestinians will have no choice but to accept. In this way, Sharon is seeking to manage rather than end the conflict, in a manner acceptable internationally and domestically.

If Sharon successfully removes a majority of settlers from Gaza (relocating them to the West Bank or the Negev), which he himself states will take one or two years, he will, no doubt, be praised by the US and Europeans for having made “painful concessions” for peace ­ for which Palestinians will have to reciprocate. Israel will be financially rewarded and Sharon, having “relinquished” volatile Gaza, will have strengthened his argument for maintaining control over those West Bank areas deemed essential for security or settlement purposes. Some observers argue that under such a scenario, Israeli control could extend to almost 60 percent of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians under permanent and worsening occupation.

Domestically, Sharon’s call to disengage from Gaza holds great appeal to many if not most Israelis, including the military, which does not support its occupation or the expense associated with it. Most importantly, Israeli mothers and fathers do not want their children sent to Khan Younis or Netzarim to perform military service, where they face considerable danger. Furthermore, as a US official recently told me: “The optics of Rafah are appalling to many here and abroad,” and erasing them from popular consciousness has its own advantages. For Palestinians these “optics” include: the division of the West Bank into 300 isolated clusters, and Gaza into four; the building of more than 500 military checkpoints throughout the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the uprising, solidifying the fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian lands and severely restricting the movement of people; the demolition of at least 3,000 homes since September 2000, leaving between 10,000 and 40,000 people homeless in Gaza alone ­ while the number of settlers in Gaza’s Kfar Darom and Netzarim settlements grew by 51 percent and 24 percent, respectively, since March 2001 when Sharon came to power.

In parallel, there has been a contraction of the Palestinian economy by half; an average unemployment rate of between 30-40 percent over the last three years, with rates in Gaza exceeding 50 percent at times; a poverty rate that increased from 21 percent in September 2000 to 60 percent as early as December 2002, with certain regions of Gaza reaching 80 percent; a decline in overall food consumption of more than 25 percent per capita, with more than half the Palestinian population totally dependent on food aid, and over 22 percent of Palestinian children suffering from acute and severe malnutrition ­ levels equivalent to those in parts of sub-Saharan Africa; the destruction of, and damage to, Palestine’s physical resources, amounting to a loss of $1.7 billion through 2002; and the building of the separation barrier in the West Bank, now projected to run over 600 kilometers, cutting the territory into 16 isolated communities, effectively annexing at least 15 percent and as much as 58 percent of the West Bank to Israel, and entrapping or otherwise severely affecting over 670,000 Palestinians through loss of land and destruction of assets.

In light of these realities, any attempt by Israel to unilaterally separate from Palestinians will bring further misery and certain disaster. Yet, such attempts have already been implemented long before Sharon’s disengagement proposal. In May 2003, for example, foreign visitors wishing to enter Gaza, including human rights and NGO workers and international monitors, were required to sign a waiver absolving Israel of responsibility for their injury or death by the Israeli Army. Many refused and consequently fewer are present in Gaza.

On Jan. 4, 2004 Israel issued a new set of restrictions designed to obstruct the entry of foreign nationals into Gaza and the West Bank, further isolating Palestinians. Now, individuals wishing to enter the Occupied Territories must apply for permission and obtain written authorization from the Israeli civil administration. Permission to enter Gaza requires a minimum of five days to obtain. Individuals found in the West Bank or Gaza without official authorization can be deported and refused future entry into Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Perhaps most worrisome, NGOs wishing to enter Gaza must now disclose the following information to the Israelis ­ which many are loathe to do ­ before permission will be given: information about the organization, its annual report, website and scope of work; a 24-hour contact number and the CV of the head of mission; information about the main funders of the organization; a letter from the home consulate or embassy of the organization stating it is recognized as an aid or development organization; and a list of expatriate staff wishing to enter Gaza, including names, passport numbers, nationality and position. This information must be supplied five working days in advance of entry.

The requirements will increase the difficulties already encountered by NGOs operating in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, the provision of humanitarian relief has become so encumbered that the heads of several international and UN agencies have threatened to cease their operations altogether.

Unilateral separation, which in the end is physically and functionally impossible, has yet to succeed as a long-term policy. Sharon’s strategy ­ “giving up” some land to gain control over other land ­ is an old one among Israeli politicians. What is different now is the rapidly deteriorating conditions of life among Palestinians, and the slow but steady dissipation of their society. There is no separation from that.

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.