A New Day?

In the PA election on Sunday the Palestinians gave Mahmoud Abbas (abu Mazen)
a majority of 66% (unconfirmed reports). Now he has a mandate to act on
behalf of his own people to replace the chaos and lawlessness in the PA by
reorganizing the security forces into effective and loyal units that can
disarm the gangs of terrorists and thugs that are bedevilling the lives of
the Palestinians. For example, in the past few months over 45 individuals
have been summarily executed for being so-called "collaborators" with Israel
(you won't read about this in your liberal newspapers). The question is
will he do it?
He also has a mandate to negotiate a peace treaty with the Israeli Govt.,
that would manifestly improve the lot of his people. But, this cannot
happen unless there is a ceasefire, including a cessation of the rockets
that have been raining on the Negev. There have been hundreds of these in
the past few weeks (you won't read about these in your liberal newspaper
either), and although they are mostly ineffective, last week one of them hit
beside a school bus full of children in Sderot. Of course, the terrorists
of al Aksa and Hamas hope to continue and even step-up their attacks so that
Israel will be forced to respond and Abbas will not be able to curtail them.
Such an attack occurred on Friday when a car carrying 4 IDF soldiers in
civilian clothes was deliberately ambushed near Nablus. Sgt. Attiah from
Petach Tikva was killed and the three others wounded. Although the IDF took
this very seriously they did not change their tactics of opening up most
checkpoints and allowing Palestinians to move around freely in order to
vote. Although this was done, it did not stop the Palestinian elections
commission from criticizing Israel, even though the low turnout in some
areas, particularly southern Gaza, had more to do with the Hamas boycott
than Israeli checkpoints.
Coincidentally on the same day as the PA election, the new coalition Govt.
of Likud, Labor and the orthodox UTJ party (with 6 seats) was installed in
the Knesset, thus giving Sharon a majority again (66 out of 120). Now the
Disengagement Plan from Gaza will go ahead rapidly. Abbas will want to
coordinate the withdrawal of the IDF with the take-over by his forces to
make sure that Hamas and others won't steal the opportunity. So he will
have to meet soon with Sharon and come to terms with him over the
coordination of the disengagement process. This could augur well for the
future.
The main fly in the ointment at the moment is whether or not the settler
groups will resort to force in resisting the evacuation of their
settlements. They will certainly resist, but the extent of their reaction
will make a very big difference. If they resort to the use of firearms then
a very serious situation will escalate within Israel. Also, whether or not a
large proportion of (religious) soldiers obey the Rabbinical ruling not to
force settlers to move will be important. We have been in similar situations
before, for example with the evacuation from Sinai, when the settlers in
Yamit (although they were not predominantly religious) fought the IDF. But,
then there was no shooting involved. Let's hope the Gaza withdrawal will
pass with minimal conflict this time too, both between the IDF and the
settlers and the IDF and the Palestinian terrorist groups.