Forward Pass

Less than a week after Hamas's stunning victory in the Palestinian elections, Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears before activists to launch the election campaign of his centrist party, Kadima ("Forward"). Flanked by blow-up photographs of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains in a coma, Olmert refers only obliquely to Hamas's electoral success, noting, "We aren't thrown by external threats, including those of recent days." And he cites as one of Israel's central challenges "defining the final borders of the state of Israel as a state with a clear and solid Jewish majority." Yet there isn't a hint of how Israel is to establish those borders, given that the rise of Hamas has ended the hopes of even the most optimistic Israelis for a negotiated peace. In previous speeches, Olmert has implied that unilateral withdrawal--the policy begun by Sharon last summer in Gaza--would likely still be Kadima's fallback option for the West Bank. In a speech just last week, Olmert noted that, should the road map fail to revive the peace process, Israel would act "through any means" to ensure the preservation of its Jewish majority- -widely understood here as a euphemism for unilateral withdrawal.Now, though, the notion of handing over territory to a Palestinian Authority (P.A.) dominated by the Iranian-backed Hamas has led to second thoughts across the political spectrum. In one recent poll, barely 20 percent of the electorate continues to endorse unilateralism--down by some 30 percent in the last month. And that shift has reinforced those within Kadima who already opposed additional unilateral moves. Ironically, the rise of Hamas confirms the logic of unilateralism--that there is no one to make a deal with on the Palestinian side--even as it confirms the warnings of opponents of unilateralism that additional territorial concessions will only further erode Israeli security. And so Kadima is left with platitudes about the road map and the need for the P. A. to disarm terrorist organizations, even as a terrorist organization becomes the P.A. Kadima is setting out on its election campaign not only bereft of its charismatic founder but without any credible plan for dealing with Hamas beyond sitting tight. Yet, according to polls, that's exactly what a majority of Israelis want their government to do: no negotiations, no recognition, and no more unilateral withdrawals. This partly explains why Kadima continues to lead in the polls, maintaining its hold on the Israeli center and confounding skeptics who insisted the party would disintegrate after Sharon's departure. But, while sitting tight may constitute a wise short-term strategy, both strategically and politically, Kadima could begin to crack when the time comes to decide the future of the territories. And the fault line may well be Kadima's ambivalence about unilateralism. Within Kadima, the most outspoken opponent of unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank is Avi Dichter, the recently resigned head of the domestic security service Shin Bet and the architect of Israel's policy of using targeted assassinations to combat terrorism. Sharon was so keen on including Dichter on his party's list that he postponed elections until Dichter completed a waiting period, mandated by Israeli law, between when an official quits the security services and when he can enter politics. Given Sharon's absence and Olmert's lack of security credentials, Dichter's role in determining the party's security policy has only become more important. And few candidates are as popular with Kadima activists: When Dichter mounts the stage at Kadima's campaign launch, he is greeted with more enthusiastic applause than most of the veteran politicians. Dichter, who supported the Gaza withdrawal, doesn't answer a journalist's questions so much as offer minibriefings, still more the security man than the politician. "You can't compare the West Bank to Gaza," he explains. "There was no security need to remain in Gaza, except to protect the settlers. We weren't protecting the state from Gaza. But that's not at all the situation in the West Bank. Gaza is not close to major [Israeli] population centers; the opposite is true in the West Bank. If Hamas maintains its ties with Iran and continues terror, they will lose the West Bank. There's no chance we will allow the West Bank to become a kingdom of terror." However central Dichter's voice in the party, though, it's premature to bury unilateral withdrawal as a Kadima option. "Unilateralism is hovering around us all the time, especially now," notes one key Kadima official. "But there's no reason for us to bring it up until the international community sees that it's the Palestinians who killed the road map and that they must pay a price for it." Part of that price could be an Olmert initiative to win international backing for expanding the borders Israel would retain in a unilateral withdrawal. Until the rise of Hamas, the assumption here was that Israel's West Bank security fence would be the most likely border to which Israel would withdraw, leaving it with some 10 percent of the territories. Now, though, some unilateralists insist on also including the Jordan Valley, the West Bank's border with the Arab world, to prevent penetration of Iranian weaponry and advisers. That's hardly a marginal detail: The Jordan Valley constitutes a large swath of the West Bank. Notes Dan Schueftan, a security analyst who is considered the father of Israeli unilateralism and who is close to Kadima leaders, "The big change is that we will now have to keep the Jordan Valley. If we give the Palestinians a link with the Arab world, the West Bank will turn into Gaza. And that will force us to conquer it again." Indeed, Kadima has suddenly rediscovered the significance of retaining the Jordan Valley in Sharon's strategic thinking--which, until the Hamas victory, was scarcely noted in Kadima circles. "Sharon repeatedly stressed the importance of the Jordan Valley to Israeli security," says Lior Horev, a Kadima political adviser. "We'll convey that to the Israeli voter." One possible model for a unilateral withdrawal that would still address the new security threat is the Israeli evacuation of four West Bank settlements last August. Largely eclipsed by the Gaza pullout, that limited West Bank withdrawal evacuated settlers but kept the Israeli army in the area. Still, Dichter rejects even that model as a self-inflicted wound at a time when fighting terrorism, rather than encouraging Israeli infighting, should be the priority. "The only relevant criterion for determining evacuations should be security," he notes. If there is any issue that could split the seemingly invincible Kadima, an amalgam of ex-Likud and ex-Labor politicians, it's disagreement over unilateralism. Shimon Peres, a likely leader of a pro-unilateral faction and number-two on the Kadima list, has already tacitly broken ranks with Kadima on the question of Hamas recognition. Olmert has insisted on three preconditions for recognizing Hamas--recognition of Israel, disarmament, and acceptance of the P.A.'s commitments. Yet Peres, speaking from Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the recent World Economic Forum, cited only one: that the terrorist group leave its guns at the door. A Kadima spokesperson insists that Peres accepts all three of Olmert's preconditions; yet the discrepancy was pointedly noted by the Israeli press and not denied by Peres. If Kadima does opt for unilateral withdrawal, its likely coalition partner will be Labor, which is the only party to explicitly endorse unilateralism as a response to the Hamas victory. But, if Kadima chooses the Dichter approach, its likely coalition partner will be the Likud, which opposes unilateralism--and is, in fact, blaming Hamas's victory on the perceived boost to terrorism provided by the Gaza withdrawal. So far, that argument hasn't taken hold: In a recent poll, some 55 percent rejected any significant link between the Gaza withdrawal and the rise of Hamas. Notes Dichter, "Hamas's popularity in Gaza grew over the last five years, when we were sitting in Gaza." Meanwhile, Kadima continues to rise in the polls. Partly, that's by default. Olmert's rivals aren't liked or trusted by most voters. Not even the rise of Hamas has substantially boosted Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is widely resented for his economic policies as finance minister, which hurt the poor. For his part, Labor's Amir Peretz, who gambled on a domestic rather than a security agenda, appears irrelevant. Following the Hamas victory, less than 8 percent of the public said it trusts Peretz to deal with security issues. Still, Olmert too has a way to go in proving himself, not only to the Israeli public, but even to his own party. At Kadima's launch rally, Dudu Cohen, a 30-year veteran Likud activist from the West Bank town of Maaleh Adumim, near Jerusalem, listens to Olmert's speech and shakes his head. "He's not Sharon," says Cohen, who quit the Likud only because of his admiration for the former prime minister. I ask Cohen whether he would support Olmert if he opted for unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank. "I can't imagine what that would look like," he replies. "I couldn't bear watching the withdrawal from Gaza on TV. But, then again, in the end, I supported it. If Olmert decides on withdrawal, I guess the party will support him. Maybe I just don't want to imagine it happening again. Just as I couldn't imagine it happening the first time." With Hamas still celebrating its victory, it's a possibility few Israelis can imagine. Yet, given the alternative of renewing an occupation that most Israelis have rejected, Kadima may soon find itself debating precisely that scenario. And, as Kadima supporters well know, in Israel, the inconceivable often has a way of becoming inevitable.

By yossi klein halevi