Out-and-out

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza made headlines but not much analysis. Dina Ezzat is left unimpressed

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This was the week of the Israel disengagement/ withdrawal/pullout -- the wording depended on the political orientation of the newspaper -- from Gaza. It is, according to some Islamist papers, the week where activist resistance forced Israel to end its close to four-decade occupation of a part of Palestinian land.

Throughout the week, Gaza was high on the pages of the semi-official, opposition and independent papers. Monday, the disengagement day was widely covered on the front pages. The story was given prominence, even by the semi-official papers, over news of the electoral campaign of President Hosni Mubarak.

Al-Ahram, the leading Egyptian daily and supposedly the closest to the state, dedicated one of its editorials to "the end of occupation in the Gaza Strip" captured by Israel in the 1967 War. For Al-Ahram 's editorial, as like most editorials of Egyptian papers on the right, centre and left, the disengagement was "a very important step" for whatever it's worth, as some argued.

Again, throughout the week there were photos from Gaza of Israeli settlers weeping as they packed up, of Israeli troops getting ready to leave Gaza. And photos of Palestinians celebrating what is widely perceived a collective Palestinian victory.

In his daily column in Al-Ahram on Monday, Makram Mohamed Ahmed called it "a calm withdrawal against many expectations." There were questions: The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: beginning of peace or a prelude to an Israeli trap? as Al-Wafd, the daily mouthpiece of the right-wing opposition Wafd Party, asked on Sunday. There were the schedules of the details of the withdrawal and the names of Israeli settlements to be dismantled.

There was an analysis of the reaction of settlers vehemently opposed to the disengagement. "The Jewish state as such is based on the concept of settlements. No wonder that settlers are in such an insane state of anger now that they are asked to leave," Nabil Zaki wrote in Al-Akhbar on Monday.

There were statements by Palestinian officials and interviews with the leading Palestinian Islamist activists who insisted it was thanks to their attacks against Israeli targets that the Israelis retreated.

"The Palestinian people are certain that the road of a negotiated settlement is a waste of time. They know that these negotiations offered an umbrella of legitimacy to the daily Israeli violations," Hamas leader Hassan Youssef told the Islamist weekly Afaq Arabiya, mouthpiece of the outlawed but highly influential Muslim Brotherhood, on Thursday. According to Youssef, the second Intifada set new rules for the game based on a belief that resistance, not negotiations, will realise for the Palestinians their elusive dream of independence. "As far as weapons of the resistance movement are concerned, I say that so long as our land is occupied we will not give them up irrespective of the pressure exerted by the US and its Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice," Youssef said.

The role of the resistance in getting Israel out of Gaza was repeatedly emphasised, and at times contested. In an interview with Al-Ahram 's correspondent in Gaza, another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, argued that it was "the resistance that forced the Zionist machinery to take steps back."

But when it was Egyptian commentators -- especially those with semi-official papers -- the argument was summed up by Makram. "With all due respect to Hamas I believe that it has no right to exclusively attribute the disengagement to itself," Makram wrote in Al-Ahram on Monday -- the same day officials of the Palestinian Authority were quoted by the Egyptian press as saying, "Hamas has no right to hijack the disengagement."

Beyond the straightforward reporting and commentaries there were very little deep reflective pieces on Gaza. Very few asked the obvious question: what will the Palestinians/Arabs, not to mention Egypt specifically, and the international community do if Israel decides what many fear: Gaza is first and last. Fewer asked the equally obvious and pressing question of who will help the Palestinians make Gaza the first building block of an independent Palestinian state.

There were some fair question. "Would Gaza turn into a big prison for Palestinians after the Israeli withdrawal?" asked Sanaa El-Said in her weekly back page article in Al-Wafd on Sunday. According to El-Said, "the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon calls disengagement is about the liquidation of the Palestinian issue and the elimination of the right of Palestinians to have their independent state or even the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland."

As prominent Al-Ahram commentator Fahmi Howeidi concluded in his weekly Tuesday article, "it is still far too early for the joy and happiness so loudly unfolding in the Arab world. Those rejoicing are simply echoing illusions if not downright lies about the 'trick' of the so-called disengagement." As Howeidi rightly noted, the Israeli move poses questions about the future that nobody seem to have answers to, including the future legal definition of the Gaza Strip and whether it will be considered occupied territory in view of the continued Israeli security control of its entry and exit points in what is a truly "absurd scene".