Lawless in Gaza

Douglas Davis says that Ariel Sharon’s wisest decision was his last one — to pull out of the anarchic terrorist hothouse of Gaza

As the dominating presence of Ariel Sharon recedes from the public stage, his lasting legacy is likely to be not his military exploits but his final major political act: unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Israel had tried engagement, and when that did not work it opted for disengagement. If the Oslo accords promised a marriage between Palestinians and Israelis, Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal signalled a divorce. Reconciliation could be generations away.

There were high hopes in Europe that Sharon’s evacuation would rekindle the peace process; that the Palestinian Authority would seize the end of the occupation to assert itself as a coherent, credible administration. That was not to be. The kidnapping of Kate Burton and her parents in Gaza late last month was a nasty reality check. So, too, were the less publicised events which followed their release.

When the Palestinian Authority initially refused to free the kidnapper — himself a member of the mainstream Fatah security forces — other Fatah members went on the rampage. They commandeered two bulldozers, punched through the concrete barrier on the Gaza–Egypt border and opened fire. Two Egyptian border guards were killed and 30 wounded. The Palestinian Authority hastily freed the kidnapper, who, with his colleagues, is back on the beat. On Monday, amid a continuing deterioration in security, the Foreign Office advised British citizens to leave Gaza unless they had round-the-clock ‘professional close-security arrangements’. On the same day Egypt warned the Palestinians it would withdraw its support unless the slide into anarchy was stopped.