BYE BYE GAZA - Barry Chamish

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Netanyahu, and instead establish a new centrist party
drawing on some of the more moderate members of the
Likud and more importantly, moderate Israelis generally, and
get Shimon Peres and his Labor Party and the Shinui [a
secular Israeli party] to join with him ­ such a party would
emerge in the next election as dominant and would form the
next government.
And this centrist party, I assume, would be more willing
to go to road map negotiations?
Yes, exactly. And what also would make it possible for such
a centrist party to do that ­ to return to the road map, which
means doing some difficult things ­ is the fact that as a
consequence of the experiences Israelis have had this past
week, there is a fairly widespread disenchantment with the
settlers. Israelis no longer see them as the best and the
brightest but as a danger to the country and its democracy.
Israelis may now feel more confident about taking the risk of
doing some difficult things required by the road map that they
would not have considered doing before, when they feared
the power and influence of the settlers. The settlers emerge
from this confrontation considerably weakened, a shadow of
what they were before.
That‟s interesting because in the United States, so much
TV footage has been of the settlers, showing them in a
very sympathetic light. But the same TV images in Israel
did not win them much support?
No, it did not. I think the Israelis generally empathized with
their anguish, but there’s been a demystification of the
settlers. And I think this will have serious political
consequences. I think from the point of view of the peace
process, that is one of the most positive outcomes of this
encounter between the largely secular and centrist Jewish
public in Israel and the settlers.
What about the Palestinians? What do they have to do?