Since Ariel Sharon coined the term "disengagement," opponents of Israeli territorial withdrawals have complained about the Orwellian nature of the term. And yet, as hard as opponents of the leftist view that Israel's security is enhanced by Israeli land transfers to Palestinian terrorists fought against the withdrawal policy and pointed out its dangers, their warnings were no match for the concept of "disengagement."
In Israel's geographic, ethnic, and military contexts, the term "disengagement" is first and foremost a psychological concept. It is concerned not with reality but with the deep-seated Israeli yearning to escape from our hostile environment. It holds the promise that Israel can determine a border that will separate us from our hostile neighbors.
In an article published immediately after the conclusion of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria last August, Ha'aretz commentator Ari Shavit upheld the notion of the border. He claimed that the significance of the operation was that "after the era of the settlement ethos and after the era of the peace ethos, the turn has now come for the border ethos."
The problem is that a border can only be meaningful if the people on both sides of the divide recognize it and understand its meaning in the same way. Since the Palestinians do not recognize Israel's right to determine its borders, any border that Israel chooses will only operate in one direction. While Israel will honor Palestinian territorial integrity, the Palestinians will insist on their "right" to cross the border at will.
But reality is no match for psychological yearning. Israelis want to disengage.
Israelis are not unique in their desire to cut themselves off from their culturally alien - not to mention hostile - neighbors. The one-way border syndrome has stricken wide swaths of the Western world. For instance, the conflict between the US and Mexico over regulation of their border is becoming increasingly acute as the Mexican government continues to encourage its citizens to illegally migrate to the US.
Similarly, the leaders of the Arab states along the Mediterranean, such as Morocco, Tunis and Algeria, have obstinately refused repeated European requests to take steps to prevent the massive illegal immigration of their citizens into Europe.
These examples illustrate the complexity of the concept of a border when people on its opposite sides differ on their interpretations of its meaning and importance. Yet Israel's border syndrome is even more hazardous than that suffered by the Americans and the Europeans because at least the Mexican, Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian governments accept the fact of American and European sovereignty. Their conflicts are limited to divergent interpretations of what that sovereignty entails. In Israel's case, the Palestinians have never accepted Israel's sovereignty along any borders whatsoever.
The fact of the matter is that in the wake of the global jihad and the increased rejection of assimilation by cultural and ethnic minorities in Western states, among large and growing sectors of the Western societies, citizens yearn to isolate themselves from an increasingly hostile international environment. In Europe as in sectors of America, citizens ignore the war cries of their enemies and focus their energies on debating their rights in their welfare societies.
Like the Europeans, Israelis crave the luxury of ignoring the country's primary need to ensure its security and the preservation of Israel's character as a Jewish state. Sharon's coining of the term "disengagement" enabled this unrealistic desire to be transformed into a socially acceptable world view and an attractive government policy much as the abstract, amorphous concept of "peace" became the only socially acceptable aim of government policy in the 1990s.
Sharon and his political followers sold the public the belief that if Israel "disengages" from its neighborhood, then Israeli society will finally be able to turn its attentions to "truly important" issues like government welfare payments to single mothers and gay marriage.
The Israeli media has played a critical role in advancing the notion that the dream of disengagement is a realistic policy option. The local media coverage of events in the Palestinian Authority is so superficial and indifferent that an Israeli news consumer would be perfectly justified in believing that events in Ramallah, Jenin and Gaza bear little influence on his life and well-being. Newscasters speak in the same breath of missiles falling on Ashkelon, al-Qaida attacking from Lebanon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom undercutting the authority of his party leader Binyamin Netanyahu. In the best of cases, the three stories are viewed as equally important by our newscasters. In most cases, Silvan's attempts to humiliate Bibi are covered with far greater passion and attention to detail than attempted missile strikes on the Ashkelon-Eilat oil pipeline and the increased activity of al-Qaida in Lebanon and Gaza.
AGAINST THIS backdrop of Israeli societal self-obsession, the elections to the Palestinian legislative council are scheduled to take place in 12 days. Most of the news coverage and commentary regarding these elections has focused on short-term issues: Will Hamas emerge victorious in the elections? Will Arab residents of Jerusalem be allowed to vote? Although these are interesting issues, they miss the larger reality.
That reality is that regardless of what happens in the elections, and regardless of whether Israel and the Palestinians ever renew negotiations, the contours of the Palestinian state are well known and have been known since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. The anarchy, terror, corruption, poverty and ideological commitment to the destruction of Israel that have been the consistent characteristics of the Palestinian Authority since its inception provide us with a precise description of what the realization of the vision for a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict with Israel entails.
