From Gaza to Baghdad

Here8217;s the message I take from this: There is nothing like the burden of responsibility to promote accountability. Ariel Sharon has declared his intention to withdraw Israeli forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip 8212; without any formal agreement with the Palestinians. Sharon has given up on negotiating with Arafat, let alone Hamas, but he finally understands that Israel cannot go on controlling all these Palestinian lands and remain a Jewish democracy. So he is unilaterally pulling out of Gaza, just as his predecessor, Ehud Barak, pulled out of South Lebanon: You want it, it8217;s yours.

What the Haaretz article tells me is that Arafat and Hamas understand two things: One, the morning after Israel8217;s pullout, they will get to pat themselves on the back for being Gaza8217;s liberators. And two, the morning after the morning after, the Gazans will be tapping Arafat and Hamas leaders on their shoulders to ask for jobs, water and electricity. Yes, Arafat and Hamas will continue to blame Israel for shortages of all those things, but those charges won8217;t quite fly once the Israelis pull out 8212; provided Israel is smart and allows Gaza some openings to the world so it doesn8217;t become just a big prison 8212; and Israel also withdraws settlements from the West Bank.

Ask Hezbollah. For all of its boasts about driving the Israelis out of South Lebanon and marching next on Jerusalem, since the Israeli pullout to a UN-approved border, Hezbollah has never dared cross that border in force. Why? Because Hezbollah knows that Israel, having pulled back to the UN border, has the moral and strategic high ground, and would blow up the power plants of Beirut if Hezbollah invaded. And Hezbollah doesn8217;t want that responsibility.

8216;8216;Maybe it8217;s good that Hamas wants to claim credit for driving Israel out 8212; if they are responsible for liberating Gaza, they are also responsible for running it,8217;8217; said the Israeli scholar Yaron Ezrahi. 8216;8216;It diminishes Israel8217;s responsibility and increases Hamas8217; at the same time. The only way to really reduce the violence is when you create a context where Palestinian leaders, not Israel, are held accountable by their own people for the negative fallout from violence.8217;8217;

And this leads to our challenge in Iraq. America8217;s Baghdad boss, L. Paul Bremer, is absolutely right when he insists that we must turn over sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, as promised. Why? Because we may have trained thousands of Iraqi policemen, but without a government of their own, they are defending America 8212; which they will never do with vigour. The only thing they might defend is a government of their own. Moreover, right now many Iraqi leaders blame the United States for what is going wrong in Iraq. The Bush team deserves much blame, but not all. Iraq8217;s nascent leaders will begin to act in a concerted and responsible fashion only when they 8212; like Hamas, Arafat and Hezbollah 8212; have the burden of responsibility.

I8217;m not advocating unilateral withdrawal from Iraq. I am advocating putting every ounce of energy we have behind the UN effort to replace the current Iraqi Governing Council with a legitimate, broad-based caretaker government to run Iraq from July 1, 2004, until elections in January 2005. Hard, but not impossible.

After decades of colonialism and misrule, and then a traumatic dictatorship in an already tribalised society, Iraqi national identity is weak 8212; and insecurity only weakens it more by prompting people to fall back on their tribal units. But there is an Iraqi identity. It takes security, though, for it to emerge. Even Iraqis don8217;t know how strong it is, and they won8217;t know until they are handed the keys.

Only then can we gradually shift the burden for Iraq8217;s self-construction or self-destruction to Iraqis themselves. Only then will they begin to be accountable 8212; and accountability is the mother of both self-restraint and self-government.

New York Times