a momentous occasion

Both symbolically and literally, the Israeli pull-out of Gaza is an incredible thing. Ethan Bronner talked about its meaning in a column in the Sunday New York Times:

FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?

But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of them came.

As far as I am concerned, it is refreshing to see a government both acknowledge that the present situation is untenable and to actually move forward with concrete steps to do something about it (even if it does seem to have occured decades too late).

However, the Gaza pullout is definitely no kind of panacea for Israeili-Palestinian relations either. Not only does it leave open the issue of what is to be done about those settled in the West Bank, but it has made domestic relations among settlers and authorities very problematic. We'll see what happens now that the deadline for pullout has expired.

In my opinion, this is definitely a step forward, but I just fear that the distance travelled thusfar is minute in comparison to what must be undertaken to reach the end of this road.