E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Gaza pullout The withdrawal proves as politically charged as the region’s history BY BOB ZELNICK

For my morning interview in Ramallah — the informal Palestinian capital — I had passed through the Qalandiyah checkpoint in 15 minutes, flashing nothing but my passport to an Israeli soldier. But when I tried to return around 6 pm, after an appointment in Jerusalem, the line was at a standstill and the wait, an estimated three hours. I reached for my cell phone and called my Palestinian fixer, Sanad, already in Ramallah. He told me to return to East Jerusalem and hire a cab. "He will bring you to the checkpoint for foreigners. You will be here in no time."

"No time" apparently discounted a blistering 40-minute ride through the hills and wadis, but once at the checkpoint the line was, as advertised, short. This time, however, the soldiers questioned my daughter, Marni — who served as my assistant — and me thoroughly, finally asking, "Are you Jewish?" When we acknowledged we were, they refused to let us pass. "We can’t guarantee your safety in Ramallah," the best English speaker explained. "The terrorists could kidnap or kill you."

Press credentials proved useless. Pleas of discrimination were ignored. Forty minutes of calls to Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) offices finally got us through the checkpoint, too late for the appointment, but not for a parting scold: "If I saw the man you want to interview, I’d arrest him." Driving back to Jerusalem, our Palestinian driver had some advice of his own: "Never say you’re Jewish around here. It complicates things."

Things were complicated enough. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who throughout his career would proclaim a settlement anywhere two or more Israelis had congregated, took a page from the book of a politically down-and-out peace camp — unilateral disengagement — and turned it into a dramatic evacuation of all Gaza settlements together with a token four on the West Bank.

By the time I arrived in late July, Sharon’s plan had been disowned by the Central Committee of his own center-right Likud Party. More dramatically, the religious Zionists, who had established settlements deep in the heart of the Palestinian West Bank, including scores of illegal "outposts," had converged on Gaza. They hoped to join forces with resisting settlers, at the very least to make the withdrawal so searing an experience that this first event would also be the last. Two leading rabbis urged IDF units to ignore orders to close the settlements, two others invoked a pulsa denura curse upon Sharon enlisting God’s angels to kill him. This is distinctly unfunny to a nation that saw similar invective precede the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. But as 40,000 IDF troops and special police trained in the desert set about their task, it became evident that neither settler nor sympathizer could seriously threaten the evacuation.

Gaza was no stranger to me. I first visited the Gaza Strip and the Israeli settlements that had been stapled to it as an ABC News correspondent during the mid ’80s. Even then the territory was bursting with squalid refugee camps, monuments to the giddy Arab belief that only by resisting re-settlement would they one day return to homes lost inside Israel in the 1948 war. Gaza City was dirty and dangerous, with cars and cabs competing frantically with horse and donkey carts for every inch of available space. Suddenly a different world came into view, one of comfortable homes and swimming pools, hothouse vegetables and flowers flown to Europe fresh each day so the Dutch and Germans and French could enjoy a touch of spring in midwinter. Palestinians, if they were lucky, could find menial work for local Jews or line up for the buses each morning and work in Israel as day laborers, waiters, gardeners, and trash collectors. Palestinian banks? No such thing. Competing in markets serviced by Israel? Forget it. Opening a home sweatshop to stitch some clothes or Israeli footwear? Now you’re talking, Mahmoud.

At the time, Israel’s population in Gaza was less than 5000 with Palestinians numbering more than 600,000. Israelis had first claim on the water supply and the best available land. Egged on by Shin Bet intelligence agents who sought to undercut the PLO, a radical Islamic group known as Hamas was gathering strength in the refugee camps. Their members talked in terms of an apocalyptic struggle with the Jewish state. When I spoke to settlers about the state of affairs in Gaza, some expressed surprise that a Palestinian could object to a nearby family planting flowers and vegetables just because that family was Jewish. "If they don’t like it, let them move," was a common refrain.

Israeli leaders on the right would argue that Jews should be free to settle anywhere in the Land of Israel, while centrist leaders often claimed the settlements had value as defense outposts or potential bargaining chips, useful so long as the PLO remained committed to terrorism and the replacement of Israel with "a secular democratic state in all of Palestine." The world, it seemed, would one day hear a lot more about Gaza and the political leaders who covered their own collective failure of judgment with talk about the unreasonableness of the other side.

LOOKING BACKWARD

Gaza was no stranger to me. I first visited the Gaza Strip and the Israeli settlements that had been stapled to it as an ABC News correspondent during the mid '80s. Even then the territory was bursting with squalid refugee camps, monuments to the giddy Arab belief that only by resisting re-settlement would they one day return to homes lost inside Israel in the 1948 war. Gaza City was dirty and dangerous, with cars and cabs competing frantically with horse and donkey carts for every inch of available space. Suddenly a different world came into view, one of comfortable homes and swimming pools, hothouse vegetables and flowers flown to Europe fresh each day so the Dutch and Germans and French could enjoy a touch of spring in midwinter. Palestinians, if they were lucky, could find menial work for local Jews or line up for the buses each morning and work in Israel as day laborers, waiters, gardeners, and trash collectors. Palestinian banks? No such thing. Competing in markets serviced by Israel? Forget it. Opening a home sweatshop to stitch some clothes or Israeli footwear? Now you're talking, Mahmoud.

At the time, Israel's population in Gaza was less than 5000 with Palestinians numbering more than 600,000. Israelis had first claim on the water supply and the best available land. Egged on by Shin Bet intelligence agents who sought to undercut the PLO, a radical Islamic group known as Hamas was gathering strength in the refugee camps. Their members talked in terms of an apocalyptic struggle with the Jewish state. When I spoke to settlers about the state of affairs in Gaza, some expressed surprise that a Palestinian could object to a nearby family planting flowers and vegetables just because that family was Jewish. "If they don't like it, let them move," was a common refrain.

Israeli leaders on the right would argue that Jews should be free to settle anywhere in the Land of Israel, while centrist leaders often claimed the settlements had value as defense outposts or potential bargaining chips, useful so long as the PLO remained committed to terrorism and the replacement of Israel with "a secular democratic state in all of Palestine." The world, it seemed, would one day hear a lot more about Gaza and the political leaders who covered their own collective failure of judgment with talk about the unreasonableness of the other side.