Not one month ago I warily regarded Israel's surrender of the Gaza Strip to Arab refugees as a farsighted sacrifice, every bit as painful as it was shrewd. Necessary? Perhaps, and I refrained from calling marks without Ariel Sharon's vantage. But the inconsonance of rewarding a slum-ridden gangland with territory to govern was plain. "Watch, over the months, the fate of Gaza farms being confiscated from their Jewish owners," I wrote. "That will be a measure of the stewardship of men who say to us that the people they rule should have a state."
Richard Fernandez cites grim but expected news: mobs of refugees, alongside constables in the employ of the Palestine Liberation Organization, descended on greenhouses in Gaza. Israelis brought flower to the arid landscape, and in spite of a desperate appeal for preservation — New York Jews led an effort to buy the greenhouses for a total of $14 million — the pride of Yasser Arafat has decided Arrakis will return to sand. The estates have been compromised and stripped.
There is a terrifying comedy in the thought that, add a day or two, $14 million might have purchased deeds for the memory of greenhouses. That kind of farce makes a devil laugh, for it is a skit within the travesty of the "Palestinian state": transnationalist diplomats persuade Israel to purchase bonds for the humanity of Arab fascism, a debt on which the transnationalists know the fascists will default. But of course, everyone — creditor, broker, confidence artist — can claim, like the Gaza annex in better times, the remembrance of good intentions.
Last January President Bush erred when he in political magnanimity asked us to conflate balloting in a violent and superstitious authoritarian hovel (the election of Arafat scion Mahmoud Abbas) with a vote that was administered after three years of guarded reform (Afghanistan's election and retention of Hamed Karzai). PLO-land is a dictatorship, and a dictatorship is not a national reflection of the character of the populace. It is a false projection established by a ruling elite that wields power, indefinitely, through the very real projections of force, intimidation and political unipolarity.
In that immutable law is hope for the long term and a warning for the short term. The hope is that Arabs and Muslims will readily act as men when they are allowed by the state. Think Baghdad, Kabul, Beirut. But not Gaza; we are presently in the short term. Keep watch in the press for news of the farms, for the soil itself is next.