The outbreak of fighting in Gaza over the past few days, triggered by the explosion of Hamas munitions in the midst of a packed rally, was the first tentative round of what is likely to develop into a full scale military free for all.  The multilateral conflict, in which Israel is only one participant, has been heating up since the months before the death of Yasir Arafat.  While all the Palestinian factions have a narrow interest in maintaining some level of enmity with Israel, each of them knows that the immediate threat to their power comes from their Palestinian rivals.

Two major events happened simultaneously this week:  PM Ariel Sharon barely succeeded in ensuring the Likud primaries will be held in the spring (narrowly defeating Benyamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau in a Likud Central commitee as the two wanted to move the vote up to November in an effort to remove Sharon as party leader) and the Palestinians in a blatant show of force decided on massive kassam rocket attacks from Gaza into the western Negev.

As long as Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the Fatah faction are the leaders of the Palestinian Authority there is no chance terrorism will abate.  The Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will continue to undermine the PA regime which exists more in name than in action.  Endemic corruption makes the Fatah controlled PA more like a criminal organization than a governmental structure.  With very little possibility for moral influence or physical coercion in confrontation with the Islamists the best the Fatah dominated PA can do, is to disappear.

Many people are trying to assess what Israeli PM Ariel Sharon accomplished with this summer’s Disengagement.  In the immediate future the lives of the 10,000 Jews uprooted from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria will continue to be disrupted.  The trauma will follow them forever, never to be wiped out.  The State of Israel and the Jewish People will have to deal with these personal tragedies for a very long time.

Gaza is rapidly reaching boiling point as tribal style conflict begins to surface in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli withdrawal from the area.  Yesterday’s abortive mob rush to the ruins of Neve Dekalim that ended with a Palestinian killed after he climbed on an IDF tank, followed by this morning’s assassination of Musa Arafat (cousin of late unlamented Yasir) two blocks from the headquarters of the PA Security Services are just the first rounds of what is likely to erupt in the near future.

Generals sacrifice soldiers, politicians sacrifice civilians.  Armies are expected to win wars while state leaders are expected to “win the peace.”   Both are constrained in what they do in order to remain in power.  They know they are replaceable.  Israeli PM Ariel Sharon has held both roles and knows the game intimately.  Like all good generals he has unwillingly but determinedly sent soldiers to their deaths in order to win his battles.  Likewise, one aspect of Sharon’s political being is to achieve conflict resolution with the Arab world, especially the Palestinians.  Here Israeli civilians will pay the price, or to be more exact, many of those who live in settlements across the 1967 borders.  Similar to the army, they were sent forward in the front lines and in the end some will be sacrificed to achieve the overall objective of “peace”.  The vast majority are expected to hold the line and survive.  The demographic battle lines are drawn and those on “this side of the fence” will remain in Israel.