Think for a minute about what that means.
Natan Sharansky, who for a decade was a worldwide symbol for human rights, the struggle against tyranny and spreading the democratic tradition around the world, has decided that he can no longer serve as a member of the Israeli government.
In all the time since Ariel Sharon unveiled the Disengagement Plan against which he so passionately campaigned in the 2003 election, he has not provided a single glimpse of how the plan’s implementation would benefit Israel – not a single reason why this plan should be implemented. This is a glaring omission, given the numerous reasons why the plan would be bad for Israel.
But the Israeli right has been equally delinquent in failing to explain those reasons. There has been virtually no public discussion about the failure of the Palestinians to dismantle the terrorist networks in the Gaza Strip, about the continuing preparations for renewed assault on Negev communities such as Sderot, about continuing weapons smuggling from Egypt, about the ability of the Palestinians to create a full-fledged terrorist state in territory Israel plans to evacuate.
All those reasons why the plan would be bad for Israel are anchored in one salient truth: that the Palestinian Authority continues to be an undemocratic regime whose people continue to suffer repression in their own society.
Only one person has spoken at all about the impending disaster that the Disengagement Plan will unleash, and why that disaster will happen. Natan Sharansky is easily the world’s most eloquent voice about the power of democracy to defeat tyranny. No person alive can bring as much to a discussion about the benefits of democratization as he can, and no person can bring the unique experience he has to describe the importance of the world’s war against tyranny.
Terrorism is the weapon of the tyrant. He employs this weapon against his own people in repressing their freedoms at home, and he employs it against free societies in his struggle for greater power on the world stage. Freedom-loving people do not blow up busses or trains or hotels or skyscrapers. They do not kill children in schools or people at cafes or shopping malls. Freedom-loving people make peace. They seek accommodation with adversaries and cooperation with allies.
Natan Sharansky has correctly evaluated that the Palestinians remain a tyrannical society. There remains no full-fledged democratic transformation in the Palestinian Authority, and no move toward increased freedom for Palestinian people in their own society.
Which begs the question: What will fill the vacuum once Israel disengages from the Gaza Strip? If terrorist organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front are left out of the upcoming Palestinian elections, then the elections themselves cannot be said to have been democratic. And if they are included, there is every reason to fear that they will win a majority between them and use their newfound power to increase repression within Palestinian society.
In either case, such a society cannot serve as a partner with which Israel will be able to make peace. Rather, the Disengagement Plan will result in a greater chance of war by allowing a terrorist-dominated society to continue unfettered preparations to launch that war.
The failure of the Israeli government to link the Disengagement Plan to serious democratic reform in the Palestinian Authority, including a cessation of incitement in Palestinian media and schools, and a re-education of society to adopt democratic traditions, means that Sharon’s government will be largely to blame for the new Terror War that awaits.
This is Sharansky’s message. It is one that Sharon, for all his warm wishes that Sharansky would remain in the government, ignored. Sharansky is now free to champion this message to other leaders like President Bush. He might find a more attentive audience there. For Sharansky’s message is one that any free society must be willing to hear if it is to be victorious over terrorism.
Natan Sharansky’s message is, and has been for his entire life, that freedom must blossom throughout the world in order for peace to be possible. The Israeli National Anthem speaks of our hope to be a free people in our land. But by ignoring Sharansky’s demand to link the Disengagement Plan to democratic reform, Israel will be left without freedom and without the land. Any Jewish government that cannot keep Sharansky as a member should be ashamed of itself.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
