You cannot lead people somewhere you are unwilling to go; Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent resignation is good for everyone, given that Israel is pretty much inside a fait de accompli with regards to disengagement. While now former Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disengaged from government and engaged in political maneuvering, the Unilateral Disengagement Plan proceeds forward under the direction of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Ariel Sharon never served in the elite Special Forces unit that Netanyahu led while in the Military, but Mr. Sharon did serve in the Israeli Forces for more than 25 years. Endurance may prove more valuable than talent in this political race. Netanyahu’s resignation will not delay the pull-out of the 21 settlements in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank, but it might serve to create turmoil within the right-wing Likud Party which has supported settlement activity since 1967. This might prove to be exactly what is necessary for some true progress to be made for peace by fragmenting the right-wing.

Fractionalizing the Likud Party by riling them up, Netanyahu may also make the unilateral disengagement plan that Sharon is pushing successful by precipitating the realignment of the right-wing base that if unified could have mounted stronger resistance. Mr. Netanyahu, who has opposed the pullout but voted for it anyway, reminiscent of U.S. Senator John Kerry and the war in Iraq, might soon be seen as a flip flopper in addition to being seen as a ‘quitter’, a tag suggested by a frustrated ally, Limor Livnat, the education minister.

Granted, the disengagement in Gaza is unilateral but Netanyahu’s resistance to it is on the basis of it not being coupled with a Palestinian concession. How much more do Palestinians conceed?

Disengagement is not being implemented in accordance to any terms that they have endorsed or approved therefore and furthermore, disengagement is something that needs no concession because the circumstance that now requires it should never have happened as acknowledged by UN Resolution 242 and 446; Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and Israeli settlements are illegal.

Political dancing aside, the disengagement continues to be the international legitimacy machine for Israel that it is marketed as. The minimal scuffling between the settlers and the soldiers, the lofty words of nobility and honor that are thrown into the media of how the Israeli soldiers, “feel the pain” of the settlers but as members of a democracy must comply with the mission put to them; this all sounds very good for print and television.

Palestine does not take the resignation of Netanyahu nor the Disengagement Plans as something that bares much significance on the policy of Israel.

Disengagement is not bad. It is not enough. Where Netanyahu advises seeking a concession by Palestine, Palestine requires concessions from Israel. Palestine is waiting for the 1949 Armistice line to be respected, for settlement activity to stop, for land razing and land seizures to quit, for demeaning and humiliating measures to end, for targeted assassinations to cease, for the release of prisoners, and humane treatment of those that are not released. Palestinians are waiting for Israelis to stop thinking of themselves and start thinking of what it is they are doing and have done. What they are doing is not for ‘security or for justice’ but for their own welfare, just as Netanyahu’s resignation is not for ‘principle or peace’ but political promotion.