The withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, which began yesterday and is expected to be substantially completed this week, is a welcome act of decolonisation from an unsustainable project.
Based on political and operational agreements between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, the initiative could catalyse wider talks on the future of Israeli occupation and settlements in the West Bank.
It will require sustained international pressure as well as trust and goodwill between the respective leaderships to translate what began as a unilateral Israeli policy into one that leads to a comprehensive peace settlement dealing with Jerusalem, refugees and final borders. As yet there is little likelihood of such an outcome. But if this pull-out goes ahead without major violence an important basis for further progress would be laid down.
Some 9,000 Israeli settlers are involved among an estimated Palestinian population of 1.2 million in Gaza, most of them descended from refugees of the 1948 Israeli war of independence. The gap between their positions and lifestyles, backed up by a huge military presence, has been one of the world's most unjust contrasts. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon concluded several years ago that this is an unsustainable occupation. In his broadcast last night justifying the decision he reminded Israelis: "We cannot hold on to Gaza forever, more than a million Palestinians live there ... crowded in refugee camps, poverty and hotbeds of hatred with no hope on the horizon."
Mr Sharon argues that staying in Gaza would undermine the far more powerful Israeli presence on the West Bank and in east Jerusalem. There, some 430,000 settlers occupy strategic and economically valuable areas which are being daily reinforced to create irreversible facts on the ground.
The token withdrawal from four West Bank settlements yesterday cannot disguise this. It must be seen in the context of Mr Sharon's repeatedly stated policy to maintain the Israeli presence on the West Bank and never to concede a divided Jerusalem. Over the last year he has obtained an assurance from US president George Bush recognising the realities of such strategic control and the need for them to be reflected in a settlement.
This raises the question of whether such a patchwork of separated Palestinian cantons on the West Bank can form the basis of a just and durable two-state outcome capable of delivering the peace and stability both peoples crave. Achieving them will take a major commitment by Israel and a sustained effort by Palestinians to enable the emergence of a political leadership and civil society adequate to the task.
The international quartet of the US, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia must now bring pressure on Israel to link the Gaza withdrawal to revived negotiations on a comprehensive settlement. This is an urgent and necessary task, given the turbulence and instability elsewhere in the Middle East.