Many in Israel assume that Sharon, after disengagement, will turn rightward, try to re-establish his base of support within Likud, declare that Israel has taken a major step and not need to do anything else before the Palestinians take serious steps of their own. No doubt at the same time he will press to complete the separation barrier--which Israelis see as a passive defense against suicide attacks in Israel. Not only is such a general posture politically compelling, it will also fit the emotional climate for Israelis. The disengagement will be a trauma in Israel. Even those who have neither been supportive of the settlements nor of the settlers will feel the pain of wrenching people from their homes--and the settlers have a stake in raising the emotional costs of the disengagement to try to ensure that it does not become a precedent. All this suggests that Sharon and his public will seek a pause after disengagement. Moreover, since Labor is unlikely to stay in the government for long after disengagement, and since elections in Israel are highly likely by the spring of 2006, the pause Sharon will seek will be until after the Israeli elections.

Abu Mazen and the Palestinians will have exactly the opposite impulse. He will want to show his people that there is a political pathway and prove that the Gaza disengagement is the first Israeli move on this path, not the last. Just as many Israelis assume Sharon will move rightward, many Palestinians fear Sharon is simply giving up Gaza, which he did not want, to preserve the West Bank, which he does. The Israeli settlers clearly do not buy this, but Palestinians suspect that Sharon has no interest in a peace process that would require additional withdrawals on the West Bank. They will be all the more convinced of it if Sharon carries through with finalizing the separation barrier, which Palestinians see as a land grab and one more Israeli imposition on them. Thus, while Sharon will seek a pause, Abu Mazen will seek rapid movement, and the potential for a crisis in the period after disengagement, even if the disengagement goes well, is quite high.

Moshe Ya'alon, the chief of staff of the Israeli military until June 1, predicted in his exit interviews that there would be a third intifada unless the Israelis continued with additional withdrawals from the West Bank. Some Palestinians are similarly predicting a third intifada because of a souring mood and the expectation that a stalemate may soon resume. Will disengagement prove to be simply a prelude to a resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian war?

It need not, provided that the disengagement is managed in a way that benefits the Palestinian Authority and not Hamas and provided that a bridge is built to the future so the impending crisis afterwards is pre-empted. More than anything else, the former requires not only effective coordination between the Israelis and Palestinians, but also a plan on the part of Abu Mazen to receive the territory and the settlements in Gaza and show how they will be used to benefit the Palestinian public. While the United States cannot create the political will for the new Palestinian leadership, it certainly has needed to push both the coordination process and Abu Mazen to develop credible plans and make decisions. Notwithstanding the appointments of General William Ward and former World Bank head Jim Wolfensohn to work on Palestinian security and the economic aspects of disengagement, the U.S. effort has lacked the intensity to press either the necessary coordination between Israelis and Palestinians early enough, or Abu Mazen consistently enough, to shape the disengagement into a real platform for the future.

Recalling the Roadmap

Already much of what could have been gained by the Palestinian Authority from the disengagement has been lost. Still, building a bridge to the future may yet salvage the situation, particularly if Wolfensohn's plan for infusing real assistance into the Palestinian Authority materializes soon. Given the internal pressures on both sides, Abu Mazen and Sharon share a need to show that there is a pathway for the future: Abu Mazen to show that he did not permit the disengagement to let the Israelis off the hook, and Sharon to demonstrate that Israel will not be forced to rush to big decisions before it has even absorbed the trauma of the disengagement. Ironically, a bridge already exists if the United States will assume a serious role and not contract it out to others. And that bridge is the roadmap to peace.

Presently, the roadmap is a piece of paper that largely exists as slogans. Because the United States negotiated the roadmap with the European Union, the Russians and the United Nations--but not with the two parties who had to carry it out--there is not one obligation in it that is understood in the same way by the Israelis and the Palestinians. Instead, each interprets their obligations minimally and the other's maximally. But each has accepted the roadmap as a politically accepted framework.

It is time to seize on that, and for the United States to announce that it will turn the roadmap into a real plan by negotiating common understandings with the two sides on every obligation, on the sequence and on the meaning of the phases in it. This negotiation will not be easy or done quickly; indeed, it will take the kind of grinding diplomacy that the Bush Administration has avoided in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it is the only kind that can produce real understandings.

To ensure that this does not become an open-ended way of doing nothing, the administration can make clear that if the negotiations do not proceed in good faith it will offer its own definitions of the meaning of each obligation. Neither side will necessarily be able to take comfort in that. It should certainly add to the readiness to negotiate seriously--and seriously implement what is agreed upon as well. On both the negotiations and the implementation, the administration should be prepared to honestly declare who is performing and who is not.

For Sharon, who insisted that President Bush include the commitment that the United States "will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan [than the roadmap]" in his letter of assurance dated April 14, 2004, this should be acceptable--and in any case it will give him the ability to tell his critics that he does know what comes next. For Abu Mazen, who has constantly called for the reactivation of the roadmap, he, too, will be able to declare that there is now a clear American commitment to ensure that Gaza first will not be Gaza last.

Making it Stick

The disengagement from Gaza creates the possibility of re-establishing the core bargain of peace-making--namely, security for freedom. Israelis get their security, Palestinians their freedom. Over the last four years, both sides lost their faith in this bargain: Israelis because they became convinced that Palestinians rejected Israel as a Jewish state and used terror as their instrument of rejection, and Palestinians because they saw the Israeli response to the intifada as proof that Israelis would never surrender control over them. But with disengagement, Palestinians will see that Israelis actually will surrender control over them, assuming they do, and Israelis will see that Palestinians will actually fulfill their obligations, assuming they do.

For that reason, disengagement can truly end the war of the last four years between the two sides and build a foundation for peace-making. But obviously, it has to work. And just as obviously, Abu Mazen must be seen to be succeeding. His strategy has always depended on delivering the goods: life getting better, jobs being created, corruption and chaos being brought under control, freedom of movement without Israeli checkpoints being the norm, and land being turned over to the Palestinians. For this to happen, each side must do its part. Abu Mazen must be prepared to lead and not allow consensus to be defined by the lowest common denominator among the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Sharon must help Abu Mazen where he can, to show that a Palestinian leader who is against terror and violence and believes in secular government, the rule of law and co-existence with Israel is a partner for Israel. And President Bush must involve the United States more energetically to work with the two sides and to help ensure that meaningful assistance materializes on the ground for Palestinians from the international community--especially the Gulf oil states who have enjoyed an oil revenue windfall in the tens of billions of dollars last year alone. Helping Abu Mazen establish the economic improvements he promised will cement his authority, without which none of these recommendations are achievable.

With Arafat gone, with Abu Mazen in his place and with Ariel Sharon delivering on Israeli disengagement, there is an opportunity to transform the situation between Israelis and Palestinians. If this opportunity is lost, it will be a long time before another one presents itself. And rather than seeing prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians grow, we will see Abu Mazen fail, Hamas emerge and the Israeli barrier shape the future.