By Ami Ayalon; Ha'aretz , 22.05.06

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meets the U.S. president tomorrow to present his "convergence plan." Winning George Bush's backing will be crucial. But actually implementing the plan will be Olmert's biggest challenge - a make-or-break test for his government.

The convergence plan faces many obstacles. Is there anything working in its favor? To answer that, let's look back at the Gaza disengagement - what allowed for its implementation, and if those conditions can be re-enacted with respect to the West Bank.

When it came to Gaza, there was the decisive leadership of Ariel Sharon, a broad national consensus, a relatively small number of settlers to relocate, an intensive and brief evacuation period, international support, a military and police deployment suited to the operational needs, and a financial burden that could be borne by the national budget.   

But there was another key factor that many overlook: The Palestinians kept quiet.

This was more a result of the Palestinians' desire to see the disengagement succeed, and less so a matter of Israeli military deterrence. Those were the days after the death of Yasser Arafat and the election of Mahmoud Abbas, when Palestinians, as reflected in numerous opinion polls, wanted to see diplomacy revived and believed this depended on the disengagement going ahead. The plan would not have worked were it not for this tacit cooperation on the part of the Palestinians.

And therein lies a paradox. In order to disengage, or converge, unilaterally, Israel needs a Palestinian partner who will work to preserve calm and prevent terror attacks. It could play out in two ways:

The Israeli government could ignore the importance of quiet on the Palestinian side as a predicate for successful implementation of the convergence, and pursue its current policy of ignoring the pragmatic elements in the Palestinian Authority, stopping funds, closing border crossings and preventing the flow of trade. This will deepen Palestinian poverty, aggravate the humanitarian crisis, and both bolster and further radicalize Hamas. It will also fail to check our slide toward a new round in the Palestinian intifada.

Then there's another way, in which moderates and pragmatists become dominant forces in the Palestinian Authority. Under this scenario, Palestinians will, as a matter of self-interest, preserve a calm that will serve all the major players. Israel will have a successful convergence, Hamas will come closer to being perceived abroad as a legitimate leadership, and the international community will breathe easier at having skirted an event that could further destabilize the region.

For this to be the case, the Israeli government must adopt the axiom that there will be no convergence without quiet on the Palestinian side. It must strengthen the pragmatists, chiefly Abbas. Using him as the conduit, it must release the frozen taxes and donations, and open up the commercial crossings, in order to ease conditions for the Palestinian population.

Such actions would give us a shot at getting the quiet we need for convergence to succeed. Under such conditions, Hamas would find itself forced to play a role that it never envisaged, even in its worst dreams - security officer for the convergence plan, subcontractor for the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service.By pursuing this new policy, Israel could even bring about a split between the more and less militant elements of Hamas, or the inclusion of Fatah in a Palestinian coalition government.

As the convergence plan is a long-term political goal, it is vitally important that it be put into action today. Talk about implementation being two or three years away simply won't do. Now is the time to move on parts of the plan that will affect the 2006 and 2007 budgets, as they are to come up for debate in the coming weeks.

Progress on the convergence plan must be assessed and charted out in terms of fiscal periods, months and days. Such planning will include the rate at which the security fence is going up, the expeditiousness with which the illegal outposts (as defined by the Sasson Report) are removed, and the numbers of settlers opting to move across the Green Line under the soon-to-be-tabled Evacuation and Compensation Bill.

Prime Minister Olmert sees convergence as Zionism's lifeline. He was elected on the promise that ultimately no Israelis will live beyond the fence. This pledge placed a double moral obligation on the government from the moment it took office.

The first obligation is to the settlers, who went out to their current homes as government emissaries. From the moment that their mission has been declared as accomplished, the government must not hold them and their children as hostages, against their will, without making the minimum conditions available for them to return home as national assets.

The second obligation is toward the citizens of the State of Israel, who for years saw their tax money invested in Judea and Samaria. From the moment the government decides to call an end to the settlements beyond the fence, there is no moral justification for diverting taxpayer funds to pointless additional investment in these areas.

The 2007 budget must reflect all of this, both in terms of absorbing returnees under the Evacuation and Compensation Bill, and in terms of stopping the investment in infrastructure on the wrong side of the fence. The prime minister should demonstrate his seriousness by appointing one of the ministers-without-portfolio to oversee the government's handling of the operative elements of the convergence plan.