So the Gaza withdrawal is a fact. Now what? And what have we learned? Let's deal with the latter first. We have learned that the settler movement is not invincible, that the attempt to sell the dunes of Gaza as holy land did not gain traction, and that no matter how well organized the settlers were, the army, police and security forces were organized even better. Learned as well is that it is not always the Palestinians who have to dictate whether we give back territory or not, or what territories we decide to give up, and despite the fact that though in many ways we and the Palestinians are tied in a Gordian knot, Israel can act independently to define its own future.

By getting out of Gush Katif, Israel shed 1.4 million Palestinians and eased, at least temporarily, the dreaded demographic threat; saved both lives and massive resources required to protect the settlers there. It also returned to the most densely populated area on earth, with one of the world's fastest growing populations, one-third of its territory and almost half its water. We removed settlements that were built in 1971, when there were fears that a hostile Egypt would link with a hostile population in Gaza to attack Israel. But we have now been at peace with Egypt for three decades, so it was time to end the anomaly of our presence in Gaza. The withdrawal caused pain for the 1,800 families affected, but their generous compensation packages and the acceptable alternatives offered to them can be seen as an interesting precedent, if and when the peace process with the Palestinians advances.

Another very important, perhaps the most important, thing learned is that the country and its democratic institutions are stronger and more widely accepted than all those rabbis who claimed to be speaking in God's name when they called on soldiers to disobey orders to dismantle settlements. In doing so, the rabbis forced an issue that has long simmered beneath the surface to the top of the national agenda. Their call for virtual mutiny, their positioning themselves squarely against the state and its authority forced other key West Bank rabbis, who understood that the consequences of heeding that call by some soldiers, including their students, would be the beginning of the end of democratic Israel, to speak out. "One has to obey every letter of the Bible," Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, the head of the Har Etzion Yeshivah in Gush Etzion wrote in the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz. "But he also has to obey every letter of the law of the land." The two, he explained, are not at odds with each other - to the contrary, they are totally compatible.

Israel is potentially a much healthier society for the confrontation. Like drawing pus from a wound, it has to some extent relieved the dangerous, ongoing, divisive and potentially fratricidal tension between the nationalist right-wing rabbis and their acolytes on one hand, and the state's elected lawmakers and institutions on the other. Their weakness has been exposed. And that is an important lesson that has been learned.

Israel's future is not behind it, and history does not end with the withdrawal from Gush Katif. And to a large extent, the future course will depend on the Palestinians. By withdrawing from Gaza and building the West Bank security barrier, Israel has consolidated considerably, and can afford to carry on with no peace process in the works. If there is Palestinian terror there can be no process - and there can't even be an effective link between the West Bank and Gaza, as the Palestinians demand. Every time a suicide bomber gets through or is caught on the way to a target in Israel, the gates would be closed and the Gaza-West Bank link severed.

If there is no terror and Abu Mazen - backed by foreign governments which have come to his aid - does what he is supposed to be doing, actually restructuring the PA security forces, ending the corruption, instituting fiscal transparency and acting democratically, then the road map will get moving again. And that is when the West Bank settlements become crucial. The road map's next stage is an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and territorial contiguity on the West Bank, not a series of enclaves divided by territory Israel controls. Prime Minister Sharon is on the record as saying he would agree to that, and it is American policy. The key word here is "contiguity"; making it happen will require the removal of 50 or so outlying smaller settlements.

But even if the peace process does not move forward, Israel is going to have to tackle the task of removing dozens of illegal settlements that have sprung up over the years. The U.S. is adamant about the removal of 18 of these settlements, and Sharon promised to deal with them after the Gaza disengagement.

So, it seems, settlement is going to remain an issue for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the precedent of Gaza will make it a little easier to deal with it rationally. The country now knows that it can be done.

The Jerusalem Report, September 5, 2005 issue