There is Little to Suggest Sharon Will Seize This Chance

There are two basic scenarios for what will happen to the Palestinians in the post-Arafat era: the optimistic and the pessimistic.

The optimistic one, and it is extremely optimistic, goes like this. Sharon has lost his excuse for not negotiating with the Palestinians: that Arafat was untrustworthy. His death opens the way for negotiations with his successors. Those successors, the present prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and the former prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, now free from Arafat, will be able to maintain a reasonable level of order in the West Bank. With US, Egyptian and British help, they will build a police service capable of maintaining law and order and, if necessary, suppressing Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main Islamist groups.

Still on the optimistic scenario, Sharon will pull Israeli settlers and soldiers out of Gaza next year, but instead of doing it unilaterally, as planned, he will discuss the details with Abbas and Qureia, making for an orderly withdrawal.

The Palestinians, weary of conflict and, with the Israelis gone, having access to the outside world through its border with Egypt and through a newly opened port and airport, concentrate on making Gaza viable. At that stage, under international pressure, Sharon opens tentative negotiations with the Palestinians over the creation of a Palestinian state that encompasses Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The pessimistic scenario - and it is seldom possible to be too pessimistic about this conflict - begins with the Gaza withdrawal. If the Palestinians keep up attacks and Hamas fires more and better rockets into Israel the government will not leave, or if it has left, will go back in. It will keep soldiers along the Egyptian border and not allow the Palestinians to have their own port and airport.

Even if the Gaza withdrawal went well, it is still a long way from a peaceful resolution. Sharon would be pulling 7,500 Jewish settlers out of Gaza, while retaining almost all 400,000 settlers occupying large parts of east Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank. The ring of Jewish settlements around Palestinian east Jerusalem is visibly becoming tighter, in danger of cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank.

As long as there are sizeable numbers of settlers in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, there is no prospect of peace. Arafat was an obstacle to lasting peace. But so, too, is Sharon. He could afford to be magnanimous, but there is nothing in his record of involvement with the Palestinians to suggest he will be.

With the excuse that he could not deal with Arafat gone, Sharon can use continued instability in the West Bank or Gaza as a further reason to resist pressure to open negotiations. But while limited violence in the territories might suit Sharon in the short-term, a descent into chaos will not provide Israelis with the security they desire.

Israel is dominant just now, but the Palestinians are not going to be pushed out of east Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. And Israel might find it harder to deal with the Palestinians in five or 10 years' time than now. It is in Israel's interest for Sharon to be magnanimous.

Ewen MacAskill is the Guardian's diplomatic editor