This is the question that many Middle East watchers have been posing, without managing to come forward with a clear-cut reply.

Perhaps this strange feeling can be attributed to the fact that both Jews and Palestinians have suffered the pain of exile during different periods of their history.

In actual fact, both groups have an acute sense of themselves as potential victims of persecution.

As a New Statesman editorialist remarked this time last year, while the warring sides in the former Yugoslavia look back eight centuries, and those in Northern Ireland a mere four, the competing claims in the Middle East draw on events going back two millennia or more.

There is also ambivalence as to whether Israelis and Palestinians can strike peace between themselves or whether they need a powerful broker such as the United States.

I personally believe that should the US be perceived as an honest broker that enjoys the trust of both parties, this could speed up the process of change, but even this is a debatable subject.

I understand this contrasting view, since there is a difference between mediating Israel-Arab relations and actually bringing peace about. Dovish Israelis are of the opinion that only Israelis and Palestinians can make peace between themselves, citing as examples the breakthroughs to Israel-Arab peace – be it Sadat’s 1977 visit, Oslo or peace with Jordan.

In all cases, these achievements were made bilaterally, secretly and possibly even behind the backs of a less than enthusiastic US administration.

But at the end of the day a pivotal role by the US can make the world of difference. One only has to recall Kissinger’s ceasefire efforts and separation of forces agreements of 30 years back, as well as Baker’s shuttle diplomacy in the early 1990s which led to the organisation of the Madrid conference.

But the US is deep down committed to ensure that what lies ahead does indeed succeed.

After all, it was US emissary David Welch who recently stated that the disengagement plan is a central feature of America’s foreign policy in the region.

Due to their own different kind of weaknesses both Abbas and Sharon need American hands-on support, particularly since so many fine details and aspects of disengagement have not yet been settled.

A weak Abbas might seem like a positive prospect for belligerent Israelis, but then in my opinion the weakening of the Palestinian Authority can only lead to an escalation of violence and terrorism, which is something Israel surely should not and is not imaginably interested in.

Right now the PA is facing a dual dilemma: the deterioration of law and order as well as its relations with Hamas.

Regarding the law and order problem, this has continued to exacerbate itself in spite of the much greater political will shown by its new leadership, as well as thanks to its more serious attempts to fulfil any obligations towards the Israeli side that the two have agreed upon.

PA Minister of Planning Ghassan Khatib hit the nail on the head when he recently remarked that his side is facing a state of limbo because they are neither under the full control of the Israeli occupation, nor are they under the full control of the PA. By the same token they are not involved in a full blown and publicly accepted resistance to that occupation nor are they in the process of the implementation of any tangible agreement with the Israeli side.

What I often find baffling is that the Israeli side often behaves as the party responsible for security in the occupied territories, while at the same time it holds the PA responsible in the same territories for not fulfilling their security obligations.

One little known fact is that a huge and uncontrollable quantity of weapons and ammunition are smuggled into the Palestinian territories from Israel or through borders supposedly under their full and complete control.

What worries me most is that while Palestinian-Israeli relations are already quite complicated, Palestinian-Palestinian relations are equally complex. This can only provoke the PA, while weakening it internally and externally.

Abbas can only be in control of the situation if he manages to win the leadership of the PLO itself.

That was Arafat’s major trump card.

Hamas, for their part, consider recent confrontations with the PA as being regrettable and painful, primarily because at the end of the day their basic conflict remains with the occupation.

What still has to be seen is whether the agreement reached in Gaza between the factions will ultimately solve the underlying problems between Hamas and the PA.

The situation can only get worse if such confrontations do erupt once again after the withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas spokesmen deny what has been suggested by certain analysts – that they are preparing a coup to overthrow the PA and take control of the Gaza Strip after Israeli withdrawal.

It was encouraging when last week Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, made a categoric statement in the sense that they do not consider themselves an alternative to the PA and that they are neither interested in weakening it nor in confronting it.

When Condoleezza Rice recently visited Israel, she sought to diffuse the crisis created by Israel’s failure to coordinate its imminent withdrawal from Gaza with the Palestinian leadership. With less than three weeks or so to go, not one of the issues that will determine whether the pullout will succeed or not had been resolved.

While Sharon must eventually coordinate disengagement with Abbas, and while Abbas must control rejectionist groups, the core issue in my opinion remains whether Sharon is determined or not to use the withdrawal as a precedent for a comprehensive land for peace accord or else whether he wants to make the accord impossible.

Israel has never denied certain government statements that unilateral disengagement from Gaza is intended to avoid the “dangers” of a resumed peace process that would require Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

In fact at the end of June, Sharon was reported to have said that he would not be deterred by settler protests from completing the Gaza disengagement, since its purpose was to strengthen Israel’s hold on the West Bank.

To all intents and purposes Sharon continues to share such a goal with the settlers, whom he once described as the cream of the Jewish people.

At the end of the day, both sides need to live alongside each other – if not out of brotherly love, at least for better shared security.

A case in point is what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh.

As Akiva Eldar told Haaretz: “Who would have dreamt that Sharon would be offering an Egyptian president assistance in rescuing victims, including Israeli tourists, of fundamentalist terrorists who struck at the Egyptian resort and whoever thought that one day, Egyptian experts would be training Gaza police to thwart attacks by fundamentalist extremists on Jews?”

But the first major step that must be taken even before the disengagement plan comes into being is the state of relations between Hamas and the PA.

The intra Palestinian dimension of renewed violence must cease for their own good.

Sharon’s disengagement plan will have succeeded if it manages to effectively offer a fresh opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians to put their houses in order and live side by side in peace.

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Leo Brincat is the main Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT.