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Two questions that for over a year have been the focus of deep international concern were answered this past week. Yes, Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, was serious about disengaging from Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank; and, no, the settlers were not able to trigger a Jewish civil war in Israel, although not for lack of trying. Equally important, Palestinians acted responsibly and prevented actions that might have aborted the withdrawal.
The successful withdrawal finally frees the international community to address an issue that it had largely avoided for fear of jeopardising the hoped-for disengagement: what will it take to translate this historic dismantlement of Israel's colonial enterprise in Gaza into a political dynamic that would return the parties to a sustained and successful peace process? For the withdrawal from Gaza is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition for such an outcome.
A resumed peace process is not an automatic consequence of the disengagement, but must be carefully constructed and actively pursued by Israel and the Palestinians. If it is now Mr Sharon's intention to use the disengagement as a bridge back to the Road Map for Middle East peace - contrary to assurances he repeatedly gave fellow Likud ministers and the settler leadership that its purpose was to remove the Road Map and Palestinian statehood from Israel's agenda for the foreseeable future - he knows what he must do.
For his chief of military intelligence, General Ze'evi Farkash, told Mr Sharon and members of his government last week that if Palestinians were not presented with a credible "political horizon" for statehood soon, the efforts of Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president, to prevent a return to violence by Hamas, the leading militant Islamic group, would fail. If settlements in the West Bank continue to expand, outposts are not dismantled, and plans for new housing in east Jerusalem (intended to prevent the capital of a new Palestinian state being located in the city) are not halted, Palestinians will conclude - correctly - that Mr Sharon has no intention of returning to the Road Map. In these circumstances, Hamas is likely to sweep the Palestinian Legislative Council elections scheduled for January.
Also critical to Mr Abbas's chances of prevailing in January's contest is how Mr Sharon's government will deal with Gaza. If Israel implements the arrangements proposed by James Wolfensohn, the skilful representative of the Quartet group of international mediators, in order to facilitate desperately needed economic development in Gaza, then Mr Abbas stands a good chance of succeeding. On the other hand, if Israel does not allow the opening of Gaza's borders to the movement of people and goods into the West Bank and across international borders, and blocks the reopening of an airport in Gaza, the area will become a vast prison and experience economic disaster. There could be no more certain recipe for a return to violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
That said, even the most enlightened Israeli policies will not lead to a Palestinian economic and political turnround if Mr Abbas does not undertake a far-reaching housecleaning. He must put an end to "warlordism" in his security forces and parts of the West Bank and Gaza that have made a shambles of his promise to establish, under the Palestinian Authority, "one authority, one law, one gun". Furthermore, he will not have the necessary credibility to accomplish this goal if he does not rid his government of corrupt "old guard" holdovers, no matter how high their position, within Fatah (the dominant Palestinian party which he heads) and in the Palestinian Authority.
Arguably, the political integration of Hamas into the Palestinian Authority is essential to the eventual success of the peace process. But Hamas's political pre-eminence will make such a process impossible, not only because of its ideological commitment to a recovery of all Palestinian land (an exact parallel to the commitment of Israel's settlers to every bit of Biblical Israel), but because Hamas's pre-eminence would play into the hands of Israeli rejectionists who oppose a return to the peace process.
None of this would seem to justify optimism about where the Gaza withdrawal will take us. However, after the successful disengagement, a new reason for hope is that many in Israel have finally realised that the settlers, who until now have been seen even by many of their opponents as idealists who exemplify the dedication of the early Zionist pioneers, would not hesitate to subjugate Israel's democracy to their theological and messianic beliefs. Indeed, they saw that the settlers were prepared to jeopardise Israel's continued existence if it was not on their terms. (A senior Israeli military official is reported in Ha'aretz to have said that after last week's experience, none of the brigade commanders he has talked with will again recommend sending students from yeshivas, or orthodox religious schools, for officer training.) The disenchantment with the settlers frees Israeli political leaders to consider measures to advance the peace that they lacked courage to undertake as long as Israel's public, and many of its leaders, were in thrall to the settlers' mystique.
The writer is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former executive head of the American Jewish Congress. These views are his own.
