To paraphrase Dr. Johnson on the subject of second marriages, what the world is witnessing in Gaza is a triumph of hope over experience. Once again the Israelis are pulling back, much as they did after the Oslo Accords of 1993. And once again the Israeli withdrawal is supposed to be the first step toward peace with an Arab neighbor, this time a nascent Palestinian state.

It’s not the first time. Back in the ’90s, the Israelis agreed to pull out of Gaza on the Mediterranean and Jericho on the West Bank in return for promises of peace. Yasser Arafat’s PLO was going to recognize Israel’s right to exist, control its own crazies, and punish disturbers of the peace. We all know how that turned out.

But it was a beautiful dream, so beautiful it is hard now to recapture the optimism of those sunny days; they seem part of not another decade but another world, where prayers were shared, handshakes exchanged on the White House lawn, and peace in the Mideast was thought of as not just possible but inevitable.

Alas, the whole carefully assembled house of cards collapsed. Instead of peace coming stage by stage, war did. The anticlimax of the whole process came at Camp David, when Israel’s Ehud Barak proposed a Palestinian state that would consist of Gaza, almost all the West Bank, and a share of Jerusalem to boot. Yasser Arafat left without even bothering to make a counteroffer. It was clear he’d decided to launch a second Intifada instead, and suicide bombings soon became the new vogue.

Not till another informal but bloody war was fought, and the Israelis began to build their wall – excuse me, Security Barrier – did an uneasy tension begin to supplant the violence. Now the Israelis are taking another unilateral step in hopes of imposing a peace. Or at least a breathing spell. For the dazzling dreams of Oslo are not only long gone but almost forgotten.

The ultimate vision remains the same – a Jewish and Arab state living side by side in peace, aka the two-state solution. Everybody, or at least all men of goodwill, understand that is the goal, the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s just no tunnel.

But the Israelis are pressing ahead anyway, despite the opposition of the settlers and their louder supporters, along with those who believe that Israeli concessions without something tangible in return will lead not to peace but the next war. By something tangible, they mean the breakup of terrorist organizations like Hamas, which now competes with the Palestinian Authority for authority.

There is no sign that Hamas is growing any weaker; on the contrary, it appears to be growing stronger. And it may grow stronger still after this latest Israeli withdrawal, which it will hail as a great victory achieved by its force.

Those Israelis who warn of another outbreak of terrorism after these settlements have been dismantled speak from bitter experience – and amid the ruins of the Oslo Accords. For them, believing a pullback will assure peace is like going to see an old movie in hopes the ending will have changed.

As for the majority of Israelis who favor the pullout, they have little but hope on their side – and one other, maybe decisive factor: Yasser Arafat isn’t around anymore to talk peace while simultaneously waging a not-so-secret war.

Besides, defending the settlements in the Gaza Strip has proven a steady drain on the Israeli military, Israeli morale in general, and on the peaceful Arab residents of the Strip, who must negotiate a series of humiliating checkpoints just to travel a few miles.

The rocket attacks and Israeli incursions, the terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations, have alternated for so long in Gaza it’s hard to remember which came first. And just why anyone would ever covet the place remains something of a mystery; it’s been a hellhole since Samson did his bit there for urban renewal. The Israelites should have left it to the Philistines long ago.

Ariel Sharon, who’s certainly no peacenik, has again proven a pragmatist – and chosen to withdraw to more defensible borders. This won’t be the first time he’s dismantled Israeli settlements; a younger Arik Sharon was the commander in charge of moving his fellow Israelis out of Sinai in order to make peace with Egypt. But in that case, he was dealing with a foreign government, not a collection of militias like those maneuvering for control of Gaza as the Israelis leave it to its uncertain fate.

A stable, democratic state in the Mideast can arise out of intramural rivalries. Only the historians may pay much attention to modern Israel’s own origins now and remember that in 1948 David Ben-Gurion’s fledgling government was challenged by at least a couple of guerrilla movements – including outright terrorists like the Stern Gang plus Menachem Begin’s Irgun, which was not wholly innocent of terrorist outrages itself.

There were those back then who urged Ben-Gurion to govern in tandem with the Jewish militias, allowing them their own military units and zones of operation. But he would have none of it. A state, Israel’s first premier understood, must have only one army to be a state. Even at the cost of a brief but shocking civil war, Israel’s founding father put down Menachem Begin’s challenge.

Now much the same challenge confronts Mahmoud Abbas, the putative leader of a new Palestinian state. What happens in the next few days as the Israelis move out their own diehards may be dramatic, but it will matter less than what happens in the next few months, or even years, as Mahmoud Abbas tries to assert his authority over Hamas. The result will determine whether he presides over a Palestinian state or a state of confusion.