First step towards Middle East peace?

Israeli settlers and soldiers scuffle around a trash bin after settlers tried to block the car of the Army chief Rabbi, General Israel Weiss in the Gush Katif settlement of Neve Dekalim, 25 July 2005

Their hero Sharon, who masterminded Israel's settlement policy from the beginning, now wants to evacuate some of them -- how is that possible? Has he finally yielded to the Palestinian pressure or has he gone out of his mind in his old age? No, nothing of that sort. Sharon has repeated many times in the past that the Intifada has nothing to do with this planned withdrawal, that this is a unilateral disengagement.

Be that as it may, it is fair to ask: Is this the start of a new era in the troubled history of the Middle East? Is the long-cherished peace just around the corner?

These are difficult questions to answer, but Sharon's inner thoughts may give us some clues.

In May 2001, in a couple of interviews to the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz and the French daily Le Figaro, he said, one: "Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the Jewish people" and "no Israeli has the right to share Israel." Two, no Israeli settlement will be evacuated. They are "important for Zionist reasons. It is not an accident that the colonies are where they are. It is necessary to hold the security zones on the West Bank and the east, the routes between them." And, three, The Palestinian state will not be allowed to have an army. The frontiers will remain under the control of Israeli armed forces. (Mr. Sharon could have added that airspace, coasts, roads, communication, water, and electricity will also remain under the effective control of Israel.

Nearly four years after these interviews, in April 2005, during a visit to the United States, Mr. Sharon more or less repeated the same objectives to a group of American Jewish leaders. He said that Jerusalem will never be shared with the Palestinians.

Although Palestinians have always wanted East Jerusalem -- which by the way was conquered by Israel in 1967 and subsequently annexed -- to become the capital of a future Palestinian state. Sharon said there will be no negotiations on this issue.

More than 200,000 Israelis have already settled in East Jerusalem and with active support of the Israeli government are slowly but steadily encroaching on the land and livelihood of the Palestinians, who also suffer continuous "security" limitations on travel. Demolition of Palestinian homes is a common phenomenon. Sharon insisted that Israeli settlements or population centres in the West Bank like Ariel, Maaleh, Edumim, and Gush Etzion, where more than 230,000 settlers live, will remain eternally under Israeli sovereignty as contiguous Israeli territory. Here the words "contiguous territories" are of vital importance. This policy virtually rules out the possibility of having a viable Palestinian state on contiguous land. Again, it merely confirms Sharon's prior statement, "it is not an accident that the colonies are where they are."

In other words, settlements' locations were planned by Sharon "to destroy the territorial contiguity that defines viability." Sharon again insisted that he does no want to negotiate with the Palestinians on these issues. In other words, as in Gaza, this is going to be a unilateral decision. As far as the West Bank is concerned, he will also impose his will on the Palestinians, whether they like it or not. Thus we see that Sharon still believes in the old Likud ideology of never allowing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state on the occupied territories and of maintaining Israel's stranglehold over the fragmented Palestinian enclaves.

At this point, one may of course, ask : If Sharon has not changed his political vision , why is he giving up Gaza?

Again, in an interview given to the Haaretz in February 2004, Mr. Sharon explained that he had decided to evacuate Gaza for practical reasons. In Gaza, 8,000 Israelis live in heavily guarded settlements, occupying one fifth of the land and controlling an equally disproportionate amount of water among close to 1.4 million impoverished Palestinian refugees, who live on the rest of the parched land behind high fences. A large contingent of soldiers and armoured vehicles are required to protect the settlers.

Although these soldiers will be withdrawn, it will merely be a cosmetic exercise because, according to the Israeli Defence Ministry, Gaza will continue under Israeli military control by sea and air. (Both the seaport and the airport in Gaza have already been destroyed by Israel.)

It seems most of the Gaza settlers are going to be resettled in the West Bank, where building activity has intensified because of the forthcoming withdrawal from Gaza. After the withdrawal, Sharon's intention is to concentrate all his resources on the West Bank settlements, with the final objective of annexing them as part of Greater Israel. To make it impregnable, he is building the 650 km long wall separating the Palestinians from the Israelis. The wall, built on Palestinian land, delves deep into Palestinian territories and snakes through the West Bank to include many Israeli settlements.

Palestinian villages and farmlands falling between the wall and the Green Line (pre- 1967 borders ) will, in effect, be annexed. The wall will also extend Israel's control over critical water resources. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in these towns and villages will either be forced to move to the other side of the wall or live in virtual prison-camps with high fences and Israeli checkpoints. Slowly but inevitably under an active but subtle policy of ethnic cleansing, the remaining Palestinians will be driven out of their homes and land. No one really believes that Israel is spending billions of dollars on a "temporary security fence" (this is how it is described in Israeli official discourses) and that it will be destroyed once permanent borders are accepted by the Palestinians.

In fact, demographic reasons have persuaded Sharon to withdraw from Gaza. Israel today has a population of a little over six million people of which 1.2 million are of Arab origin. In the occupied territories there are at least 3.5 million Palestinians. Therefore taking Israel proper and the occupied territories together , there are approximately 5 million Jews and 5 million Arabs. Given the high fertility of Palestinian mothers, according to most estimates, in a few years the Arab population will surpass the Jewish population in a significant manner.

So, if Israel annexes the whole of the West Bank and Gaza, sooner or later, it will be forced to give citizenship to the Palestinians, if it wants to continue as a democratic state. As a result, in a few years' time it will cease to be a Jewish state. How can you disenfranchise the majority of the population and still claim to be a democratic state? So what Sharon wants is to create facts on the ground which no one would dare to change. The idea is to grab as much land as possible for Israel now and contain the Palestinian population in these enclaves (Bantustans) without taking any legal responsibility for them because, in theory, they will become "independent." If Sharon is allowed to implement this plan, Israel in reality will become an apartheid state.

So, we return to the basic question: Will this withdrawal from Gaza usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for the Middle East? No, not really. Actually, Sharon's policy of creating facts on the ground and his declared intention not to negotiate with the Palestinians will, no doubt, be construed by the Palestinians as a declaration of war. No Palestinian leader can afford to accept Israeli unilateralism on these issues. Even many Jewish leaders understand the Palestinian position.

No one could have described the situation more succinctly than Henry Siegman, the former executive head of the American Jewish Congress. In a recently published article in the International Herald Tribune he wrote: "Palestinians will not settle for less than a state that is fully within the pre-1967 borders. Having already yielded to Israel half the territory acknowledged by the United Nations in the partition resolution of 1947 as their legitimate patrimony, Palestinians will not consent to additional Israeli annexations of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, except in swaps for comparable territory on Israel's side of the border."

What about Israel's great friend and ally the United States, the self-proclaimed champion of freedom, democracy, and human rights? What will be its reaction to Sharon's plan? Will it endorse "a Jewish apartheid regime that permanently disenfranchises and dominates by force of arms an Arab majority" or allow Israel to ethnically cleanse much of the West Bank through repressive economic and "security" measures?

According to Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT, "unremitting US military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel" has made it possible for Israel to pursue its colonial policy in the Middle East. Therefore, according to Prof. Chomsky, "any real chance for a political settlement -- and for decent lives for the people of the region -- depends on the United States." Until the US takes the necessary steps to change its policy (as opposed to rhetoric) in this direction, I am afraid, there will be no peace in the region .