Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online Feature
Ariel
Sharon and the Jordan Option
Gary Sussman
March 2005
(Gary
Sussman is based at Tel Aviv University.)
Click
here for a large, high resolution
version of the map in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format (1.6 megabytes).
An
avid enthusiast of Ariel Sharon and his unilateral disengagement
plan recently opined that the plan “has one inborn defect: it
has no vision, has no diplomatic horizon and is devoid of any
ideological dimension.”[1]
This view of the Israeli prime minister -- tactically brilliant
but lacking as a strategic thinker -- is common but mistaken.
Sharon clearly belongs in the pantheon of master tacticians in
modern politics, but he does indeed have a long-term strategy
-- and disengagement fits right in.
His vision
is no longer the creation of limited Palestinian state on some
50 percent of the West Bank, as many have long assumed. Instead,
Sharon envisions a Palestinian state on a significant portion
of the West Bank, possibly as much as 80 percent. Sharon is all
too aware that such an entity is not “viable.” He assumes, in
fact, that a two-state arrangement cannot be sustained and will
not bring an end to Palestinian-Israeli strife.
In the long
term, the Israeli premier hopes that the Palestinian state will
meld with Jordan. His assumption is that unilateral disengagement
from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, his plan for a carefully
managed transition away from direct Israeli rule over the majority
of the Palestinians, will set this process in motion. Over time,
Sharon calculates, contiguity between “Palestine” and its neighbor
to the east, as well as increased trade, cultural ties and the
“democratization” championed by the Bush administration, will
induce Palestinians on both the West and East Banks of the Jordan
to agitate for Palestinian-Jordanian federation themselves. If
one assumes that Sharon has quietly held on to his once openly
expressed belief that “Jordan is Palestine,” his break with his
old supporters among the settler movements and the right becomes
easier to understand.
Sharon’s
Intentions
Politicians
are far more forthright than we believe. They very often mean
what they say. If one, for example, reads former South African
President F. W. de Klerk’s speeches from 1989 until well into
the negotiations process that eventually ended apartheid, one
is struck by how candidly he set out his agenda. De Klerk sought
to impose a limited democracy, blunting universal democracy with
significant guarantees for the white minority. He hoped to do
so by controlling the pace and scope of the transition. He also
believed that he could outsmart the African National Congress,
which he assumed to be significantly weakened by the collapse
of its patron, the Soviet Union. In a similar way, Mikhail Gorbachev
sought to engineer a process that ensured the perpetuation of
Soviet-style communism, albeit reformed. That perestroika
and Pretoria-stroika failed to secure their objectives
is, of course, another matter entirely.
Major speeches
of political leaders and statements by their aides are a vital
guide for those not privy to the leaders’ inner thoughts. Ariel
Sharon has been less than charitable in indicating where he is
ultimately headed, but he has been clear about his immediate objectives.
In statements since December 2003, when he announced his disengagement
plan, Sharon has repeatedly noted that he wishes to buy Israel
more time to fashion a Palestinian statelet amidst the settlement
blocs, bypass roads and military bases in the West Bank. He has
been coy, however, about what might follow.
Sharon has
not changed his fundamental views on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Like many Israelis, he deeply mistrusts Arabs. As Dov Weisglass,
the prime minister’s trusted policy adviser, explains, he “believes
that the Arab world views Israel as an imposition, and won’t come
to terms with its existence.”[2]
Hence Sharon rejects the very premise of a comprehensive, negotiated
two-state deal that would lead to peace and reconciliation --
the sort of deal that his erstwhile rivals in the Labor Party
hoped would usher in “a new Middle East.” The guiding assumption
of all major official and unofficial peace initiatives to date
-- whether the Oslo accords of 1993 and 1994, the Saudi initiative
of March 2002 or the Geneva accords of December 2003 -- has been
that a comprehensive deal will remove the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict from the list of regional irritants, paving the way for
harmony, cooperation and integration. The most noted and sanguine
exponent of this vision, of course, has been Labor Party leader
Shimon Peres. For Ariel Sharon, however, there is no new Middle
East at the end of the tunnel. Instead, he seeks to use unilateral
measures to manage the conflict so as to favor Israel. This conflict
management paradigm is, in essence, a modern variation upon the
traditional Revisionist Zionist notion of the “iron wall,” as
espoused by Ze’ev Jabotinsky.[3]
Prior to Israel’s declaration of independence, Revisionists dismissed
the idea of negotiated compromise with Palestinian nationalism.
Instead, they called for building a figurative “iron wall” between
Israel and Arab interlocutors until a “moderate” Arab leadership
emerged that was no longer intent on destroying the Jewish state-in-the-making.
The second intifada convinced Israelis that an iron wall
is still necessary.
Sharon’s
deep wariness of the Arabs explains why he long opposed the creation
of an independent Palestinian state. His traditional view was
that Israel needs to settle beyond the coastal plain if it is
not to be a “mass of concrete from Ashkelon to Nehariya -- all
within the range of Arab guns and having to rely on friendly powers
for protection.”[4] Unlike his former allies in the
religious right wing of the settler movement, however, Sharon
is willing to amend his tactics to serve his strategic objectives.
It is not incidental that he recently accused the settlers of
having a “messianic complex.”
Sharon initially
opposed the separation barrier that Israel is building in the
West Bank, only relenting when he realized that he could not defy
growing public support for the project. Then he swiftly appropriated
the barrier in service of his agenda. Similarly, Sharon realized
that he cannot fight the increasingly hegemonic idea of partition
of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
As he is acutely anxious not to confront the United States, the
turning point for him was President George W. Bush’s embrace of
the “two-state solution” in a Rose Garden speech on June 24, 2002.
But Sharon has a very different notion of a two-state solution
than the one envisioned by the Palestinian Authority and the international
community. One might describe his vision as the “one and a three
quarter-state solution.”
Since coming
to power in February 2001, Sharon has astutely harnessed concepts
like statehood, the barrier and unilateral disengagement to maximize
Israeli territorial gains and deflect demographic pressure from
Israel toward the east. In recent weeks, the indefatigable Shimon
Peres, now deputy prime minister in Sharon’s disengagement government,
has proclaimed that while the Likud Party has secured the spoils
of political power, his party has won the battle of ideas. In
one sense, Labor Zionism’s thesis of the need for territorial
partition to achieve peace has indeed emerged ascendant. Sharon
has also embraced the Zionist left’s idea of unilateral separation,
suggesting an impressive tally of victories for Labor Zionism.
The ascendance of the unilateralist paradigm as Sharon understands
it is, however, a great victory for Revisionist Zionism. The notion
of an iron wall, as well as the belief that there is no solution
to the conflict, has gained wider currency in Israel. In dialectical
fashion, Sharon has synthesized key ideas promoted by the Zionist
left, in order to further his vision of what a secure Israel would
be.
Sharon’s
Logic of Unilateralism
The Israeli
premier and his aides have been most transparent in stating the
objectives behind the unilateral disengagement plan. As noted
above, it is first and foremost an articulation of Sharon’s dismissal
of the conflict resolution paradigm, whereby the “final status
issues” in the conflict -- chiefly borders, settlements, Palestinian
refugees and Jerusalem -- can be resolved at once. A leading architect
of the disengagement plan, Eyval Giladi, argues that it is impossible
“to reach a final status agreement in one step.” Giladi rejects
the notion that peace will bring security. Instead, he posits
that security brings peace.[5]
Moreover, the plan seeks to free Israel from the “road map” to
a negotiated two-state solution, sponsored by the Quartet of the
US, UN, Russia and the European Union and promulgated in May 2003.
Sharply contradicting his undertakings to the international community
and his later comments at the February 8, 2005 Sharm al-Sheikh
summit, Sharon made it clear to a group of Israeli ambassadors
that “there will not be a direct transition from the disengagement
plan to the road map.”[6]
A successful
flight from the road map ensures that Israel reasserts control
over the diplomatic process and manages it on Israeli terms. Speaking
in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, prior to his summit with
George Bush in April 2004, Sharon noted, “Only an Israeli initiative
will keep us from being dragged into dangerous initiatives like
the Geneva and Saudi initiatives.”[7]
Sharon’s failure to take any diplomatic initiative in his first
term created a diplomatic vacuum that others filled. His plan
was partly a response to such efforts. Dov Weisglass concedes
that the plan “compels the world to deal with our idea, with the
scenario we wrote.”[8]
By reasserting control, Sharon intends to avert the final status
negotiations with the Palestinians that are stipulated in phase
three of the road map. In such an exchange, Palestinian concessions
on the question of the right of return would need to be matched
by Israeli flexibility on Jerusalem, settlements and borders.
Tellingly, Weisglass likened his scheme to “formaldehyde” applied
to ensure that “there will not be a political process with the
Palestinians.”
The unilateral
approach, then, allows Sharon to address the issues of settlements
and borders without negotiations and on terms that greatly favor
Israel. Sharon assumes that “painful” measures, like the removal
of small settlements, will allow Israel to control the scope of
the withdrawal. In private conversation and in numerous media
interviews, the prime minister has noted that his plan “constitutes
a mortal blow to the Palestinians” and their quest for statehood,
and will make it impossible to return to the 1949 armistice lines.[9]
His pet journalist Uri Dan explains that Sharon’s “cruel separation”
plan is premised on making tactical sacrifices in exchange for
strategic gains in the West Bank.[10]
It is striking
that Sharon continues to be reluctant to return to a bilateral
process, even though his arch-nemesis Yasser Arafat is no longer
the Palestinian leader. The disengagement scheme was after all
presented as a means to bypass a recalcitrant and ruthless Arafat.
Though Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, may be emphatic in eschewing
violence as a means of struggle, he is no less committed to the
bottom lines from which Arafat refused to budge at Camp David
in July 2000. These are positions that Sharon could never agree
to.
Withdrawing
to What?
Given that
Sharon is keen to avoid a withdrawal on the scale of the Geneva
blueprint, the critical -- and still unanswered -- question is
what his red lines for a withdrawal are. His spokesperson Raanan
Gissin notes that his plan “will remove the issue of other major
evacuations, major withdrawals in Judea and Samaria, particularly
the major clusters of settlements.” The plan, as Gissin notes,
leaves Israel “the most vital percentages that we need.” Sharon
has long held that Israel requires greater “strategic depth” and
can attain it through establishing “security zones” -- swathes
of occupied territory from which Israel would not withdraw. Clarifying
the nature of the zones, Gissin suggests that “there will be an
eastern security zone and a western security zone: the eastern
10-15 kilometers and the western 3-5 kilometers from the 1967
borders.” Pressed to quantify the percentage of the West Bank
left to the Palestinians, Gissin confirms that it would be 58
percent.[11] Sharon’s
former national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy, corroborates
this percentage,[12] as does journalist Ben Kaspit, who detailed
Sharon’s strategy days before the December 2003 Herzliya speech
in which he first laid it out.[13] In the widely cited Haaretz interview
in which he used the term “formaldehyde,” Weisglass intimated
that disengagement will ensure that 190,000 [of 240,000] settlers
“will not be moved from their place.” Relocating 50,000 settlers
living in the West Bank and Gaza (the figure of 240,000 excludes
settlers residing in East Jerusalem and its surroundings) will
leave Israel still controlling a significant portion of the West
Bank. Such a withdrawal would roughly conform to the plan proposed
in July 1967 by Gen. Yigal Allon, who was then deputy prime minister
in a Labor government. The aforementioned interviews would, therefore,
confirm what many critics have long assumed about Sharon’s intentions.
Eyval Giladi,
on the other hand, speculated further that the final figure for
“West Bank territory on the western side of the barrier will be
a fraction below 10 percent.”[14]
That percentage was corroborated by Ehud Olmert, then deputy prime
minister and now serving in the new position of vice prime minister.[15]
The trajectory of the separation barrier adopted by the Israeli
cabinet on February 20, 2005 also points in this direction (see
map).
These assessments
suggest that Sharon entertains a set of possible withdrawal scenarios,
ranging from a case in which Israel would evacuate 60 percent
of the West Bank to one in which Israel would leave just below
90 percent. Many presume that Sharon will determine the Palestinian
entity’s final borders with the separation barrier, and that,
accordingly, the barrier’s ever changing route through the West
Bank and East Jerusalem tracks with Sharon’s evolving thinking
on the proportions of the Palestinian entity that he will countenance.
The rulings by the International Court of Justice and the Israeli
Supreme Court on the barrier have constrained Sharon’s ability
to impose a scenario at the lower end of those he envisages. But
a further incentive for a larger-scale withdrawal is that such
a pullout would abet Sharon’s long-term efforts to maximize territorial
gains.
Reframing
the Conflict
Sharon’s
first objective is to create a subservient Palestinian state with
provisional borders and then seek to limit subsequent territorial
concessions to that state. A Palestinian state with provisional
borders is promised by phase two of the road map. In contrast
to the Palestinians, however, Sharon seeks to avoid phase three
of the road map for as long as possible. Weisglass conceded that
Sharon embraced unilateral disengagement only when it became apparent
that there was no Palestinian partner for an interim arrangement
that postpones phase three. Arafat’s refusal to accept this idea
underpinned Israel’s efforts to marginalize him. In Sharon’s eyes,
a limited Palestinian state, where the maximum number of Palestinians
lives on the minimum amount of land, is a strategic asset. Such
a statelet improves Israel’s hand in final status negotiations,
because the conflict can be more easily portrayed as a disagreement
between two sovereign states. Israel will no longer have to deal
with the PLO, which represents the refugees. As Azmi Bishara explains,
There is
a vast difference between negotiating a final settlement with
a state and with a national liberation movement. Dozens of states
have borders disputes; there is nothing particularly urgent or
unsettling about them, unlike national liberation causes. Sharon
has no intention of broaching the latter, and the Palestinians
will forfeit the opportunity to broach them too if they accept
the creation of a state outside the framework of a just, comprehensive
and permanent solution, a state amputated at its inception and
that Sharon intends to make the permanent solution.[16]
Disengagement
also allows Israel to stake the moral high ground in the conflict.
For this reason, Sharon will go beyond the avaricious 60 percent
that many assume he plans to return. At the same time, he has
made a determined effort to lower the expectations of the Palestinians,
Israelis and the international community regarding the extent
of the eventual withdrawal. Sharon assumes that nurturing a pessimistic
outlook among others will serve him when he makes overtures that,
ultimately, fall below former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous
offer” at Camp David. The more territory he agrees to evacuate,
the stronger his case will be for demanding annexation of the
rest. When the Palestinians, as he expects, spurn these overtures,
Israel will yet again be able to hold Palestinian dogma responsible
for unilateral Israeli annexation.
Disengagement
has two additional advantages. One is that limited withdrawal
will allow Sharon to demonstrate to Israelis and the international
community the trauma associated with territorial “concessions.”
In doing so, he can undermine a comprehensive peace deal in a
Machiavellian manner. As a prominent settler leader, Rabbi Yoel
Bin Nun, explains, “He needs national trauma to impress upon the
Israeli public and the international community that it is impossible
to do this again.”[17] A second advantage is that the plan relieves
the domestic pressure that demographic concerns place on Sharon.
Israelis are obsessed with demography -- the relative percentages
of Jews and non-Jews in the population of Israel-Palestine. Their
fear of a declining Jewish majority has led to a dramatic paradigm
shift, in which an independent Palestinian
state and “the potential military threat from such a state” are
viewed as the lesser evil.[18]
In giving up Gaza, Sharon readjusts the demographic balance
and reduces domestic pressure for a comprehensive deal. Moreover,
by removing Gaza from the equation he weakens the Palestinian
hand in a later bargain.
Above all,
the plan will allow Ariel Sharon to fight for the territorial
assets he deems vital. In contrast to his predecessors, Sharon
does not expend valuable political capital fighting symbolic battles.
This trait is also what distinguishes him from religious hawks.
The letter he obtained from Bush in April 2004 is testament to
his strategic focus. Time gained as his unilateral game plays
out is time to deepen Israel’s hold on key settlement blocs and
create yet more facts on the ground. As Sharon declared to a settler
audience, “Ma’aleh Adumim will grow stronger, Ariel, the Etzion
bloc, Giv’at Zeev will remain in Israeli hands and will continue
to develop. Hebron and Kiryat Arba will be strong.”[19]
Even the most liberal of Likud leaders, Ehud Olmert, has made
clear that these communities will not be conceded. Beyond creating
more facts on the ground, the decision to let Gaza go makes it
easier to build an internal Israeli coalition to fight to keep
these blocs.
Sharon and
his key Likud allies recognize that alternative “solutions,” like
transferring major Arab-Israeli communities to the Palestinian
entity or carving the West Bank into totally disconnected cantons,
are not feasible. The former option, which is explicitly supported
by Avigdor Lieberman of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party and
implicitly endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s major rival
within the Likud, can only become possible if the Zionist left
also champions it. To date, only Ephraim Sneh, who was defense
minister under Barak, has briefly courted the idea. Public support
for the idea from the political center may increase over time
as concerns over demography are fueled. As journalist Aluf Benn
notes, “The solution of withdrawal from the territories is no
longer enough for the angry prophets of demography, Professors
Arnon Sofer and Sergio Della Pergola.”[20] But a critical mass of support is not yet close
to being formed.
Sharon supported
the canton option when he first entered politics.[21]
But the intensified international scrutiny of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in the years of the second intifada has taken
this option off the table for Israel’s image-conscious hawks.
Ehud Olmert notes, “The canton program will create a situation
that the world will not be prepared to live with, and rightly
so, because it will not allow for territorial contiguity and does
not give the Palestinians the minimal basis to enjoy independent
life under self rule and sovereignty. The plan effectively turns
them into something, pardon me for the infuriating comparison,
similar to the old South Africa. The world will not live with
this.”[22]
Living
with a Limited Palestinian State
Sharon appreciates
that something the White House will call “a Palestinian state”
is a given. He is now trying to create greater domestic and international
consensus for a limited Palestinian state -- though one much larger
than Sharon’s detractors are prepared to admit. He will even acquiesce
in greater sovereignty for the Palestinian entity than his predecessors
may have been willing to do. One might call his current project
“the 20 percent (of the West Bank for Israel) coalition.” In other
words, he seeks to realign Israeli positions on the Palestinian
issue around borders he considers vital to Israel. His unilateral
measures, therefore, are a way of repackaging the notion of the
two-state solution. Seen from his perspective, such an approach
is rational. Sharon, after all, believes that a negotiated peace
like the one spelled out in the Geneva accord will not resolve
the conflict.
The Israeli
premier can already count several successes in his endeavor. For
starters, his plan is viewed as the only game in town. Secondly,
his letter from Bush recognizes Israeli “facts on the ground.”
Domestically, Sharon’s gelding of the Labor Party represents a
triumph in efforts to realign the Israeli political topography.
At present, the biggest threat to his agenda comes from the religious
right and ideologues and disaffected legislators in the Likud.
The creation
of a limited Palestinian state is fraught with risks for Israel,
which could find itself with a highly unstable neighbor. As Gideon
Levy notes, there can “be no independent Palestinian state between
Ofra and Etzion. There can be no just solution with Ariel and
Ma’aleh Adumim.”[23] Not all Israelis seem bothered
by a Palestinian state that lacks territorial contiguity and may,
as a result, be unviable. One right-wing commentator suggests
that the “idea that a country requires geographical
integrity is an odd one.” Instead, he posits that a “country’s
viability” is “chiefly a function of the quality of governance.”[24] Without denigrating the importance
of governance, a cramped, non-contiguous entity inhabited by poor
and aggrieved people would likely continue to generate attacks
on Israeli civilians. Some cynics in Israel might silently approve
of such an outcome, which could reinforce their thesis that the
Palestinians do not want peace.
Another issue
is sovereignty. The democratic transition literature suggests
that sovereignty is a precondition for democracy -- an association
conveniently overlooked by Israel and the international community
in placing so much emphasis on Palestinian “reform.” Yet there
is every reason to assume that even a negotiated Israeli territorial
retreat might lead to a Palestinian state whose sovereignty is
diluted. Israel may well insist on controlling the external border
crossings, in order to prevent weapons smuggling, or on mastering
Palestinian airspace. Israel will probably insist that the new
state be demilitarized. Israel will also violate the Palestinian
entity’s sovereignty in cases where it perceives itself to be
under military threat. Furthermore, Israel may also insist that
it has the right to veto diplomatic relations between the Palestinian
state and entities deemed hostile to Israel -- Iran, for example.
Such demands will limit both the internal and external aspects
of sovereignty. Internal sovereignty implies that a government
enjoys decisive and unrestricted sanction, while external sovereignty
entitles a community to set policy free of the meddling of other
agents. “Sovereignty,” as David Held notes, “by its very nature
implies a degree of independence from external powers and dominance
or ultimate authority over internal groups.”[25]
Israel’s
instinct will be to limit Palestinian sovereignty as is universally
understood. Even if Israel were to secure the support of certain
Palestinian elites, willing to collaborate for their personal
interests, for such a limited entity, Israel would face the possibility
that ordinary Palestinians would not accept the entity as a state.
“A state exists chiefly in the hearts and minds of its people;
if they do not believe it is there, no logical exercise will bring
it to life.”[26] An outcome in which Israel limits the scope and substance of Palestinian
sovereignty will serve to ensconce the binational reality in which
Palestinians and Israelis find themselves. If the Palestinian
state is not recognized by the Palestinians as a state it will
be akin to the South African bantustans of yore. It is hard to
imagine that Ariel Sharon is not aware of the risks implicit in
a state whose sovereignty and contiguity is limited -- which leads
us to the tacit part of his disengagement plan.
The
Jordan Option?
It is worth
recalling that the “Jordan option” -- whereby a Palestinian entity
federates with Jordan -- was the endgame that Sharon espoused
when he entered politics in 1974. For many years, he vocally supported
the removal of the “artificial kingdom” in Jordan.[27] At least one prominent Jordanian believes that
the Israeli premier’s tactical maneuvering should be evaluated
in the light of his past predilections. When he was still foreign
minister, current Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher noted,
“We are afraid that the day might come when Israeli leaders might
argue ‘Jordan is Palestine.’ Why are we worried? The wall will
effectively divide the West Bank into three parts. It will make
life impossible for Palestinians: dividing them from their work,
their schools, their lands. If that happens, what options do Palestinians
have? They will leave, voluntarily or by force, for Jordan.”[28]
Indeed, a
variant of the idea, euphemistically labeled as the “regional
solution,” enjoys support in the Israeli security establishment.
Press reports intimate that Giora Eiland, head of the National
Security Council, has presented the “regional” option to Sharon.
Besides receiving a favorable response from the premier, Eiland
has a mandate to present the plan to the international community.[29]
The salient difference between the current Israel Defense Forces
command and the ex-general Sharon is that the former fancy that
such an accommodation can be negotiated. The more prudent Sharon
appreciates that neither the Palestinians nor Israel’s neighbors
will agree to the idea.
How might
Sharon succeed in effecting this binational outcome to the conflict?
He and his spokespersons often note that the disengagement plan
buys Israel time. If Sharon has in mind a two-state outcome that
will usher in peace, then why play for time? The reason is not
only that time gained allows Israel to strengthen its hold upon
crucial settlement blocs. More importantly, the time that Sharon
will purchase through his plan allows another demographic trend
to progress, namely, a change in the internal Jordanian demographic
balance between Palestinians and Transjordanians. Palestinian
refugees residing in Jordan already constitute a majority, but
gerrymandering by the Hashemite regime has ensured that they are
vastly under-represented in the legislature. Moreover, Transjordanians
continue to dominate the kingdom’s key institutions, most importantly
the security apparatus. This balance could shift, especially if
Jordan is pressed into majority-rule democracy as some might think
Bush’s rhetoric of “transforming” the Middle East implies. In
such a scenario, the region could be home to two “Palestinian
entities” -- a limited state on the remnants of the West Bank
and Jordan. Cut off from Israel by the separation barrier, the
Palestinians would look to Jordan as their cultural and economic
hub. In such a sequence, Sharon probably envisages the collapse
of the two states into one entity. The merger would not necessarily
require force or direct Israeli involvement. One development Sharon
could anticipate is the rise of irredentist movements in both
polities, calling for voluntary association based on the will
of the two peoples. Heightened Jordanian sensitivities and current
US interests prevent Sharon from discussing this broader objective
with the candor he uses to discuss West Bank settlements.
In order
for Amman to become the “new Jerusalem,” Israel would need to
connect the two territories by giving up the Jordan River Valley.
What was once seen as a vital threat to Israel -- continuity between
Jordan and the West Bank -- could be seen by Sharon as an Israeli
interest. No Iraqi army is going to be marching through Jordan
any time soon. To boot, leaving the Jordan River Valley will aid
Israeli efforts to secure the moral high ground and alleviate
Israeli demographic fears by giving West Bank Palestinians room
to the east for population expansion. In the context of his disengagement
scheme, Sharon has also made it clear that Palestinians should
seek their economic prospects in Jordan and Egypt. The fact that
there is unlikely to be an eastern separation barrier between
the valley and the hilly areas of the central West Bank adds weight
to the idea that Sharon will give up parts of the Jordan River
Valley.
In
essence, Ariel Sharon proposes an undeclared waiting game with
Jordan. He assumes that Israeli withdrawals will put Israel in
pole position for such a game, in which Jordan’s dependence on
the international community for economic aid makes it vulnerable.
He further assumes that the national resolve of Palestinians and
Jordanians is weaker than that of the Jewish people. This last
assumption may be somewhat naïve; Jordanian nationalists are determined
to preserve a distinct entity and have actively been doing so
since 1988.[30] Similarly, Palestinians continue to be committed
to the two-state outcome and a Palestinian state. Misguided assumptions
about one’s opponents are an inherent flaw of unilateral games
-- as F. W. de Klerk can testify. A managed transition might take
on a life of its own. Writing before the current uprising, however,
Palestinian intellectual Salim Tamari perceptively suggested that
the “conditions that will arise from a truncated state will also
compel Palestinians to rethink the pan-Arab component of their
culture” and make the binational idea “increasingly of greater
relevance to Palestine’s relationship with Jordan, than its relationship
with Israel.”[31]
Tamari
raises a provocative issue. Ironically, it might well be that
the bubbling binational discourse -- which focuses on Israel-Palestine,
not Jordan -- inadvertently serves Sharon’s agenda. On the one
hand, it undermines the hegemony of the two-state solution as
understood by the Zionist left, Palestinians and much of the international
community. Moreover, a progressive-led debate on Israeli-Palestinian
binationalism creates important space to consider the alternative
binational option. It might well be easier to forge a domestic
Israeli consensus around such an agenda. The Zionist left has
traditionally supported this position. In March 1990, Shimon Peres
lamented that the Likud’s efforts to stymie the Jordan option
would “open the door to the Palestinians, the PLO and Arafat.”[32]
For the likes of Peres, for whom the two-state solution is a means
to an end -- securing a Jewish-majority democracy in Israel --
yet another political U-turn would be no problem. Perhaps this
explains why Peres gleefully cooperates with Sharon in government.
On the right, elements of the settler movement and the Likud support
a variant of the idea. When the time comes, a limited Palestinian
entity linked to Jordan could quite easily be repackaged as a
natural extension of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s plan
to grant the Palestinians wide-ranging autonomy on civil matters,
yet leave Israel in control of West Bank and Gaza. The repackaged
Palestinian state and a subsequent Jordanian-Palestinian union
could well emerge as the common denominator for the Zionist movement.
[1]
Ari Shavit, “Year of Truth,” Haaretz, December 30, 2004.
[23]
Gideon Levy, “Don’t Disengage,” Haaretz, April 18, 2004.
[24]
Bret Stephens, “Toilets in the Sand,” Jerusalem Post, September
3, 2004.
[25]
David Held, Political Theory and the Modern State (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), p. 225.
[26]
Joseph Strayer quoted in Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed
Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the
West Bank (Ithaca, 1993), p. 38.
