Following President
Bush's meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Aqaba, Jordan,
the Middle East peace process is once again officially underway.
To maximize the diplomatic momentum developed thus far, rhetoric
must translate into concrete improvements on the ground and all
sides will need to address issues that are at the heart of the conflict.
From the moment
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used the word "occupation"
to describe Israel's relationship to the Palestinians, many began
questioning whether the time is ripe for a resolution of this decades-long
conflict. His call for an end to "occupation" has nonetheless
prompted a false sense of hope among many.
Sharon did
not indicate any willingness to relinquish Israeli control of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, merely expressing instead a desire to
end any Israeli responsibility for the Palestinian population -
a sentiment echoing Israeli prime ministers since 1967. It is this
core tenet of Israel's vision that has prevented the creation of
a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and thwarted
efforts to resolve the conflict.
After the occupation
of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in 1967, Israeli
leaders wrestled with how to ensure control over the land and resources
of these areas while avoiding responsibility for the Palestinians
living there. Their "solution" has been virtually uniform:
Palestinians should be given some voice in their own affairs, while
control of land, resources and economy remained with Israel. Since
1967, successive Israeli governments have implemented a series of
strategic plans to achieve this.
Guided by the
Allon Plan (1967), the Sharon Plan (1977) and a plan by the World
Zionist Organization (1978), Israel has constructed settlements
and connecting roads designed to isolate Palestinian population
centers and prevent their expansion, meantime ensuring Israel's
permanent control over large swaths of land.
The final version
of the Allon Plan in 1967 recommended establishing some form of
Arab or Palestinian "entity" in approximately 50 percent
of the West Bank. In 1977, the Israeli Knesset adopted the Begin
Plan, which called for Palestinian "autonomy" in the Occupied
Territories, embodied in an administrative council. This council
was to be responsible for internal Palestinian matters while Israel
retained control over foreign policy, borders and the economy.
After the signing
of the Oslo accords in 1993, Israel moved to "remote"
control. The Israeli army transferred limited powers to the new
"self-governing entity," the Palestinian Authority, and
redeployed outside Palestinian towns, thus decreasing risks to Israeli
soldiers while maintaining the occupation through a nexus of Israeli
checkpoints, closures and permits necessary to move outside or between
Palestinian areas.
At the same
time, Israel launched a massive settlement expansion that Sharon
had planned in 1991. Motivated by large economic incentives, Israeli
settlers flocked to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, doubling the number
of settlers there between 1994 - 2000. These settlements were linked
to Israel by "bypass roads" that expanded the road network
proposed in the Allon and Sharon Plans.
A key piece
in the overall plan is currently under construction - a concrete
"separation" wall, 25 feet tall, that will surround the
Palestinian cantons in the West Bank. Maps outlining the final contours
of the wall illustrate the complete concordance between Israel's
grand vision of the West Bank and the earlier Allon and Sharon maps.
There is a
lot of attention on the road map's plan for dismantlement of Israeli
settlement "outposts" built since March 2001, and a planned
freeze on all settlement activity. But dismantling these "outposts"
will have no impact on major settlement blocs, and ending settlement
expansion does not go far enough: large settlement blocs - Sharon's
"facts on the ground" - already protrude into the West
Bank and Gaza.
In his recent
statements, Sharon has not changed the Israeli position at all.
"It is in Israel's interest," he said at the end of the
Aqaba Summit, "not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians
to govern themselves in their own state."
The problem
is Sharon's vision of that state - one he outlined in a December
2002 speech: "(the) Palestinian state will be ... allowed to
maintain lightly armed police and interior forces to ensure civil
order. Israel will continue to control all entries and exits to
the Palestinian state, will command its airspace and not allow it
to form alliances with Israel's enemies."
Focusing on
Sharon's use of the word "occupation" or possible dismantlement
of "outposts" blinds us to the larger reality - an apartheid-style
Palestinian "Bantustan," where the fig leaf of autonomy
hides the reality of continued Israeli occupation. If Israel is
allowed to implement its strategic plan, the newest efforts to resolve
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are doomed to fail.
(Adam Hanieh
is a human rights consultant and researcher living in Ramallah,
on the West Bank. Catherine Cook is media coordinator at the Middle
East Research and Information Project in Washington, DC.)
