After
reassuring his colleagues on the Israeli Right that he has no
intention of abandoning any of the major settlements which he
helped to create to guarantee that Israel would retain control
over most of the West Bank, Ariel Sharon publicly
"accepted" the Road Map to Peace proposed by
President Bush. While retaining control over most of the West
Bank, Sharon will now be willing to talk about a Palestinian
state in what amounts to less than 12 percent of pre-1948
Palestine. To show his "good faith," Sharon will
dismantle some of the many settlements that have been set up by
handfuls of Israeli nationalists in the past two years, while
Israel retains control over most of the settlements in which
some 240,000 Jews have created a de facto occupation on the
West Bank. To protect those more serious settlements which he
boasted in the 1980s would create "facts on the
ground" that would forever guarantee Israeli control over
much of the West Bank, Sharon is now portraying himself as a
"realist" and is willing to allow Palestinians
control over what will be a country that is smaller and less
economically viable than Long Island.
For the sake of
achieving these essentially meaningless concessions, the
Palestinians will have to prove that they can control Hamas and
suppress all those who might engage in acts of violence against
Israeli civilians. Otherwise, Israel will no longer be required
to follow through with this road map and actually grant
Palestinians the sham state Ariel Sharon envisions.
Palestinian
Prime Minister Abbas may grab at any straw being offered to him
by President Bush, but he and other Palestinian moderates are
unlikely to be able to convince the extremists that they have
achieved some significant victory or that the prospect of
continued Israeli occupation over the majority of the West Bank
seems like an outcome worthy of abandoning their armed
struggle. The best the moderates can say to the extremists is,
"If you end violence now, then we can travel down this
path at the end of which will lie...a negotiation about what a
Palestinian state will be." Well, for those who understand
that such a negotiation between a powerful Israel and a
powerless Palestinian people is not likely to produce much more
than the outcome Ariel Sharon describes to his right-wing
audiences.
What would
work? President Bush could reverse the order of his Road Map,
insisting that the negotiations about the final settlement take
place now, at the moment that the US has the greatest post-Iraq
war credibility with Israelis who should feel some appreciation
for the U.S. willingness to destroy the hostile Iraqi regime. A
final settlement that provided Palestinians with a state that
roughly approximated the size and integrity of the pre-1967
West Bank and Gaza would be a serious accomplishment sufficient
to build a majority Palestinian support for peace. Once that
had been agreed upon, Palestinian moderates could win the war
for the minds of their own people, and while some acts of
violence would almost certainly continue, Hamas and related
violent groups would become increasingly isolated as the
Palestinian majority sought to implement the rest of the Road
Map.
Instead, the
current plan rewards the terrorists and violence-prone on both
sides. It communicates a clear message: "We know that you
oppose a peaceful resolution of this conflict. To get your way,
all you have to do is engage in acts of violence, provoke the
other side, and then we will give you just what you want-a halt
to any progress down this road to peace."
So the charade
is win/win for Ariel Sharon and President Bush. Sharon can
appear to be making dramatic concessions while in fact giving
little besides dismantling of a few trailer homes on remote
hills that he has labeled "illegal settlements" (as
if there were any other kind). Bush portrays himself as having
delivered on his promise to make serious progress toward
Israel/Palestinian peace without actually demanding an end to
the Occupation, and his Road Map conveniently postpones the
moment of reckoning till after the 2004 elections. Yet for
those of us who are aware of the painful suffering that the
Occupation has brought to the Palestinian people and that acts
of terror have brought to the Israeli people, this latest round
of false promises and road maps leading nowhere will generate
yet a new level of sadness at an opportunity that is still
being missed.
The Resolution
for Middle East Peace being introduced by Congressman Dennis
Kucinich on behalf of the Tikkun Community takes on even
greater importance given this charade. The Resolution specifies
exactly what Bush's Road Map leaves out: the details of a
settlement that would be balanced and fair to both sides. It
calls for a Palestinian state that would be created in all of
the West Bank and Gaza (except, as Palestinians and Israelis
agreed at their negotiations at Taba in 2001 just before Ariel
Sharon was elected, for "minor border adjustments" to
ensure that the Jewish sections of Jerusalem including the Wall
could be part of Israel), reparations for Palestinian refugees
(but also for Jews who fled Arab lands, plus funds to resettle
West Bank settlers back inside the pre-67 borders of Israel),
serious military arrangements to provide lasting safety for
both Israel and Palestine, and support for a process of Truth
and Reconciliation between the two sides aimed at fostering a
new spirit of generosity and healing between the two
sides.
Also in this
section:
Díaz-Espino, Mireyistas move to grab
Coiba
Jackson, Orchestrated
campaigns
Girvan, Trade and human
development
Harris, Remembering a
fallen Marine
ICFTU, The Mideast
roadmap
Lerner, The Mideast
roadmap
