The End Of A
Viable Palestinian State
By Jeff Halper
01 April, 2005
The
Electronic Intifada
The
fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the
assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own,
then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution
242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to
the Geneva Initiative), on even half the Occupied Territories (Sharon's
notion) - it doesn't matter. Once there's a Palestinian state the conflict
is over and we can all move on to the next item on the agenda.
Wrong. A Palestinian
state can just as easily be a prison as a legitimate state that addresses
the national aspirations of its people. The crucial issue is viability.
Israel is a small country, but it is three times larger than the Palestinian
areas. The entire Occupied Areas - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and
Gaza - make up only 22% of Israel/Palestine. That means that even if
all of the territories Israel conquered in 1967 were relinquished, it
would still comprise a full 78% of the country.
Would the Palestinian
areas constitute a viable state? Barely. Just the size of the American
state of Delaware (but with three times the population before refugees
return), it would at least have a coherent territory, borders with Israel,
Jordan, Syria and Egypt, a capital in Jerusalem, a port on the Mediterranean,
an airport in Gaza, a viable economy (based on Holy Land tourism, agriculture
and hi-tech) and access to the water of the Jordan River.
An accepted member
of the international community enjoying trade with its neighbors - and
enjoying as well the support of a far-flung, highly educated and affluent
diaspora - a small Palestinian state would have a shot at viability.
This is what Israel
seeks to prevent. Ever since becoming the head of the Ministerial Committee
on Settlements in the Begin government back in 1977, Ariel Sharon has
been completely up-front about his intention of securing the entire
Land of Israel for the Jewish people. Security has nothing
to do with Israel's expansionist policies.
Successive Israeli
governments did not establish 200 settlements because of security. Nor
did they build a massive infrastructure of Israeli-only highways that
link the settlement blocs irreversibly into Israel for security reasons.
Nor can the route of the Separation Barrier, nor the policy of expropriating
Palestinian land and systematically demolishing Palestinian homes be
explained by security. They all derive from one central
goal: to claim the entire country for Israel. Period.
Still, Israel cannot
digest the 3.6 million Palestinians living in the Occupied
Territories. Giving them citizenship would nullify Israel as a Jewish
state; not giving them citizenship yet keeping them forever under occupation
would constitute outright apartheid.
What to do? The
answer is clear: establish a tiny Palestinian state of, say, five or
six cantons (Sharon's term) on 40-70% of the Occupied Territories, completely
surrounded and controlled by Israel. Such a Palestinian state would
cover only 10-15% of the entire country and would have no meaningful
sovereignty and viability: no coherent territory, no freedom of movement,
no control of borders, no capital in Jerusalem, no economic viability,
no control of water, no control of airspace or communications, no military
- not even the right as a sovereign state to enter into alliances without
Israeli permission.
And since the Palestinians
will never agree to this, Israel must create facts on the ground
that prejudice negotiations even before they begin. Last week's announcement
that Israel is constructing 3500 housing units in E-1, a corridor connecting
Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, seals the fate
of the Palestinian state.
As a key element
of an Israeli Greater Jerusalem, the E-1 plan removes any
viability from a Palestinian state. It cuts the West Bank in half, allowing
Israel to control Palestinian movement from one part of their country
to another, while isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian
territory. Since 40% of the Palestinian economy revolves around Jerusalem
and its tourist-based economy, the E-1 plan effectively cuts the economic
heart out of any Palestinian state, rendering it nothing more than a
set of non-viable Indian reservations.
If there is any silver lining in the E-1 plan, it is that it has highlighted
American complicity in Israel's settlement expansion. The Bush Administration,
while calling the E-1 plan unhelpful, nevertheless formally
recognized the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement bloc, together with E-1, in
last year's agreement between Bush and Sharon - a fundamental American
policy change that was ratified almost unanimously by Congress. This
puts the US in the very uncomfortable position of undermining its own
Road Map initiative, which stems from the Bush vision of
an Israeli-Palestinian peace. It also neutralizes completely America's
role as an honest broker, and pits it against the other three members
of the Road Map Quartet - Europe, the UN and Russia - who deplore the
change in American policy.
Most tragically,
American support for Sharon's settlement project destroys forever the
possibility of a viable Palestinian state, dooming the peoples of Israel-Palestine
to perpetual conflict. How this squares with American interests in a
stable Middle East is anybody's guess.
Jeff Halper,
Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)