40th
Anniversary Of The Six-Day War
By George Bisharat
05 June, 2007
San
Francisco Chronicle
Forty
years ago this week, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
re-establishing a political system in which one sovereign ruled over
all of former Palestine. Unnoticed by the world, this brought about
a version of a "single state solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict -- albeit one in which Palestinians and Jews do not have equal
rights.
Instead, Israel has ruled
the West Bank and Gaza Strip through military governments that control
the daily lives of millions of Palestinians in every aspect, yet in
which they have no say. Although Palestinians now elect representatives
to a Palestinian Authority, these officials administer the tiny Gaza
Strip, and less than 20 percent of the West Bank. Their powers scarcely
exceed those of county supervisors.
Meanwhile, international
opinion has steadily solidified behind a "two state solution."
In this scenario, independent Jewish and Palestinian states would divide
the land between the Mediterranean coast and the River Jordan. By the
mid-1970s, most states in the U.N. General Assembly supported Palestinian
nationhood. In 1988, the PLO explicitly recognized Israel within its
pre-1967 borders, agreeing to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, together comprising just 22 percent of former Palestine.
The United States finally
joined the bandwagon in 2002, when President Bush called for two democratic
states living side by side in his "Roadmap to Peace." Even
Israel has signed on, although its conception of what territory and
powers a Palestinian state should possess is more constrictive than
anyone else's.
Ironically, this unanimity,
so laboriously assembled over decades, upholds a solution that is now
impossible to achieve. Israel's program of colonizing the West Bank
has become irreversible, and the land base for a viable Palestinian
state has disappeared. Some 450,000 Israeli settlers now occupy more
than 140 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. These Jewish
settlements, the security swaths around them, the roads linking them
to each other and to Israel, and the "separation wall" that
pens Palestinians into discontiguous islands of land, cover more than
40 percent of the West Bank. Much of this is either private Palestinian
property, seized without compensation, or state lands in which Palestinians
hold traditional use rights that Israel refuses to respect.
Meanwhile, Israel's colonizing
juggernaut rolls ahead. Recently, plans to build 2,500 new homes for
Israeli settlers east of Jerusalem were announced, and orders were given
to continue construction of the "separation wall" in the Jordan
Valley. There appears to be no political force capable of slowing, let
alone halting, this movement.
A comforting illusion has
been fostered that if Palestinians and Israelis could only be coaxed
back into negotiations, the elusive two-state solution would somehow
materialize. The interests of leaders on all sides are served by this
fiction, although for different reasons. For President Bush, an appearance
of progress toward Palestinian-Israeli peace quells hostility toward
the United States in the Middle East, and eases policy options elsewhere
in the region, including Iraq. The PLO leadership, personified in the
hapless Mahmoud Abbas, staked its entire political legitimacy in the
Oslo accords and the endless "peace process" it inaugurated.
Abandoning negotiations toward a two-state solution would constitute
an admission that it had led the Palestinians into a terrible dead-end.
Israel mollifies the United States by engaging in the negotiation charade,
exploits the continuing indeterminacy to continue colonizing the West
Bank, and advances its strategic objective of permanent control over
most or all of former Palestine. Like the shimmering waters of a desert
mirage, the two-state solution moves just out of reach with every apparent
advancing step.
The tragedy is that temporizing
in the face of this inevitable truth ultimately serves neither Israeli
Jews, nor Palestinian Arabs, nor Americans. Continued conflict in the
region hurts the direct parties in obvious ways, and also deeply undermines
the status of the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Our reflexive
support of Israel, even in its self-destructive policies, is a prime
cause of hostility against us.
The number of Israeli Jews
and Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of former Palestine
are now roughly equivalent, at just more than 5 million each. The question
is: Will political power within this single political system continue
to be exercised in what former ANC member and current South African
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils and others have described as an
acute form of apartheid? Or will Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews
enjoy equal rights and share power fairly in what is already a joint
polity? For those who support peace, justice and respect for international
law, the choice should be obvious.
George Bisharat
is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law, and writes frequently
on law and politics in the Middle East.
This article appeared on
page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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