Sharon's
Latest Settlement Move
By Ali Abunimah
& Hussein Ibish
The Chicago Tribune,
09 February 2004
Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement that he plans to remove virtually
all Israeli settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip has caused a shock
wave in Israel.
Has some sudden
epiphany convinced Sharon that the settlements are the key obstacle
to peace and that Israel's future is jeopardized by the continued attempt
to incorporate occupied Palestinian territories into a greater Israel?
Many Israelis, especially
in the military, have long felt that the Gaza settlements are pointless,
and a massive drain on national resources for no serious purpose. The
small Gaza settlements are purely symbolic, in stark contrast to the
massive settlements on the West Bank, which have literally reshaped
the landscape and are designed also to transform its demographic and
political realities, making Israel's control permanent.
While Sharon talks
about removing settlements in Gaza, he is continuing to build them all
over the West Bank, because he has no intention of permitting a real
Palestinian state to be constructed.
One of the main
reasons President Bush's "road map" for peace failed was that
Sharon reneged on promises that he would start removing new settlement
"outposts." Instead, he made a show of removing a few small,
uninhabited sites, while setting up many more new ones and expanding
dozens of major settlements up and down the West Bank.
Since Sharon broke
those promises, Israel has announced thousands of new settler housing
units. It recently allocated $1 million for yet another Jewish-only
road in the West Bank, this one to connect an outpost settlement to
a school run by an extremist Israeli group the U.S. State Department
has formally designated as a terrorist organization.
Sharon's announcement
could simply be a ploy to offset scandals at home, and growing pressure
on Israel abroad, by trying to create the impression that he is taking
some far-reaching initiative without intending to actually do anything.
Within Israel, his
proposal has divided the opposition.
The right now is
split between those who see him as a traitor to the cause of settling
all of "Eretz Yisrael," or the Land of Israel, and those who
see him as a pragmatist who can make tough decisions. Some on the left
mistrust him completely, while others, like Labor Party leader Shimon
Peres, welcome his proposals.
Sharon's announcement
has also drawn international attention away from the appalling separation
barrier Israel is building in the West Bank.
Sharon probably
does intend to remove the settlements from Gaza, although his strategic
vision has only been hinted at.
His spokesman Raanan
Gissin explained that "Sharon envisages territorial exchanges with
the Palestinians as part of future permanent arrangements, under which
Arab Israeli localities would pass under the sovereignty of the latter,
while Jewish settlements [in the West Bank] would be integrated into
Israeli territory."
Sharon seems to
be looking for a way to keep control of the West Bank--hence all the
new settlements and the separation wall deep inside Palestinian territory--but
maintain a Jewish majority among citizens of Israel.
Twenty percent of
Israel's citizens are Arabs. Gissin is proposing to strip at least some
of them of their citizenship and transfer their villages to a Palestinian
mini-state within a greater Israel.
From what we can
piece together from his actions and statements, Sharon's vision includes
offloading to a faux Palestinian state the burden of Gaza, political
responsibility for Palestinians in the West Bank, and a significant
number of Israeli citizens of Arab origin as well. Such an arrangement
would closely resemble efforts by South Africa's apartheid rulers to
maintain white rule and strip black citizens of their rights as South
Africans by creating ostensibly independent states for them known as
Bantustans.
That ploy failed
disastrously because the international community saw this deception
for what it was, while the injustices it created on the ground led to
ever more determined protest and resistance.
It appears that
Sharon is hoping to pull the same trick and get away with it.
Ali Abunimah is
a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. Hussein Ibish is communications
director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. This article
first appeared in The Chicago Tribune on 6 February 2004.