The
Holes In Israel's Road Map
By
Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah
The
Financial Timesz
24 July 2003
Despite
the declaration of a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire with Israel, and
the frequent meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the "road
map" for peace is in serious trouble. This is because the Bush
administration, the plan's chief sponsor, has allowed Israel to reinterpret
it so that it is gutted of the elements that offered hope of progress.
Two elements distinguish
the road map from the failed Oslo process. First, it requires Israel
to freeze all settlement construction in the occupied territories at
the outset and to remove all colonies established since March 2001.
Second, the road map spells out explicitly the objective of the peace
process: an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; and
two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side.
Because Israel depends
on the US for the military and diplomatic backing that allows it to
continue its occupation of Arab land indefinitely, the success or failure
of the plan lies in Washington's willingness to confront an Israel that
remains committed to the settlements and opposed to a genuinely independent
Palestinian state.
The first signs
that President George W. Bush would not follow through on his verbal
commitment to the stated objectives came in his closing statement at
the June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, to launch the road map. While Mr
Bush demanded that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, concentrate
on ending any and all Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation,
he allowed Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to commit to far less
than the plan demands.
Mr Bush welcomed
Mr Sharon's "pledge to improve the humanitarian situation in the
Palestinian areas and to begin removing unauthorised outposts immediately".
In this way, Mr Bush conceded to Mr Sharon the right to decide what
constitutes an "unauthorised" settlement - a distinction that
does not exist in international law, which is clear that all the settlements
are illegal. Israel has made a great display of removing a few outposts,
mostly empty trailers and water tanks. In one case, The New York Times
reported a scuffle between supposedly angry settlers and Israeli soldiers
removing an outpost, which was interrupted so that the antagonists could
share refreshments. As these sham efforts went on, Mr Sharon told his
cabinet that the settlers could continue to build but should do so quietly.
The result, according to Israel's Peace Now, a pressure group, is an
increase in the number of outposts by at least two since Mr Bush made
his statement.
More significantly,
Israel has continued to carry out substantial construction projects
in the occupied territories. It has accelerated work on a four- metre-high
concrete wall that has in effect annexed large swaths of the West Bank
to Israel and cut off many Palestinian towns and villages from the rest
of the occupied territories.
These facts on the
ground make a genuine two-state solution increasingly unattainable in
practice. But, politically, the road map has already been emptied of
the content that would make such an outcome possible in the first place.
By recognising Israel within its 1948 borders, Palestinians have already
conceded 78 per cent of historic Palestine - in which they were the
overwhelming majority until Israel's creation. In exchange, they expect
full independence and sovereignty in the remaining 22 per cent - the
whole of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In this goal,
they are supported by a vast body of international law and United Nations
resolutions.
Yet when Mr Sharon
stated in Aqaba that "we can also reassure our Palestinian partners
that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in the West
Bank for a viable Palestinian state", he was essentially ruling
out a full Israeli withdrawal. "Contiguity" is an issue only
in the context of a continued Israeli presence on Palestinian land.
Mr Sharon is willing to call an arrangement in which Palestinians are
given limited self-government within a greater Israel where they have
no civil or political rights a "state". Many Palestinians
compare it to apartheid.
These developments,
along with Mr Bush's oblique endorsement of Israel's rejectionist position
towards the right of return of Palestinian refugees, do not add up to
what is desperately needed: a serious and rapid effort to end the occupation
completely and restore to Palestinians the basic rights they have been
denied for so long. Hence there is little to build or sustain support
for the process among Palestinians.
As the Bush administration
does nothing to check Israel - and simultaneously piles pressure on
the deeply unpopular Mr Abbas, whose appointment as Palestinian prime
minister it engineered - it is only a matter of time before the situation
explodes in a new and sustained round of violence.
Perhaps the only
hope of saving the process lies with strong intervention by the European
Union, which nominally co-authored the road map. Hitherto, the EU has
acquiesced in US leadership, even when it has disagreed with US positions.
And the US has been willing to ignore Europe on those rare occasions
when it has asserted itself, as the Iraq crisis demonstrated. But, ironically,
US difficulties in Iraq may give Europe the leverage to demand real
action towards Palestinian freedom and Middle East peace as a prerequisite
for help in extricating the Americans from their own unravelling occupation
of Iraq.
Hasan Abu Nimah
is former
ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan at the UN. Ali
Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. This article
appeared in The Financial Times on 22 July 2003.