Sharon's
Speech Decoded
By Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom
23 December, 2003
He
read out the written text of his speech, word for word, without raising
his eyes from the page. It was vital for him to stick to the exact wording,
since it was an encoded text. It is impossible to decipher it without
breaking the code. And it is impossible to break the code without knowing
Ariel Sharon very well indeed.
So it is no surprise
that the flood of interpretations in Israel and abroad was ridiculous.
The commentators just did not understand what they had heard. That's
why they wrote things like "He did not say anything new",
"He has no plan", "He is marking time", "He
is old and tired". And the usual Washington reaction: "A positive
step, but..."
Nonsense. In his
speech, Sharon outlined a whole, detailed - and extremely dangerous
- plan. Those who did not understand - Israelis, Palestinians and foreign
diplomats - will be unable to react effectively.
Here is the deciphered text of Sharon's "Herzliyah speech":
The name of the game is Hitnatkut ("cutting ourselves off").
Meaning: most of the West Bank area will become de facto a part of Israeli,
and the rest we shall leave to the Palestinians, who will be enclosed
in isolated enclaves. From these enclaves, the settlements will be removed.
Stage One:
In order to do this, we need time - about half a year. We are talking
about a large-scale and complicated military operation. The army will
have to occupy and fortify new lines, while "relocating" dozens
of isolated settlements. This will require detailed planning, which
has not yet even started. The necessary forces and instruments will
have to be prepared. Half a year is the minimum.
During this period
we shall not be idle. On the contrary, we shall finish the "separation
fence", and it will play a major part in the new deployment. We
shall develop the "settlement blocs", to which we shall transfer
the settlers who will be relocated.
The execution of
the plan in half a year is perfectly timed. At exactly that time the
American election campaign will reach its climax. No American politician
will dare to utter a word against Israel. The Democrats need the Jewish
votes and money. The Republicans also need the votes and the money of
the 60 million Christian fundamentalists, who support the most extreme
elements in Israel.
While we quietly
prepare the big operation, we shall continue to flatter President Bush
and praise his idiotic Road Map, without, of course, fulfilling any
of our obligations under the Map. But we shall blame the Palestinians
for violating it.
At the same time
we shall pretend to seek negotiations with the Palestinians. We shall
try to meet with Abu-Ala as many times as possible and play the game
to the end. When we are ready to go, we shall terminate the contacts,
declare the Road Map dead and state sorrowfully that all our efforts
to start peace negotiations have failed because of Arafat.
Stage two: By
then, the "separation wall" will be ready. The Palestinian
territories (Areas A and B under Oslo) will be surrounded on all sides.
In practice there will be about a dozen isolated pockets. In order to
fulfil our promise about Palestinian "contiguity" we shall
connect the enclaves by special roads, bridges and tunnels, which we
shall be able to cut at a moment's notice.
The army will withdraw
gradually to the separation barrier and redeploy in the territories
that will be annexed to Israel, including, inter alia, the settlement
blocs of Karney Shomron, Elkana, Ariel and Kedumim; the Modi'in Road
and the territory south of it up to the Green Line, all the Greater
Jerusalem area already annexed in 1967; the new neighborhoods around
Jerusalem up to Maaleh Adumim and perhaps further; the Jewish settlement
in Hebron and Kiryat Arba and the settlements in the Hebron area; all
the Dead Sea shore; all the Jordan valley, including about 15 km of
the banks. Altogether, more than half the West Bank.
These areas will
not be annexed officially, but we shall annex them as rapidly as possible
in practice. We shall fill them with settlements (also using the settlers
from the "relocated" settlements), industrial parks, roads,
public institutions and army installations, so that they will become
indistinguishable from parts of Israel proper.
At the same time,
we shall evacuate the settlements beyond the barrier, including those
in the Gaza Strip (with or without the Katif bloc.)
In line with the
American proposal, we shall call the Palestinian enclaves "a Palestinian
State with Temporary Borders". That will give the Palestinians
the illusion that they will be able to negotiate the "permanent"
borders. But, of course, the "separation fence" will be the
final border.
The terror will
not stop completely, but the Palestinian enclaves will be at our mercy
and we shall be able to cut each of them off at any time, prevent movement
from one to another and make life in them intolerable. It will not be
worthwhile for them to conduct violent acts.
Officially, the
Palestinians will have free access to the border crossings to Egypt
and Jordan, but in practice we shall maintain an effective military
presence, enabling us to stop movement there at any time.
At first the world
will scream, but faced with a fait accompli they will quieten down.
Even if Bush remains in the White House, he will be paralysed until
after the elections at the end of 2004. If a Democrat is elected president,
he will need some months to settle down. By then everything will be
finished, and we shall be able to generously agree to some minor adjustments.
This is the Plan.
Can it be realized?
It is quite possible
that Sharon will convince Israeli public opinion. The great majority
of the public is united around two points: (a) the longing for peace
and security, and (b) the distrust of Arabs and the unwillingness to
deal with them. (Some weeks ago, a satirical supplement published a
slogan: "YES to peace, NO to Palestinians".)
Sharon's plan promises
both. It promises peace and security, and it is entirely "unilateral".
No negotiations with Palestinians are required, it does not depend on
the will of the Arabs, who can be ignored entirely.
In this respect,
Sharon's plan has a great advantage over the Geneva Initiative, which
is entirely based on the assumption that "there is a partner"
and that we must negotiate with the Palestinians and make peace with
them. Long years of brainwashing, led by Ehud Barak and most of the
other leaders of the "Zionist Left", have convinced the Israeli
public that there is no partner, that the Arabs are cheating, that Arafat
has broken every single agreement he has signed, etc. The Sharon plan
conforms to all these myths, while the Geneva Initiative clashes with
them.
But beneath the
road to the implementation of the Sharon Plan there lie two big landmines:
the settlers and the Palestinians.
The inhabitants
of the settlements that are supposed to be "relocated" include
some of the most extreme elements of the settlement movement. There
is no chance that these will go away peacefully. They will have to be
removed by force.
That will require
a huge military effort. While many moderate settlers will remove themselves
voluntarily if given fat compensation, many others will resist. According
to an informed estimate, some 5000 soldiers and policemen will be needed
to remove just one small "outpost": Migron, near Ramallah,
which Sharon was supposed to have removed long ago according to the
Road Map. When dozens of bigger and more established settlements have
to be removed, it will need a giant, quasi war-like operation, requiring
a general call up of reserves, with all the political implications.
The army cannot
just leave these territories with the settlements remaining behind.
As long as the settlements are there, the army will be there. In other
words, the implementation of the plan will not be quick and tidy, like
the last night in south Lebanon, but a process of many months, perhaps
years.
While the deployment
in the areas thawill be de facto annexed to Israel will be quick and
effective, the transfer of the territories that will be turned over
to the Palestinians will be very slow.
It is a complete
illusion to believe that all this time the Palestinians will quietly
look on. They will see the execution of a plan that they believe, quite
rightly, to be a device for the destruction of the national aims of
the Palestinian people. Clearly there will be no place in the Palestinian
enclaves for returning refugees (not to mention any return of refugees
to Israel itself). To call this structure a "Palestinian State"
is a joke in bad taste.
If Sharon succeeds
in executing his plan, a new chapter in the 100-year old Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will be opened. The Palestinians will be crowded into territories
that will constitute about 10% of the original territory of Palestine
before 1948. They will have no chance of enlarging this territory. On
the contrary: they will be afraid of Sharon and his successors trying
to remove them from what is left, completing the ethnic cleansing of
Eretz Israel.
Therefore, the Palestinians
will fight against this plan, and their struggle will intensify the
more it progresses. All possible means will be employed: firing missiles
and mortar shells over the separation barrier, sending suicide bombers
into Israel, and so on. Probably, the violent fight will spill over
into many other countries around the world, both on the ground and in
the air. There will be no peace, no security.
In the end, the
basic factors will be decisive: the endurance of the two peoples, their
readiness to continue the bloody fight, with all its economic and social
implications, as well as the willingness of the world to look on passively.
The idea of "unilateral
peace" is strikingly original. "Peace without the other side"
is a contradiction in terms. Learned people will call it an oxymoron,
a Greek term meaning, literally, a sharp folly.
Eventually, the
fate of this plan will be the same as the fate of all the other grandiose
plans put forward by Sharon it in his long career. One need only think
of the Lebanon war and its price.