What Will Be
The Sharon Legacy?
By Am Johal
29 March, 2005
Countercurrents.org
As
Israeli Arabs mark Land Day this week, Ariel Sharon's government announced
what everybody already knew since last summer. The Israeli government
is going to expand the Maaleh Adumim settlement bloc in the West Bank
by 3,500 housing units. With other development measures in place, it
will effectively separate the West Bank and leave an open corridor under
Israeli control as well as redraw the boundaries of Jerusalem. Other
policies such as the construction of the Separation Wall will continue
unabated.
Despite positive
policy developments since the recent Palestinian elections and the death
of Yasser Arafat, this recent announcement brought back the reality
of the old days and the original playbook of the Israeli right: act
unilaterally, expand the settlements, make a land grab and blame the
Palestinians for everything.
As right wing factions
in the Knesset sought to build support for a referendum on the Gaza
withdrawal last week, Sharon and his coalition government backed by
Labor soundly defeated the motion. There was Sharon again in his new
persona as a man of the middle.
"We can't expect
to receive explicit American agreements to build freely in the Settlements,"
he told his Cabinet colleagues. "The Americans always expressed
criticism about construction in the settlements, and they have done
so now, too."
As Sharon prepares
to meet President Bush next month, his government is continuing to change
the facts on the ground. Under the cover of the Gaza withdrawal, the
plan for continued settlement expansion is moving ahead.
Sharon plans to
proceed with expansion while the Bush Administration will not go beyond
a few public statements expressing concerns with the policy. The Roadmap
to Peace, in this environment, has no standing in the Middle East as
a legitimate vehicle for peace or a final agreement. As it stands now,
it is a public relations exercise designed to fill a diplomatic vacuum.
Despite UN resolutions,
pronouncements made during the Roadmap to Peace process and other public
statements, the plan to redraw Jerusalem and build into the West Bank
has had no serious opposition. Sharon's unilateralism has won the day
while he has been showered with the praise of a moderate.
Many Israeli commentators
such as Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Tanya Reinhart have asked the question,
"Is the left dead in Israel?" As the settlers protesting the
Gaza withdrawal bring 100,000 to Jerusalem, the groups opposing settlement
expansion have yet to build a public consensus or win over the street.
In this failure
of leadership on the Israeli left, a movement which has barely lifted
a finger since the Camp David Accords, has been the further negation
and marginalization of even the most basic Palestinian demands, backed
by international law, UN resolutions and the International Court of
Justice.
The narrative has
rarely shifted. "There can be no peace until the Palestinians deal
with their own terrorists." Incitement still exists on both sides
of the border, but one is still the aggressor and the other, the occupied.
Today, on the Israeli side just as with the Bush Administration, unilateralism
is rewarded as an example of true leadership.
In supporting the
expansion of Maaleh Adumim, Sharon is imposing a new geographic and
demographic reality on Jerusalem. In addition to other policies such
as the Separation Wall and evictions in the City of David/Silwan neighbourhood,
it is fair to say that there is a policy of ethnic transfer occurring
today all under the watchful eye of the EU, the UN and the United States.
The Greater Jerusalem
Plan includes an area exceeding 10 percent of the West Bank and will
ensure that there will be no contiguity between the southern and northern
areas of the West Bank.
The peace process
certainly has not been kind to the Palestinians. The number of settlers
has increased from 105,000 in 1992 to 236,000 at present in the West
Bank. Last year alone, 4,000 housing units were constructed during the
US led the Roadmap to Peace.
Since September
2000, when Ariel Sharon made his visit to the Temple Mount igniting
the Second Intifada, more than 3,200 Palestinians have been killed and
1,000 Israelis. Most of these killed were unarmed civilians. In the
process, over 4,000 homes have been demolished and the main features
of the Occupation continue - movement restrictions, choking of the Palestinian
economy, administrative detention, collective punishment, denial of
basic services and building of the Separation Wall has led to John Dugard,
the UN Special Rapporteur to Palestine calling the situation similar
to Apartheid.
In a report last
year, Dugard noted that settlement expansion together with the construction
of the Separation Wall, "suggests that territorial expansion remains
an essential feature of the Israel's policies and practises in the [occupied
Palestinian Territories]."
If the narrative
in the mainstream media will simply be that Sharon, the father of the
settlement movement, is now the one leading his nation to peace by implementing
the Gaza withdrawal, it will be a story which does not recognize his
direct role in expanding settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank
- a policy which will prolong any hope for a final status agreement.
A peace process without a human rights agenda will be meaningless.