August 28, 2004

www.rockfordinstitute.org

OPEN SEASON FOR SHARON:
DOES THE ISRAELI PREMIER DICTATE NYT OP-EDS?

by Srdja Trifkovic

The term "Jewish settlements in the West Bank" evokes images of prefabricated houses and trailers, of bearded men with yamulkas and Uzis, of treacherous access roads surrounded by barbed wire, roadblocks and heavily armed Israeli soldiers.

Maale Adumim has none of that. It is a "settlement" only in the legal-technical sense, because it is situated five miles east of Jerusalem and therefore falls outside the "green line" (Israel's pre-1967 borders).

Originally founded by a tiny group of settlers in 1976 it expanded significantly after 1982, when the Israeli government declared the area to be "state land" although it was legally owned by the Palestinian residents of the neighboring village of Abu Dis. From 1982 onwards, as the colony expanded, the Jahalin Bedouin who had been living there were transferred to another, greatly inferior site which was declared as unfit for human habitation by Israeli environmentalists.

When I visited Maale Adumim with David Hartman and Tom Fleming last year it looked and felt like a well established city of 30,000. Its middle and lower-middle-class residents were living in townhouses and single family homes more solidly built than most new subdivisions in the U.S. Many commute to office jobs in West Jerusalem on a secure four-lane highway, while others work on a massive industrial estate and office park next to the "settlement." The family we visited and their neighbors had landscaped gardens, two-car garages, and a great deal of confidence that they were there to stay for ever.

Their community was in the news recently when the government of Ariel Sharon announced plans to expand Maale Adumim and a few other West Bank locations by building a thousand new housing units for Jewish settlers. On August 17 the Israeli government published formal tenders for the contract, and a week later bulldozers were already in action north of Adumim. Needless to say, the decision violated Israel's undertaking under President George W. Bush's "Roadmap" not to do any such thing; the document mandated freezing of all construction in all settlements, regardless of size.

The expansion of settlements fits in with Mr. Sharon controversial plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza strip and the northern tip of the West Bank ("northern Samaria"), but at the same time to strengthen Israel's hold on the choicest pieces of real estate in the West Bank. His plan makes a lot of geopolitical sense if his goal is to create a Greater Israel-expanded well beyond the Green Line-and to carve up the Palestinian remnant into unconnected enclaves. He loses nothing by giving up Gaza-overpopulated, poor, and violent-while his design in the West Bank may have historic significance.

The narrow belt of territory between East Jerusalem and the Jordan, where Adumim stands, is strategically the most important piece of land in the entire region. It may easily cut the West Bank in two, severing a territorial link between Bethlehem and Ramallah essential for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Adumim and neighboring settlements of Gilo, Efrata and Beitar already separate Arab East Jerusalem from its natural hinterland and, coupled with the emerging Fence of Separation, will seal it off hermetically from the West Bank. Its natural expansion has already stopped, and the dream of its ever becoming the capital of a Palestinian state will become an impossibility even if that state comes into being one day. Sharon's current bid for a non-negotiable preemptive outcome may well make the two-state solution impossible in any event.

Predictably the Israeli announcement caused fury in the Arab world and widespread criticism in Europe. It encountered no serious opposition from Washington, however; its statement that it was "withholding judgment" echoed around the Middle East like a rifle shot. American envoy Elliot Abrams, who visited Israel earlier this month, said that a confrontation with Sharon on settlement expansion would not be in the Administration's "best interests."

The lack of serious American response was especially remarkable since Sharon's willingness to remove unauthorized settlements, and not to expand any existing ones, used to be cited in Washington as a key test of his credibility. Last June Sharon declared that ?the rule of law and order reigns in Israel, and we are immediately beginning the evacuation of the unauthorized outposts,? but now he thinks that he can do pretty much as he pleases under the cover of the U.S. presidential election-and he is right. Israeli commentator Uri Avnery summed it up recently when he called the months before the American presidential election as "a kind of open season for Israel":

Israeli governments naturally time their most controversial moves to coincide with the American elections. The more closely fought the elections, the more attractive it is for Israeli planners and adventurers . . . [Sharon] is basing his present policy on the same calculation. President George W. Bush is fighting for his political life. He will not dare to provoke a quarrel with Israel at this juncture. So from now until November, Sharon can do much as he pleases.

No less outspoken was a column by Aluf Benn in Ha'aretz on August 22. Noting that the New York Times reported that the U.S. would support Sharon's position on settlement expansion, Benn wondered if the Times report "was 'ordered' by Sharon's aides, to show the administration's support for him after the defeat in the Likud": "The newspaper is no less reliable than an official statement and spares the administration the need to explain itself to its Arab and European friends."

(Voicing opinions such as Benn's and Avnery's here at home can be somewhat tricky, but on these issues Israel is a haven of free speech compared to the United States.)

On the domestic front Mr. Sharon hopes that by expanding West Bank settlements and proceeding with the construction of the security fence he will appease his critics on the Israeli Right who object to his plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza strip. Having received American support for the fence and assurances that he can keep parts of the West Bank during his visit to Washington last spring, he looks well poised to effect a new reality on the ground well before the winner of the presidential race gets round to the problem of Israel-Palestine-about a year from now.

The strength of Sharon's position is reflected in the fact that his only political obstacles of any consequence right now are members of his own Likud party who accuse him of being too soft on the Palestinians. He would like to offer a grand coalition to Labor, even though the majority of his party's general assembly reject the proposal. He now hopes to obtain their support, because such government would enjoy clear confidence of the Israeli electorate and enhance Sharon's negotiating legitimacy. Labor would probably demand a more moderate platform for the future new round of "peace talks," but it would be neither able or willing to dismantle the fence or to return the enhanced West Bank settlements to their original condition.

The gloom and despair on the Arab side were summed up by Beirut's moderate English-language The Daily Star (August 18), which said that Palestinians and Arabs have lost all hope in the road map concept, and in the underlying idea that the United States can be a credible diplomatic interlocutor:

The continued American-Israeli dance over Israel's settlements and continued colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories is a central reason why tens of millions of people in the Middle East so vigorously reject any dealings with Israel and angrily oppose American Mideast policies . . . It is impossibly unrealistic for Washington to expect to engage Arab governments and people on issues like reform, weapons proliferation and anti-terror policies while it plays deception games with the world when it comes to Israel's settlements and colonies.

What is happening in Israel-Palestine now needs to be seen in the context of the radical reversal of previous U.S. policies performed by Mr. Bush last April, when he endorsed Sharon's intention to maintain major Jewish settlements in the West Bank in perpetuity, and when he ruled out the Palestinians' right of return to lands lost to Israel when it was created in 1948.

That Washington will accept his fait accompli regardless of the outcome of next November's election should not be doubted. In doing so it will not serve the best interest of the United States, and-by making the two-state solution even less likely than before-it will not enhance Israel's prospects for long-term survival. Sharon is drunk on his own hubris, but friends don't let friends drink and drive.

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