December 27, 2003

SHARON UNLEASHED

by Srdja Trifkovic

On December 18 at a conference in Herzliya (Israel) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delivered the most important speech of his career. He announced a set of measures that will not only "shape Israel's character during the next few years," as he put it, but may well shape the Middle East for decades to come.

Robbed of rhetoric the speech made five key points: First, Sharon will seek to impose his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unilaterally ("if the Palestinians do not make a similar effort toward a solution of the conflict, I do not intend to wait for them indefinitely.")

Second, he says that he remains committed to the "Roadmap" launched last spring-"based on President George Bush's June 2002 speech"-but "the achievement of full security" has to come first: the Palestinians must "uproot the terrorist groups," "create a law-abiding society which fights against violence and incitement," and "transform the Palestinian Authority into a different authority" before progress in the political process can be made.

Third, if the Palestinians fail to do so in the next few months, "Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians."

Fourth, the Plan will include the redeployment of the Israeli Army (IDF) along the newly-built security fence and "a change in the deployment of settlements" that will seek to remove all Jewish settlements from the areas beyond the fence.

And fifth, the fence "will not constitute the permanent border of the State of Israel" but "as long as implementation of the Roadmap is not resumed, the IDF will be deployed along that line." The "Disengagement Plan" will be "realized," however, if the Palestinians continue to postpone implementation of the Roadmap, and "they will receive much less than they would have received through direct negotiations as set out in the Roadmap."

That Sharon has already made up his mind to proceed unilaterally is clear: he will be the sole judge of whether the Palestinians have made "steps which will enable progress toward resolution of the conflict," and the verdict is preordained. His insistence on President Bush's June 2002 speech as the alleged basis of the "Roadmap" is especially significant. In that speech Mr. Bush made harshly critical remarks about the Palestinian Authority, saying that "peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership… not compromised by terrorism." He told the Palestinians that they had to eradicate corruption, reform security services, create an independent judiciary, empower the legislature, and "build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty." As the London Times commented at the time, his speech "was so pro-Israel that it might have been written by Ariel Sharon." Mr. Sharon now invokes that speech, knowing that the post set up by Bush was so high that no current or likely future Palestinian leader could hope to cross it. Sharon's scenario is greatly helped by Yassir Arafat's ability to reclaim the center stage of Palestinian politics. The ageing PA Chairman's primary objective is now as ever to enhance his personal power regardless of consequences for the position of his people. This suits the Israeli prime minister who has a welcome alibi for the intransigence to which he had always inclined.

Sharon's intentions cannot be understood separately from the geography of the new "security fence" (for official Israeli map see here) and the pace of its construction. It will be mostly completed by mid-2004, by which time Sharon will declare that the Palestinians' failure to eradicate terrorism and carry out other reforms justify Israel's "unilateral security step of disengagement." He will proclaim that the "Road Map" is sadly no longer a viable blueprint for peace, and proceed with de facto partition of the occupied territories. The areas under Palestinian control-barely one-tenth of the pre-partition Palestine-will be surrounded by the fence itself, and by a string of relocated Jewish settlements and Israeli military outposts behind it. Those areas will be de facto annexed to Israel. As is clear from the map of the fence, Palestinian enclaves will be nominally contiguous, but they could be cut into a dozen mutually unconnected enclaves at a moment's notice by the IDF.

The Palestinians will protest-they are doing it already-but to no avail. The rest of the Arab world is demoralized and unwilling to confront the United States. "What Can We Do?" asks the headline in the leading Saudi daily Al-Hayat (December 26), and answers succintly, nothing: the Palestinians can either accept the fait accompli under American, European and Arab pressure, or the unbalanced war goes on forever:

"Sharon is changing facts in Palestine, whereas Bush is changing facts in the entire Middle East. Sharon has started benefiting from the Iraq war, just as George Bush has started exploiting it. The Europeans, who think they are doing what should be done, are assuming a role that was drawn for them… Let us let this disaster complete its course and then we'll see how we deal with it."

In Washington neither party will dare criticize Israel in the critical stage of the presidential election. Even last week, after some hesitation, the Administration decided to pretend that Sharon's speech was somehow constructive and conducive to peace. "We are very satisfied with the speech," White House spokesman Scott McClellan announced: "The Prime Minister has underlined an aspect which is comforting to us. He reiterated and reaffirmed his support of the road map and the commitments he took on at the Aqaba Summit." (Only a day earlier McClellan had stated that "the U.S. believes that an agreement must be negotiated.")

In the short term-meaning the next few years-Sharon will be the winner, with a discredited Arafat and a helpless Arab world on one side, and a docile duopoly in Washington on the other. In the long run, however, time is not on Israel's side, demographically and psychologically. As the Israeli commentator Uri Avnery notes, if Sharon succeeds in executing his plan a new chapter in the 100-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be opened, 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."

The latest Palestinian suicide bombing that killed four Israelis at a bus stop outside Tel Aviv on Christmas Day is both a hint of the post-separation future and a fresh argument for Sharon's supporters. An unnamed Israeli official promptly commented that if anyone gets blamed for fencing the Palestinians in-"this nightmare of being penned like cattle"-it should be Arafat. By the same token, Sharon will have to share the burden of blame for future terrorist attacks because of his refusal to acknowledge that Israel's security is ultimately correlated to the extent the legitimacy of its existence is accepted by its Arab neighbors. Even with the fence, and the Palestinian Authority reduced to a few pathetic enclaves, the price of short-term security gains will be long-term radicalism on the Palestinian side.

While Sharon's shortsightedness should be a matter of regret for Israel's friends, the willingness of the U.S. Administration to go along with his design-and to pretend that the Israeli prime minister is being constructive-is pathetic. It serves no definable American interest and it is not conducive to Israel's long-term peaceful, prosperous survival. Sharon's "disengagement" will present ever more starkly Israel's true long-term choices: it will either reach a compromise based on the withdrawal from all occupied territories, evacuation of most settlements, and acceptance of truly sovereign Palestinian statehood, or else it will have to "remove" the Arabs inhabiting those territories to Jordan and bring millions of fresh Jewish settlers from around the world.

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