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VIEWPOINT
"Exploring The Powerful Issues & Emotions of The Middle East"
Reaching out to 51,228 Viewpoint readers around the globe
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Editor's Note:
This is a short article about the upcoming peace conference
that is really not about peace, but something else. Of
course you will not read articles like this in the main-
stream press.
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Formalizing Apartheid With A Peace Initiative
-by: Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to
discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between
Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making
and negotiating about what will be on the table has been
going on for some time.
But the details of the agreement being discussed have been
a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and
trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with
facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline
of Israel's 'next generous offer.'
Political maneuvers can be spun to sound good if the
details are kept vague, but when held to scrutiny it
becomes obvious that the upcoming Israeli offer is not so
generous. Like the Oslo Accords and the 'disengagement'
from Gaza, the peace process being cooked now is a move
to consolidate Israeli control of all of historical
Palestine while taking a large portion of the Palestinian
population off Israel's hands. The devil is in the details
that follow.
The agreement on the table offers Palestinians what
Israel's president Peres calls 'the equivalent of 100% of
the territory occupied in 1967.' According to Peres, Israel
will retain its major West Bank population centers, also
known as settlement blocs, which Peres claims make up only
5% of the West Bank. In exchange Israel will offer to give
the Palestinians the same amount of territory elsewhere.
According to Peres, Israel will exchange land in Israel
populated by Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.
This will allow Israel to remove some of its Arab
population, which most Jewish Israelis perceive as
'demographic threat' to the nature of the Jewish state.
When Israeli politicians like Peres talk about retaining
5% of the West Bank, they do not include occupied East
Jerusalem. Israel illegally and unilaterally annexed East
Jerusalem in 1967-68. Hence, Israeli sources claim there
are 250,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, completely
discounting the estimated additional 250,000 settlers in
occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel's settlement blocs are being created and built as
you read these words. For years Israel has been creating
population centers on strategic land that will carve the
West Bank into disconnected islands, maintain Israeli
access to the West Bank water resources and surround and
strangle Arab Jerusalem. The de facto annexation of this
strategic 9.5% of the West Bank's land behind Israel's
apartheid wall has already taken place. The 'peace' process
will simply make it official.
In March 2006 the newly formed Kadima party was elected to
implement Ariel Sharon's 'convergence plan.' According to
this plan, the non-strategic settlements outside of the
settlement blocs would be dismantled. The evacuated
settlers would be resettled in the 'blocs' behind the wall
that would in turn be annexed by Israel.
On April 14, 2004, President Bush wrote to then Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, 'In light of new realities on the
ground, including already existing population centers it
is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status
negotiations will be a full and complete return to the
armistice lines of 1949...' This letter was subsequently
ratified in both US Houses of Congress.
Israel took this as a green light from the US to keep what-
ever areas they can fill with settlers. Therefore, despite
the Road Map requirement that Israel freeze settlement
expansion, Israel accelerated the creation of so called
'existing' population centers in strategically important
areas, otherwise known as the settlement blocs.
In the same letter to Sharon, Bush also stated, 'It seems
clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework
for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of
any final status agreement will need to be found through
the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling
of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.'
Consequently, in the offer to be made by Israel,
Palestinian refugees will be allowed the right to return,
not to their homes, but to small, non-contiguous parts of
their original homeland, divided into disconnected
territorial units, with no chance of maintaining a sustain-
able economy and with no control over water, power, or
other necessary resources. They will be allowed to return
to a cage, with Israel manning every door.
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Israeli plans, backed by these US guarantees, create
an unlivable apartheid situation for Palestinians. But
Palestinians are not even likely to receive such a
'generous' apartheid offer in November. Now, with less
than sixteen months left in the Bush administration, Ehud
Olmert lacks the political clout to carry out Israel's end
of the deal. Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak recent-
ly stated his opposition to what he called 'withdrawal
from Israeli principles that have stood for 40 years,
merely to gain favor in the eyes of an American president
who is leaving office in a year.
Therefore, at the Olmert's administration`s insistence, the
goals of the regional meeting have been watered down to a
joint statement that will outline the basis of the future
agreement. Olmert is demanding that the joint declaration
include a reference to Bush's April 2004 letter to Sharon
and to the Road Map.
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's stated objective
is to declare a 'transitional' Palestinian state with
'provisional' borders, an option that appears in the
second phase of the road map. When Israel accepted the
road map in March 2003 it attached '14 reservations.'
Israel considers these reservations as integral parts of
the road map.
Israel`s fifth reservation states: 'The provisional state
will have provisional borders and certain aspects of
sovereignty, be fully demilitarized..., be without the
authority to undertake defense alliances or military
cooperation, and Israeli control over the entry and exit
of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and
electromagnetic spectrum.' Such a state would be squeezed
between the separation wall, Israel's demographic border',
and the Jordan Valley, Israel's 'security border' with
Jordan.
With the Jordan Valley making up approximately 30% of the
West Bank, under this scenario Israel would likely retain
more than 40% of the West Bank. This transitional
Palestinian state would consist of a series of isolated
Bantustans, or as Sharon, who fathered the plan, preferred
to refer to them, 'cantons.'
In the past the Palestinians have pressed to have this
option of the temporary state removed from the road map,
since the history of Israel`s occupation shows that
'temporary measures' are almost always permanent. However,
Palestinian negotiators now accept the possibility of a
temporary state on the condition that they receive
international assurances that the third and final phase
of the road map, that includes a permanent settlement,
will be implemented within six months. Israel has no
intention of accepting this condition.
It is questionable whether Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas will be able to accept this offer without a timeframe
for a permanent settlement. But perhaps he is not even
meant to accept. For if Abbas refuses another Israeli-
American 'generous offer' his rejection could be presented
to the world as more proof that there are no Palestinian
'partners for peace.'
Israel would then be 'justified' in implementing its
convergence plan unilaterally. Unilateral 'convergence'
will make it possible to create a situation in the West
Bank similar to what unilateral 'disengagement' has
created in the Gaza. Gaza's residents, 70% of whom are
refugees from what is now Israel, are currently isolated,
starving and under total Israeli blockade from land, air
and sea.
Olmert, Bush, Blair and their accomplices in the 'Quartet'
have vast, sophisticated and boundlessly resourced PR
machinery that, through unlimited access to an uncritical
media, can put a compelling 'peace spin' on an apartheid
process. During the November meeting they will assure the
world of their commitment to a Palestinian state (with
the appropriate Abbas/Olmert/Bush photo ops).
They will promise to commit millions of dollars, funding
Palestinian 'institution building' and humanitarian aid
and arming troops in order to 'keep the peace' inside the
Bantustans. Arab states will normalize relations with
Israel, strengthening the 'moderates' of the entire region,
thus softening the Arab street as a prerequisite for an
American led strike on Iran.
Even the participants in the summit realize that the
Israeli occupation is no longer sustainable in its current
form. If we, the peace and justice community, manage to
expose this latest maneuver for what it really is, Israel
could be forced into fair negotiations for the first time.
For this to happen we must mobilize immediately. It is our
job to educate the rest of the world about what these talks
really mean and the truth about what is happening. The
writing is literally on the wall and on the ground. It took
many months if not years to expose the ugly truth behind
the first 'generous offer.' Let's not make that mistake
again.
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Neta Golan is an Israeli peace with justice activist
living in Ramallah and a co-founder of the international
solidarity movement.
Mohammed Khatib is a leading member of Bil'in's Popular
Committee Against the Wall and the secretary of Bil'in's
Village Council.
For more information: www.apartheidmasked.org
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