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COMMENTARY
December 20, 2003
Herzliya
There are three kinds of media analysis: dumb dumber and dumbest. I myself try to stay at the dumb end where one at least tips one's hat to the big facts of life. I propose the following merely as an alternative to the "dumber" and "dumbest" analyses I have been reading in the last 24 hours. In the case of Prime Minister Sharon's much-anticipated speech to a security conference at Herzliya (near Tel Aviv Thursday night) my dumb analysis is that something fairly big has happened. Whether he does or doesn't act on what he said there Mr. Sharon has unilaterally altered the "peace process". Despite screams of disapproval from all the usual sources he has effectively amended a "roadmap" which as I have argued before is the apotheosis of fatuity in the region. Phase one of any roadmap deal has always been: Palestinians begin disarming their terrorists while Israelis begin removing their settlements from West Bank and Gaza. But since the new Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia -- the latest of Yasser Arafat's lapdogs -- cannot even contrive to get a nominal "ceasefire" from his "militants" there is nothing to talk about. So Mr. Sharon has now announced that after "a few months" (six from what I hear) if there is still no Palestinian action on the old roadmap Israel will impose a settlement. She will complete the security fence she has already begun separating the West Bank from Israel as thoroughly as Gaza is now separated. She will choose the most easily defensible course for this wall including West Bank settlements close to the old border and she will behave as if this is the final border. The two sides may then resume roadmap talks but only in the face of this fait accompli. The sacrifices which Israelis must be prepared to make even to impose this arbitrary measure are substantial. When they withdrew from Sinai in 1979 after the peace agreement with Egypt they had to uproot a few thousand settlers who had been there only a few years. This time it will be dozens of isolated settlements and tens of thousands of angry armed settlers many of whom have been settled for more than a generation. And this time no peace agreement in exchange. Moreover Mr. Sharon played a key role in designing the network of settlements on the West Bank for the express purpose of preventing a Palestinian state from emerging. He will have to undo his own handiwork always hard for a politician. And he will hand over one contiguous area of West Bank in which a Palestinian state is likely to be declared. There will be a wall -- not just roadblocks -- and Palestinian civilians who have jobs on the other side will have trouble keeping them. The two economies will thus begin to disengage which will hurt both sides but unequally for what are livelihoods to the Palestinians is only an important supply of cheap labour to the Israelis. Mr. Sharon is calculating that this great largely unspoken fact may sink into the Palestinian consciousness in the available time and make them begin negotiating in good faith. But it would take more than six months to undo habits and assumptions rooted in years of appeasement for bad behaviour. But as the Israeli experience in Gaza has shown a security fence can be made to work. There have been no terrorist operations mounted from Gaza into Israel over the many years since the Israelis erected the security fence around Gaza. My own view is that isolating the West Bank too is actually the most merciful thing that can be done for the Palestinians. This for two reasons the first of which is almost too obvious for anyone to notice. It is the removal of a temptation whose effect on Palestinian society has been morally destructive on a colossal scale. When any people are allowed to dream that their problems can be solved by murdering innocents they lose all judgement. But the second falls out of this. A Palestine deprived of options to antagonize Israel and externalize all failures must then choose between beggary and enterprise. The Palestinians themselves must eventually confront social economic and political problems which once Israel is disengaged can no longer be blamed on "the outsider". The West Bank has land as arable as any in Israel and (after subtracting the Negev desert) no greater population density. What can they do with what they have? For this reason I think it is right to hope that barring some unlikely miracle in which Yasser Arafat and his thug regime suddenly agree to disband their own terror apparatus (possibly at the cost of their own lives) the Israelis proceed with their Plan B. Separation is hardly a good solution in itself but better than mutual destruction. Huge pressure will be brought against the Sharon government and Israel generally not to do what they must. Much of this pressure will come from their only real ally the United States. On past performance Mr. Sharon will probably cave. Yet even if he does he will have left as his legacy the one real alternative to a roadmap that cannot lead anywhere. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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