A few weeks ago, Israel’s prime minister announced his bold new initiative to make unilateral peace with the Palestinians. Since there are no sane leaders to talk to on the ‘other side,’ Israel’s government has to do what it can to move the process forward. At this stage, little attention can be paid to specific provisions of the U.S. brokered ‘road map,’ let alone Palestinian rights or the demands of justice. This is the logic we have been treated to recently.

So far, the plan is extremely vague. Logistically, we’ve been told it involves dismantling an unknown number of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza. Several plans for re-location have been floated; the sparsely populated Negev region is one potential destination, the other being illegal settlements in the West Bank. The irony in the latter option should be apparent; ending illegal settlement in one area to strengthen illegal settlement in another is nothing but bad faith and a further violation of international law. In either case, re-location of settlers will involve withdrawal of an indefinite number of Israeli troops stationed in Gaza. Perhaps they will be re-deployed to ‘thicken’ the infrastructure of occupation in the West Bank.

What are the real reasons for and meaning of Sharon’s sudden moves? What are the implications of this plan? What ‘end game’ does he have in mind? As Bill Clinton demonstrated so well in 1998, the best way to distract the public mind from political scandal is to create a suitable diversion; bombing Iraq during operation ‘Desert Fox’ in late 1998 made impeachment recede into the background of public consciousness. Similarly, Sharon’s disengagement plan could potentially direct public attention away from accusations of corruption and campaign finance fraud.

But there are other more weighty reasons indicating underlying trends in Israeli policy. Corruption and fraud are the least of Sharon’s political failures and headaches. What he explicitly promised in his election campaign was security and an end to the Intifada. However, the internal dynamics of Israeli coalition politics dictated a continued commitment to settlement expansion. You can have the former or the latter but not both as Sharon attempted. His brutal methods of achieving calm and security – exemplified in the Jenin massacre of 2002 – have only led to the stiffening of Palestinian armed resistance, as has the expansion of settlement activity. The result has been disastrous. Although Palestinians have borne the brunt of the carnage, Israel’s civilian population is also suffering acutely.

Some commentators have assumed the disengagement plan is another in a long series of confused mid-term policies, a product of Sharon’s incompatible commitments. However, if withdrawal from Gaza is viewed in light of other processes, a different picture emerges. Israel is also building a wall in the West Bank. The rationale behind this is to annex as much land as possible without acquiring too many non-Jews in the process. This is why, instead of following the 67 borders, the wall carves out disconnected ghettos encompassing the major Palestinian urban centers and excluding Israel’s main settlement blocks. The area of land annexed to the Jewish state will amount to over half the West Bank. The number of natives acquired is comparatively minimal. For Palestinians who remain trapped between the wall and the ‘green line,’ a new set of racist regulations are in force; they have to apply for permission to remain in their own homes, while illegal
Israeli settlers continue to live unhindered in occupied territory. If the occupation authorities refuse to grant the population of this ‘seam area’ permission to remain, they will have to ‘fold up their tents’ and head to the Ghettos. Since the Gaza strip offers Israel very little land of any ideological or strategic importance but plenty of natives, the settlement program is not viable; the Gaza settlers can be used to demographically extend Jewish presence in the West Bank, in the areas to be annexed.

The reason these policies are being pushed now is clear. Without demographic disengagement from the Palestinians, Israel will have to grant them equal rights in a democratic bi-national framework or risk a ‘South-Africanized’ conflict, a situation in which an ethnic minority denies the majority basic rights on ethno-centric grounds. Since the international community will not stand for the latter, the Zionist dream of an exclusive Jewish state will be lost. Sharon realizes this, and he is acting accordingly.

What makes Sharon worried is that by 2010, Palestinian Arabs will be the demographic majority in historical Palestine. These demographic facts make the Zionist project problematic. Mainstream Zionism has always wanted Palestine without its indigenous population, and this is becoming increasingly difficult, partly as a result of Israeli policy. It’s not only Sharon who realizes this; in recent opinion polls, 57% of Israelis support the ‘transfer’ (ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians, and politicians such as Avigdor Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu have openly advocated removal of even Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israeli historian Benny Morris suggests that under some conditions, ethnic cleansing is a viable solution to conflict when the cleansers have been sufficiently sanctified by suffering, and the cleansed are ‘barbaric’ enough. Commitment to an ethno-centric exclusive Jewish state under these conditions is morally abhorrent. Rather than disengaging with the Palestinian
s and denying them basic democratic and human rights, Israel – for the sake of peace and reconciliation – should disengage from Zionism itself.

Fayyad Sbaihat is a senior majoring in Chemical Engineering at UW-Madison, and can be reached at frsbaihat (at) wisc.edu
Mohammed Abed is a Graduate Student in the Department of Philosophy, UW-Madison, and can be reached at mkabed (at) wisc.edu
Both writers are Palestinian members of Alternative Palestinian Agenda and Al-Awda -The Palestine Right to Return Coalition.