Sharon's diabolical plan

Uri Avnery is an Israeli academic and in this article makes an 
analysis of a speech made by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel 
Sharon towards the end of last year.

Sharon read out the written text of his speech, word for word, 
without raising his eyes from the page. It was vital for him to 
stick to the exact wording, since it was encoded in doublespeak. 
It is impossible to understand it without translation.

So it is no surprise that the flood of interpretations in Israel 
and abroad were ridiculous. The commentators just did not 
understand what they had heard. That's why they wrote things like 
"He did not say anything new", "He has no plan", "He is marking 
time", "He is old and tired". And the usual Washington reaction: 
"A positive step, but..."

Here is the text of Sharon's speech:

The name of the game is Hitnatkut ("cutting ourselves off"). 
Meaning: most of the West Bank area will become de facto a part 
of Israeli, and the rest we shall leave to the Palestinians, who 
will be enclosed in isolated enclaves. From these enclaves, the 
settlements will be removed.

Military operation

Stage One: In order to do this, we need time — about half a 
year. We are talking about a large-scale and complicated military 
operation. The army will have to occupy and fortify new lines, 
while "relocating" dozens of isolated settlements. This will 
require detailed planning, which has not yet even started. Half a 
year is the minimum.

During this period we shall finish the "separation fence", and it 
will play a major part in the new deployment. We shall develop 
the "settlement blocs", to which we shall transfer the settlers 
who will be relocated.

The execution of the plan in half a year is perfectly timed. At 
exactly that time the American election campaign will reach its 
climax. No American politician will dare to utter a word against 
Israel. The Democrats need the Jewish votes and money. The 
Republicans also need the votes and the money of the 60 million 
Christian fundamentalists, who support the most extreme elements 
in Israel.

While we quietly prepare the big operation, we shall continue to 
flatter President Bush and praise his idiotic Road Map, without, 
of course, fulfilling any of our obligations under the Map. But 
we shall blame the Palestinians for violating it.

At the same time we shall pretend to seek negotiations with the 
Palestinians. We shall try to meet with Abu-Ala as many times as 
possible and play the game to the end. When we are ready to go, 
we shall terminate the contacts, declare the Road Map dead and 
state sorrowfully that all our efforts to start peace 
negotiations have failed because of Arafat.

Stage two: By then, the "separation wall" will be ready. The 
Palestinian territories will be surrounded on all sides. In 
practice there will be about a dozen isolated pockets. In order 
to fulfil our promise about Palestinian "contiguity" we shall 
connect the enclaves by special roads, bridges and tunnels, which 
we shall be able to cut at a moment's notice.

The army will withdraw gradually to the separation barrier and 
redeploy in the territories that will be annexed to Israel — 
altogether, more than half of the West Bank.

These areas will not be annexed officially, but we shall annex 
them as rapidly as possible in practice. We shall fill them with 
settlements (also using the settlers from the "relocated" 
settlements), industrial parks, roads, public institutions and 
army installations, so that they will become indistinguishable 
from parts of Israel proper.

At the same time, we shall evacuate the settlements beyond the 
barrier, including those in the Gaza Strip.

In line with the American proposal, we shall call the Palestinian 
enclaves "a Palestinian State with Temporary Borders". That will 
give the Palestinians the illusion that they will be able to 
negotiate the "permanent" borders. But, of course, the 
"separation fence" will be the final border.

At our mercy

The terror will not stop completely, but the Palestinian enclaves 
will be at our mercy and we shall be able to cut each of them off 
at any time, prevent movement from one to another and make life 
in them intolerable. It will not be worthwhile for them to 
conduct violent acts.

Officially, the Palestinians will have free access to the border 
crossings to Egypt and Jordan, but in practice we shall maintain 
an effective military presence, enabling us to stop movement 
there at any time. At first the world will scream, but faced with 
a fait accompli they will quieten down.

Even if Bush remains in the White House, he will be paralysed 
until after the elections at the end of 2004. If a Democrat is 
elected President, he will need some months to settle down. By 
then everything will be finished, and we shall be able to 
generously agree to some minor adjustments. This is the Plan. Can 
it be realised?

It is quite possible that Sharon will convince Israeli public 
opinion. The great majority of the public is united around two 
points: (a) the longing for peace and security, and (b) the 
distrust of Arabs and the unwillingness to deal with them. (Some 
weeks ago, a satirical supplement published a slogan: "YES to 
peace, NO to Palestinians".)

Sharon's plan promises both. It promises peace and security, and 
it is entirely "unilateral". No negotiations with Palestinians 
are required, it does not depend on the will of the Arabs, who 
can be ignored entirely.

Myths

In this respect, Sharon's plan has a great advantage over the 
Geneva Initiative, which is entirely based on the assumption that 
"there is a partner" and that we must negotiate with the 
Palestinians and make peace with them. Long years of 
brainwashing, led by Ehud Barak and most of the other leaders of 
the "Zionist Left", have convinced the Israeli public that there 
is no partner, that the Arabs are cheating, that Arafat has 
broken every single agreement he has signed, etc. The Sharon plan 
conforms to all these myths, while the Geneva Initiative clashes 
with them.

But beneath the road to the implementation of the Sharon Plan 
there lie two big landmines: the settlers and the Palestinians.

The inhabitants of the settlements that are supposed to be 
"relocated" include some of the most extreme elements of the 
settlement movement. There is no chance that these will go away 
peacefully. They will have to be removed by force.

That will require a huge military effort. While many moderate 
settlers will remove themselves voluntarily if given fat 
compensation, many others will resist.

According to an informed estimate, some 5000 soldiers and 
policemen will be needed to remove just one small "outpost": 
Migron, near Ramallah, which Sharon was supposed to have removed 
long ago according to the Road Map.

When dozens of bigger and more established settlements have to be 
removed, it will need a giant, quasi war-like operation, 
requiring a general call-up of reserves, with all the political 
implications.

The army cannot just leave these territories with the settlements 
remaining behind. As long as the settlements are there, the army 
will be there. In other words, the implementation of the plan 
will not be quick and tidy, like the last night in south Lebanon, 
but a process of many months, perhaps years.

While the deployment in the areas that will be de facto annexed 
to Israel will be quick and effective, the transfer of the 
territories that will be turned over to the Palestinians will be 
very slow.

Illusion

It is a complete illusion to believe that all this time the 
Palestinians will quietly look on. They will see the execution of 
a plan that they believe, quite rightly, to be a device for the 
destruction of the national aims of the Palestinian people.

Clearly, to call this structure a "Palestinian State" is a joke 
in bad taste.

If Sharon succeeds in executing his plan, a new chapter in the 
100-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be opened. The 
Palestinians will be crowded into territories that will 
constitute about 10 percent of the original territory of 
Palestine before 1948. They will have no chance of enlarging this 
territory. On the contrary: they will be afraid of Sharon and his 
successors trying to remove them from what is left, completing 
the ethnic cleansing of Eretz Israel.

Therefore, 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.

In the end, the basic factors will be decisive: the endurance of 
the two peoples, their readiness to continue the bloody fight, 
with all its economic and social implications, as well as the 
willingness of the world to look on passively.

The idea of "unilateral peace" is strikingly original. "Peace 
without the other side" is a contradiction in terms. Eventually, 
the fate of this plan will be the same as the fate of all the 
other grandiose plans put forward by Sharon in his long career.

* * *

[Slightly abridged]