KK-Forum,
Deceptive "Generosity" av Amira Hass
Knut Rognes
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Foreign Affairs Editorial Editorial
Source: Haaretz Daily (Israel)
Published: 12/13/00 Author: Amira Hass
Posted on 12/12/2000 21:17:13 PST by Antiwar Republican
Deceptive 'generosity'
By Amira Hass
I guess it must be destiny: We don't listen to the Palestinians, to their
analysis of the situation or to their warnings, here in Israel. Instead, we
listen to the warnings and hear the situation described as "an occupation"
- as simple as that - when voiced by the former chief of the Shin Bet
security service, Ami Ayalon.Anyone who has tried to report on the behavior
of the Israel Defense Forces from the field, and not through the office of
the IDF spokesman, has been met with accusations and insults. The Israeli
peace camp, which defines itself as Zionist, has been dumbstruck: It has
also listened to the IDF spokesman and the chiefs of staff more than it has
heeded the Palestinians; and as a result, its cry of moral alarm has come
too late.
It wouldn't be that terrible were we not speaking about the loss of life
and the causing of permanent disability; it wouldn't be that terrible had
that same stupid rule worked on other levels of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, particularly with regard to the question of the settlements.
We are now moving into a new election season, during which the Israeli
peace camp, for the most part, will support Ehud Barak, relying on his
"generosity" at Camp David that Arafat rejected. The percentages of this
generosity differed from one political analyst to another: Some spoke of
the Palestinians being asked to relinquish only 5 percent of the area of
the West Bank, while others spoke of 9 percent and even more.
Jeff Aronson, who studies Israeli settlement policies at The Foundation for
Middle East Peace in Washington, gives an example of the deceptive nature
of percentages as a sign of generosity. The metropolitan areas of the
United States, which to a large degree determine the country's character
and are vital for its existence, make up no more than 4 percent of U.S.
territory. The Mississippi River occupies 2 percent of the area of the
country, but the United States would not be the same without it.
The master plans of all the settlements in the West Bank encompass some 8-9
percent of its area, with the built-up areas constituting between 1-2
percent. The outline plans of all the Palestinian communities - towns and
villages - also occupy only 8 percent of the area of the West Bank. In
other words, planned territorial equality in the West Bank for 200,000
settlers (excluding East Jerusalem) and some 2 million Palestinians.
Even if 3 percent of the area were sliced from the generous outline plans
of the settlements, it wouldn't change the fact that the majority of the
settlements, based on generous forecasts, would remain intact, situated in
an area that is of the utmost strategic importance to the texture of the
West Bank. The largest and most consensual of the settlements, for example,
Ma'aleh Adumim, is one that chops the West Bank in half; and don't think
that acrobatics and juggling with roads and tunnels is going to change this
fact.
"The generous percentages" of Camp David didn't precisely outline who would
be in control of these bypass roads. Even if the "Israeli generosity" were
to mean remaining with only Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and the Etzion Bloc, the
roads to these settlements would be patrolled by Israeli soldiers. How then
can anyone assume that a Palestinian could see himself as being independent
in his own state, when the simplest of journeys to work or to visit his
family would involve daily encounters with foreign soldiers?
More than anything else, the Al Aqsa Intifada is proving to be an uprising
against the settlements and against the Israeli illusion that the
Palestinians would accept a reality in which "their independent state"
would be sliced through the middle and down its sides by "clusters of
settlements." The Palestinian public is prepared to continue to bear the
brunt of the collective punitive and retaliatory measures adopted by the
IDF, in response to any attack on a settler or a soldier who is in the area
with the purpose of protecting the settler.
The Palestinian people are unified in their adamant opposition to any
solution that would leave the settlers among them. This opposition is not
aimed solely against Israel, but also against Yasser Arafat and senior
officials in the Palestinian Authority, who would be willing to swallow the
settlements in the framework of a permanent settlement.
Presumably, neither the stones nor the Palestinian declarations will help.
We will need a few more bloody years before a former chief of staff or
ex-director of the Shin Bet - like de Gaulle in his time - comes along and
says the inevitable: Excuse me, residents of Ma'aleh Adumim; we made a
mistake when we encouraged you to move here and thought that the
Palestinians would accept this apartheid existence forever. Excuse me,
residents of Givat Ze'ev, we will have to find you houses with gardens
elsewhere, within sovereign Israel. Or, alternatively, we could allow the
residents of Ramallah and Abu Dis, for example, to move to Ramat Aviv and
build a city in Tantura
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