COMMENTARY: Swapping Gaza for the West Bank?

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) By now it should be clear that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to remove Jewish settlers and Israeli military installations from Gaza does not signify the historic end of Israel’s settlement policy. According to the Israeli government as well as reports from groups that monitor the settlements, Israel […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) By now it should be clear that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to remove Jewish settlers and Israeli military installations from Gaza does not signify the historic end of Israel’s settlement policy.

According to the Israeli government as well as reports from groups that monitor the settlements, Israel has in fact started to increase construction on multiple settlement blocks in the central and southern districts of the West Bank.


What Sharon hopes to achieve is the consolidation of Israel’s hold over strategic sections of the lands it has occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, before entering into any kind of negotiations with the Palestinians.

There is good reason to believe the Bush administration is aware of Sharon’s intentions. On March 1, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told British television that “we have been very clear with the Israelis that we believe that it is incumbent on Israel to do nothing that prejudges a final status outcome.” And only a week earlier President Bush stated that “Israel must freeze settlement activity.”

The administration’s tone suggests that there is a limit to its patience for the continuation of Israel’s settlement enterprise. Still, it will take significant U.S. pressure for Sharon to enter into a process that he fears will require Israel to withdraw from most of the West Bank.

The Jewish settlements of the West Bank are becoming increasingly difficult for Israel to justify. Not only are they a major source of Palestinian anger, but the settlements scattered among a hostile Arab population are a significant security liability for the Israel Defense Forces.

Between 2000 and 2004, 70 percent of the IDF’s fatalities occurred inside the occupied territories. Ironically, the most widely accepted explanation in Israel for the settlements is security. This explanation is based on the outdated idea that Jewish settlements on the outskirts of Palestinian villages and towns create a buffer zone against an attack from Israel’s eastern border.

With the Baathist regime in Iraq destroyed and a formal peace treaty signed with Jordan, the threat to Israel from that direction has decreased significantly. Israel does face a real security threat from Iran, but it is hard to understand how Jewish settlements along the ridge line of the Judean and Samarian hills will protect Israel from Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

The recent revelation of Israel’s plans to expand its largest settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Maale Adumim, confirms reports from the Israeli press in late February that the withdrawal from Gaza, recently approved by the Israeli parliament, will coincide with massive settlement construction on the West Bank.


This policy seems consistent with the strategy outlined in 2003 by Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem.” Statements and actions like these tend to validate Palestinian fears about Sharon’s plans.

Even if the government of newly elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas survives such moves, there will not be much territory of national or religious significance left for negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. An Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is a positive step. But when viewed in context, it looks more like an Israeli attempt to relieve itself from the burdens of ruling Gaza instead of a starting point for ending the occupation of Palestinian lands.

On a recent fence-mending visit to Brussels, Bush declared, “By helping to build a lasting peace (between Israelis and Palestinians), we will remove an unsettled grievance that is used to stir hatred and violence across the Middle East.” He added that “a (Palestinian) state of scattered territories will not work.”

The warm reception these words were given by European leaders suggests that Europe and the United States are moving closer to a unified strategy for achieving peace in the Middle East. Now all Bush has to do is convince Ariel Sharon.

PH/JL END LINCOLN

(Jonathan Lincoln wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

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