Ariel Sharon’s unilateral peace plan is simply not the way forward to a just settlement in Palestine, and he knows it. It is another crabwise step toward expanding Israel’s borders.
The hawkish Israeli leader has warned that, unless the Palestinians stop fighting back, he will partition the occupied territories. His intention was to free the thought that such a deeply objectionable move is even possible. It is a classic maneuver of the realpolitiker. Say the unthinkable, even though you have no intention at that moment of doing it, and the unthinkable will become thinkable at some later date.
The Bush administration has predictably huffed and puffed in the wake of Sharon’s speech Thursday night, warning that it will only back a negotiated deal and will not stand for such unilateral action. And of course Sharon will draw back this time, claiming to be acting under US pressure, while Washington will try to tell its Arab friends that it has acted decisively to protect the road map.
But the echo of Sharon’s words will remain, so that when he next finds the opportunity to repeat them, they will not sound either so radical or so dangerous. Some reasonable outsiders may even wonder if perhaps he has not had a point all along and has been driven to such an extreme only after constant provocation. The Israeli leadership knows how to howl with pain while it drives its mailed fist into the face of the Palestinians.
Some commentators have dismissed Sharon’s announcement as being merely a domestic political ploy. For 18 months he has been promising the Israelis a plan to end the violence. This, say the pundits, is his effort to appease the rising tide of Israeli anger that peace has not come. That may in part be true, but it is hardly as if Sharon’s administration has been floundering since it took power, trying to work out what to do next.
This Zionist government was always clear that it had to stop the peace process. It needed the co-operation of hard-liners among the Palestinians to achieve this. It needed also to destroy the moderate middle ground on both sides. By a series of calculated acts of savagery, it has humiliated and angered the Palestinians and in so doing beaten the recruiting drum for Islamic Jihad and Hamas hard-liners who send off the suicide bombers on their missions.
Since its first day in office, Sharon’s government has never given peace a chance and has never had intended to. But to make it easier for Washington to continue its support, every once in a while it has appeared to listen and to draw back from yet another step in its war of expulsion. It counts to ten or waits for another suicide attack, whichever comes sooner, and then resumes its steady course toward expansion.
