A decade of peace talks starting in the 1990s has consistently, aimed at a two-state solution in the Middle East. That, however, has suddenly been turned on its head. First came Sharon’s recent threats to impose a solution unilaterally. That was followed by a Palestinian response to push for a single Arab-Jewish state and, on Saturday, a reassertion by Palestinians of the right to declare an independent state unilaterally in the absence of a peace deal with Israel. Sharon’s solution, which will be determined by the route of Israel’s so-called security wall, would leave the PA with three cantons on about 40-50 percent of the West Bank, plus a disconnected fourth canton in Gaza. Again, should Sharon take his own decisions, he will gladly keep as many settlements as he can, thus reinforcing his publicly professed conviction that Israel must expand into the occupied territories as much as possible.
Meanwhile, a single country, advocated by Palestinian Prime Minister Qorei over the weekend, would mean that the Jewish state would soon have an Arab majority because of the Palestinians’ higher birth rate. The thought of risking the loss of its Jewish character would make the one-state solution impossible for Israel even to contemplate. As for Palestinians unilaterally declaring a state of their own, they have been down that route before — the Palestinian National Council declared an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza in 1988 — a move that Israel never recognized.
Still, the Palestinians cannot allow Sharon to dictate his terms for he is making every effort to scuttle any prospects of a settlement and block any route back to the road map in order to impose a deal of his own. Look, for example, at Israel’s latest invasion of Nablus. Seventeen Palestinians were killed, over 200 wounded, 30,000 were put under a more or less permanent curfew and ancient Palestinian properties ransacked. Then the army invaded Tulkarm, leaving one Palestinian dead in what witnesses said was a gun battle in and around the town’s refugee camp. In protest Qorei abandoned even the pretence of arranging a meeting with Sharon while Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief and main mediator in the cease-fire talks, remained in Cairo. Both know it is futile for the Palestinians to talk truce when Israel is waging war, when there is continuing military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land by Israeli forces and settlers, the state of siege inflicted upon the general populace through curfews and closures preventing the movement of people and goods.
Eliminating the two-state solution from dialogue could lead to greater Middle East political turmoil. But the Palestinians must blunt the political initiative Sharon seeks to take. They must determine his moves, not simply react to them.
