The Israeli Cabinet made a bit of history yesterday. By giving the final approval to the withdrawal from Gaza and by voting for the inclusion of two large Jewish settlement blocs on the Israeli side of the West Bank separation barrier, the Cabinet was effectively shaping the future borders of a Palestinian state. The Cabinet votes were a mixed bag.
The vote on Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank sealed the political defeat of withdrawal opponents. It also culminated in the transformation of Sharon from one who had for decades championed the building of settlements into the first Israeli leader to approve the dismantling of settlements on land the Palestinians want for their state. Under any other circumstances, an Israeli withdrawal from Arab land would be an Arab victory. Gaza’s land, sea and air will, however, continue to be Israeli-patrolled. And the pullout itself is a go-it-alone Israeli approach that undermines efforts to revive a meaningful peace process.
Sharon was supposed to consult the Palestinians but has not so far and it does not look as if he will. The Israeli government is thus dictating the outcome of the negotiations on a final peace deal before the negotiations begin. The downside of the withdrawal is what you don’t see — that it is meant for something entirely different — to soften the blow for the Palestinians over the de facto annexation of more than six percent of the West Bank. Sharon aims to abandon Gaza while holding on to the far more densely populated West Bank settlement blocs that would take up land the Palestinians want and make a future Palestinian state unviable.
Unlike the Gaza withdrawal, there is no ambiguity about the wall. It is illegal, plain and simple, as the International Court of Justice ruled last year. The ICJ has said the wall should be torn down. Instead, the Cabinet agreed on its final stages and under the proposed route agreed yesterday, the largest Jewish settlement, Maaleh Adumim, and the settlement of Gush Etzion will be included on the Israeli side of the barrier. To be sure, the route was revised after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the original location, which would have taken three times as much West Bank land, caused too many hardships for Palestinians. Yet it still will include six to eight percent of West Bank land.
Israeli officials insist that the barrier could be torn down any time; however, it increasingly appears that Israel is drawing its final border. And only now is it being reported that the current barrier route is almost identical to what then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak proposed to the Palestinians as a final border in peace talks in January 2001. It is also the very proposal that Yasser Arafat rejected. Not surprisingly, the withdrawal plan and the barrier route won overwhelming Cabinet approval.
The votes were never in doubt but that does not make them less significant. Once Israeli borders are established, the contours of a Palestinian state will be more clearly defined. Unfortunately, it is looking more and more like a state that will be made in Israel.
