TEL AVIV, 27 April 2004 — When George Bush referred to Ariel Sharon’s unilateral separation plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip as a historic event, he wasn’t exaggerating — even if it is not clear that he grasped the implications of his words for the future of the Jewish state.
Nor did the Palestinians err when they compared his statement to the Balfour Declaration (the British government’s World War I promise to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine) — even if they perhaps failed to grasp that the statement is liable to have implications yet more grave than the 1917 pledge, and will compel a substantive strategic change in their struggle.
And Sharon — crowned by victory and convinced that he has unveiled a daring new initiative that will foil all schemes — will be surprised to discover that in Washington he was pushed into embracing an accelerated process of founding the State of Israel as a binational state based on apartheid.
What’s the connection between, on the one hand, the end of the conquest in the Gaza Strip and the dismantling of settlements and, on the other, the establishment of a binational state?
After all, the goal of disengagement is to improve the demographic situation by removing a million and a half Palestinians from Israeli control and thereby reducing the danger that the country will cease to be a Jewish state. The surprising fact is that this “conceptual transfer” is accepted by the Israeli left, which continues to believe in anachronistic slogans about the “end of the conquest” and the “dismantling of settlements”.
The report about a tacit agreement being reached between the Peace Now movement and Sharon’s aides — Peace Now will suspend its “evacuate settlements, choose life” campaign so as not to harm public relations efforts for Sharon’s separation plan — illustrates the profoundly confused state of public discourse in Israel. As the Israeli left sees it, the confinement of one and a half million people in a huge holding pen fulfills the ideal of putting an end to the occupation, and furnishes some relief about how “we are not responsible”.
Similarly, when in South Africa a failed attempt was made to solve demographic problems by creating “homelands for the blacks”, liberals originally supported the idea, and even a portion of the international community viewed the measure as a step toward “decolonization”. But, after a short time, it became clear that the ploy was designed to confer legitimacy on the expulsion of black people, and their uprooting. The bantustans collapsed, demands for civil equality intensified, and the world mobilized for the defeat of apartheid.
The bantustan model for Gaza, as depicted in the disengagement plan, is a model that Sharon plans to copy on the West Bank. His announcement that he will not start to disengage before construction of the fence is completed along a route that will include all settlement blocs (in keeping with Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand), underscores the continuity of the bantustan concept. The fence creates three bantustans on the West Bank — Jenin-Nablus, Bethlehem-Hebron and Ramallah. This is the real link between the Gaza and West Bank plans. The link is not what those politicians who will provide a “security net” for Sharon in a Knesset no-confidence vote call “the precedent of the dismantling of settlements”.
And thus, with breathtaking daring, Sharon submits a plan that appears to promise the existence of a “Jewish democratic state” via “separation”, “the end of the conquest”, the “dismantling of settlements” — and also the imprisonment of some 3 million Palestinians in bantustans. This is an “interim plan” that is meant to last forever. The plan will last, however, only as long as the illusion is sustained that “separation” is a means to end the conflict.
The day will come when believers in this illusion will realize that “separation” is a means to oppress and dominate, and then they will mobilize to dismantle the apartheid apparatus.
The last ones who will consent to abandon the ideal of “separation” and uphold rights will be the Palestinians, but — to some extent — Sharon’s separation plan and Bush’s declaration will provoke them.
In this way, Sharon’s rhetorical victory is sown with the seeds of its own destruction. The bantustan plan is now in swing, and the scenario that Sharon so badly wanted to avoid will unfold.
— Meron Benvenisti is an Israeli writer and political scientist, and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem.
