MUSCAT, 31 August 2004 — It was expected that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would surprise the world with a decision to expand the settlements by building more housing units in the West Bank. This is an attempt at appeasing the extremists in the ruling Likud Party who threatened, a number of times, to kill Sharon if he executed his decision to withdraw from Gaza Strip.
By taking this decision, Sharon has succeeded in assuaging the anger of extremists. He paid no attention to international initiatives in rejection of settlement expansion. In fact, the settlement policy is the major barrier against reaching a permanent solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.
Sharon’s decision may also have surprised the parties involved in the road map — the Americans, Europeans and Russians and the UN. It should not be forgotten that three years ago, these parties agreed on freezing settlements
However, Sharon’s decision comes as no surprise to officials of the Palestinian Authority. After all, he had given the green light for building the wall, which acts as a narrow prison around the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, destroying the agricultural lands and demolishing houses inhabited by the Palestinians.
However, the big surprise following Sharon’s decision came from the US administration that met the unjust and illegal step with suspicious silence. It did not condemn or oppose the decision.
However, it has been leaked to the US media that the administration, in fact, supports Sharon’s decision to build new settlements under the pretext that these settlements are an extension of the existing ones and part of the so-called natural growth of Israeli families living there.
The undeclared US stand had begun to take an official shape when US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the New York Times that an American intelligence delegation would visit Israel next month to check if the new settlements are built inside previous settlement lands and not on new lands. Rice’s statement reveals the Bush administration’s reluctance to make the Zionist lobby angry, especially at a time when presidential election is round the corner. Emboldened, the Zionist lobby is using all means to achieve its goals and making gains beyond the limits of the road map.
The US position has provoked the British government, which, for the first time, took a stand against the US on a basic issue relating to the Middle East. On Iraq, the two countries’ positions have been complementary in all aspects. But this time the British government had no alternative but to take an anti-American stand, for fear of losing its European Union allies who are managing the road map project as an important party in guaranteeing the Palestinian rights.
I do not think that the British government or the European Union would surrender their anti-settlement stand in return for preserving the alliance with the US administration. Sharon’s decision represents a fatal blow to the road map program and it strengthens the occupying power. The American stand takes away what little has remained of the road map because it hurts the international legitimacy which is supposed to preserve the rights of the Palestinians who have pinned their hopes on the road map as the last solution acceptable to all parties to the Middle East dispute.
— Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali is editor in chief of The Times of Oman.
