Colonial experiments in Third World countries are now relegated to the history books, but few would question the fact that Ariel Sharon survives to this day as a relic of that era of European expansionism.
As this column goes to press, the audacious prime minister of the Zionist entity in Palestine had his 11th meeting with the American president. The meeting took place at George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.
While Bush reiterated comments that it was unrealistic to expect a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory, reports say he issued an “unusually stern warning” that Israel must respect the terms of a US-backed peace plan known as the road map by freezing all settlement activity. “I told the prime minister of my concern that Israel not undertake any activity that contravenes its road map obligations or prejudices final status negotiations,” Bush said. “Therefore Israel should remove unauthorized outposts and meet its road map obligations regarding settlements in the West Bank,” he said, adding: “The road map clearly says no expansion of settlements.”
Bush’s comments about settlement expansion — mentioned three times at the joint press conference — came as something of a surprise to the Israeli delegation. Israeli officials, who fanned out in Washington last week for preparatory meetings with American legislators and diplomats, were convinced that Bush — an unwavering defender of Sharon, “a man of peace” — will publicly reaffirm his previous commitments last April that Israel, in return for dismantling its settlements in Gaza, will get to keep most of its settlements in the West Bank, including Maale Adumim, in a final peace deal.
Though Bush and Sharon talked about the road map — and talk is cheap — the priority now will be Gaza. Phase two of the road map calls for an “interim” Palestinian state, and that is envisioned as comprising the Gaza Strip and other strips here and there of the West Bank. At that point Sharon’s government will freeze the peace process for years, maybe decades to come.
Boxed in like that, the Palestinians will find their aspirations for an independent free Palestine crushed.
Here’s what Bush had to say to reporters about the subject as he flew to Texas on Air Force One after attending Pope John Paul II’s funeral: “There needs to be an international effort that encourages and fosters economic vitality so that a government that does emerge in Gaza will be able to better speak to the hopes of those who live in Gaza.”
Do we need to read between the lines here?
After you’ve separated the refugees from their homeland (as Bush provocatively did last April, not mincing words as he did so), you separate Gaza from the West Bank, and then the West Bank from the Palestinians.
There is a substantially large settlement community in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, inhabited by mostly ultranationalist, messianic zealots. Several of these colonies are at least ten times as large as the largest one in Gaza, and the administration has quietly gone along with Israel’s unwillingness to relinquish its hold on them.
I see Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza as a step away from the peace process and a calculated strategy to quash Palestinian hopes for statehood.
Two issues need to be looked at.
Israel’s projected withdrawal from Gaza would lead to the emergence of a truncated, stand-alone entity that will find itself independent of governmental and institutional structures in the West Bank, leading ultimately to a permanent separation. And then who said the Israelis are “withdrawing” from Gaza anyhow? Yes, they are evacuating the illegal settlements they had built there, but not by any means are they surrendering their control of that strip of Palestinian land.
For as Sharon’s government sees it and has made firm plans for it, after the so-called withdrawal, Zionist military forces will arrogate themselves the right to enter Gaza, on whim, when they see fit. Israel will continue to maintain control over the territory’s airspace, seaports and border crossings. Palestinians will not be allowed to rebuild their airport, opened with much fanfare in the heady days of 1998, or develop a seaport.
Gaza has always been known as “the world’s largest prison” with its 1.3 million inhabitants hemmed in on all sides like prison inmates who often found it impossible to travel outside their homeland because of strict frontier controls by occupation soldiers, and a nightmare even to move from one town to another within the territory itself because of checkpoints.
In Texas, we heard some muted criticism of Israel’s recent expansionist policies, which regularly violate Tel Aviv’s own obligations under the road map to freeze settlement activity, pursued under the rubric of “natural growth,” and of Sharon’s failure to dismantle settler “outposts” — a promise made to Bush, again during their meeting last April — but Bush is likely to go along with his buddy’s attempts to solidify Israel’s hold over the West Bank as the price for Gaza.
The road map, as drawn optimistically it now feels around the Stone Age by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, was supposed to have been negotiated, and to have concluded, at the end of this year with an agreement formalizing the emergence of a Palestinian state.
The plan, however, remains an abstration, a mere notion, without a timetable or any realistic expectation that it will be revived, all of which emboldens Sharon to move unilaterally, in small steps, without official talks with the Palestinians, stretching the process for years into the dim future.
Meanwhile, the pauperization of the people of Palestine goes on. The economy of the occupied territories is not only bleak but desperate. Per capita GDP in the West Bank and Gaza has declined on average by five percent, and personal income by 30 percent, since 2000, with half the population living below the poverty level. According to the CIA’s World Factbook 2003 and the report, “West Bank/Gaza: The Development Challenge,” issued a year earlier by the US Agency for International Development, the unemployment rate in the 1980’s was five percent, in 1995 it was 20 percent, and in 2002 it reached 40 percent.
Why?
In June 2004, a World Bank study concluded that the principal cause of the economic collapse of the West Bank and Gaza was attributable to Israeli military incursions, resulting in the destruction of homes, orchards, businesses and infrastructure, and to measures adopted by the occupation authorities to impose closures and checkpoints, resulting in restrictions on the movement of goods and people, not only between the occupied territories and neighboring countries but also within the West Bank and Gaza.
If Bush had my ear — that is, if he cares to hear what a nice Palestininan boy from the refugee camps has to say — I know what I would tell him to tell Sharon: Mr. Sharon, bring down that wall! Get your fanatic settlers and occupation soldiers out of Palestine, and let the people of that country, after living under the rule of the gun for almost 40 years, be free. Free, free at last.
