Friday, November 25, 2005
Sharon, the centrist, man of peace etc. posted by Richard Seymour
Some time ago, I suggested that Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza was a prelude to consolidation of its occupation of the West Bank. Israel historian Avi Shlaim - copycat that he is - made the same point on C4 News in response to Ariel Sharon's pitch for the 'centre-ground' earlier this week. Partial corroboration arrives this morning in the form of a secret British government document, which accuses Israel of hastily taking over the Arab areas of the West Bank:A confidential Foreign Office document accuses Israel of rushing to annex the Arab area of Jerusalem, using illegal Jewish settlement construction and the vast West Bank barrier, in a move to prevent it becoming a Palestinian capital.
In an unusually frank insight into British assessments of Israeli intentions, the document says that Ariel Sharon's government is jeopardising the prospect of a peace agreement by trying to put the future of Arab East Jerusalem beyond negotiation and risks driving Palestinians living in the city into radical groups. The document, obtained by the Guardian, was presented to an EU council of ministers meeting chaired by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on Monday with recommendations to counter the Israeli policy, including recognition of Palestinian political activities in East Jerusalem.
Surprise, right? Well, mark this:
It adds: "Israeli activities in Jerusalem are in violation of both its Roadmap (peace plan) obligations and international law."
International law? Now, do you suppose there might be some resolution somewhere that says Israel's whole occupation of the West Bank is in violation of international law? Never mind countless other practises including the imprisonment and torture of children, the use of chemical weapons, collective punishment etc etc. Anyway, to the crux of the matter:
"Israel's main motivation is almost certainly demographic ... the Jerusalem master plan has an explicit goal to keep the proportion of Palestinian Jerusalemites at no more than 30% of the total." All of this, the document says, greatly reduces the prospects of a two-state solution because a core demand of the Palestinians is for sovereignty over the east of the city. [Emphasis added]
Indeed, in everything has said and done, it has indicated that it has no intention at all of allowing even a minimal Palestinian state on the tiniest patch of territory that Palestinian Authority still stakes a claim to. As Bionic Octopus highlighted some while ago, Sharon's senior adviser Dov Weisglass acknowledged that 'disengagement' was really an attempt to subdue any 'peace process':
The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place [Bush's] formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.
Sharon, man of peace, centrist etc. I think it's worth pausing to consider that even if Amir Peretz, the new left-wing leader of the Israeli Labour Party, is serious about pursuing his Peace Now plan, the Israeli political and military establishment will probably never allow it to happen. As Ran Ha Cohen writes, the military has anomalous weight within the Israeli state, comparable to that of Turkey. Not that Peretz is entirely useless - he could potentially galvanise Israeli public opinion and force some kind of recognition of the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations. But even if the former Histradut leader does engage in the necessary Stakhanovite efforts, he will probably find that state which is founded on an expansionist and racist ideology, and which is now imbricated with Israeli and international capital in helping to exploit Palestinian labour in the West Bank where the latter is not simply excluded or gunned down, is not terribly interested in allowing Palestine to be anything but a dream or a museum. And Histradut, by the way, was and remains an integral component of Zionist rule in Palestine. If there is hope, it doesn't rest with those proles.