Posted on 30-1-2003
Labor
Looses, Peace?
By Gadi Taub*
Amram Mitzna, the leader of the Labor Party, offered Israelis
the most
realistic solution to the Palestinian conflict. With Labor's
defeat in
yesterday's elections, prospects for peace are now even more
remote and
once again rest with the two men — Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat
— whose
unspoken alliance has frustrated the hopes of Israelis and Palestinians
alike.
The cornerstone of Mr. Mitzna's plan was that if negotiations
fail to yield
agreement within one year, Israel should unilaterally withdraw
from the
territories and impose independence on a reluctant Palestinian
leadership.
This plan is not just different from that of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon.
It is an utter reversal of the basic assumptions of Israel's
prevailing
political discourse. According to Mr. Mitzna, leaving the territories
is
not a concession to the Palestinians; it is in Israel's most
vital and
urgent self-interest. If they do not withdraw, Jews will soon
be a minority
in their own country.
Mr. Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, surely
knows this. He
does not explicitly support Mr. Sharon. But the uncompromising
positions of
Mr. Sharon's party, Likud, better suit his purposes than Labor's.
Mr. Arafat condemns terrorism just enough — and in English —
to keep
himself from becoming a political leper in the West. And he
fails to
condemn terrorism just enough — and in Arabic — to let Palestinians
know he
will not move to stop it. Had he moved decisively to limit suicide
bombings
to the territories, Israelis might have concluded he favors
partition.
Instead, terrorism in Tel Aviv shows the Israeli public that
he seeks to
replace Israel with Palestine.
Suicide bombings also enable Mr. Sharon to get away with his
own
doublespeak: talk peace but build up the settlements. Mr. Sharon,
like Mr.
Arafat, talks of negotiations just enough to maintain the support
of
America and some of Israel's moderate center. And he raises
the specter of
terrorism more than enough to foment Israeli anger and conceal
the actual
thrust of his policy, which is strengthening Israel's hold on
the territories.
Thus Mr. Sharon's inexcusable delays in the construction of
Israel's most
effective defense against terrorists — a fence. Building a fence
around the
West Bank would help stop terrorists from entering Israel. The
fence
already in place around the Gaza Strip is an almost foolproof
barrier
against suicide bombers. From the West Bank, in contrast, Palestinians
can
take what some call "Bus No. 11" to inner Israel: their own
two legs.
A fence, however, will eventually become a border, and any settlements
on
the other side of that border would have to be abandoned. This
Mr. Sharon
will not do.
Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat reinforce each other's positions in
an even more
important way. Terrorism merely conceals the crucial questions
of
demographics and partition. On these issues, Mr. Sharon and
Mr. Arafat
share something far more essential. Both want to blur the Green
Line, the
pre-1967 border, thereby undermining the prospect of territorial
partition.
If there were any doubts about this, Camp David should have
dispelled them.
The two-state solution presented at Camp David in 2000 would
have given
Palestinians control of almost all of the West Bank and the
entire Gaza
Strip, in addition to other benefits. Yet Mr. Arafat rejected
it. His
assumption seems to be what the Israeli left has long believed:
Israel
cannot survive a prolonged occupation. Only partition can save
the Jewish
state.
The problem is demographics. A Jewish democratic state can survive
only
with a Jewish majority. Without the territories, Jews are about
80 percent
of Israel's population. With the territories, Jews are just
barely a
majority. With Palestinian birthrates in the territories among
the highest
in the world, an Arab majority in a Jewish state that includes
the
territories is all but inevitable.
So if Israel does not give up the territories, it will face
a choice:
relinquish either democracy or the ideal of a Jewish state.
Granting
Palestinians in the territories the right to vote would turn
Israel into an
Arab state with a Jewish minority. Not allowing them to vote
would result
in a form of permanent apartheid. Either way, Zionism will perish.
Each leader thinks he can eventually grab the whole territory
between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Mr. Sharon is right
to think that
his settlement and road-building policies will prevent the emergence
of a
viable Palestinian state. Mr. Arafat is right to assume that,
in the long
run, these same policies will bring Israel's downfall. Yet both
are also
wrong: without partition, neither people will have its own state.
The alternative to partition is civil war. The rejection of
Mr. Mitzna's
plan, coupled with Mr. Sharon's clear victory, could be one
more step
toward turning Israel into another Lebanon.
Gadi Taub, author of "A Dispirited Rebellion: Essays on Contemporary
Israel
Culture," teaches communications at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
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