Israelis and Palestinians agreed: Israel's latest Cabinet decisions were historic. But the reasons were entirely different, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem They were "two of the most important decisions since the founding of the state", editorialised Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said one of them was the "hardest" of his life. And all Israelis said the decisions were "historic". But whatever the epithet, rarely in modern times have decisions on the future borders of one country so fatally prejudiced the future borders of another. The two decisions were taken by the Israeli Cabinet on 20 February. The first gave final authorisation to Sharon's plan to withdraw soldiers and settlers from most of the Gaza Strip and from four small settlements in the West Bank, with the first evacuations set for July. The second was to approve the final route of the so-called separation barrier in the Israeli occupied West Bank. Palestinians paid scant attention to the first decision. They were outraged by the second. At an emergency meeting on Sunday night, the PLO Executive Committee denounced Israel for "exploiting the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to cover up for its expansionist policies in the West Bank." It described the route of the barrier as the "gravest strategic" threat to the Palestinian core aspiration of an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank "with Jerusalem as its capital". This was not hyperbole. Due to rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and Israel's own Supreme Court, the Israeli government was forced to re-map the course of the barrier. The original route would have incorporated -- or to use the ICJ's term -- "annexed" some 16 per cent of the West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem. The revised route annexes between six-seven per cent, according to Israeli statistics: 10 per cent, according to Palestinian, which include occupied East Jerusalem. But as any political geographer will tell you it is not so much the percentages that matter as the location. The approved route incorporates the vast Maale Adumim settlement east of Palestinian East Jerusalem and the equally vast Gush Etzion settlement bloc west of Palestinian Bethlehem. Both blocs are deep within the West Bank, and both are where the bulk of the 4,500 new settlement housing units now under construction or approved for tender in the occupied territories are located, says Israel's Peace Now Movement. It is this expansion that gives the lie to the Cabinet's proviso that "the fence is a temporary security measure to prevent attacks and does not embody a political or other border," says Daniel Seiderman, an Israeli lawyer who represents Palestinians whose lands have been confiscated by the settlements and/or requisitioned by the barrier. "Israel says nothing is irreversible and that the fence can be removed. But it's not the wall that creates irreversibility. It's the interface of the wall with the settlement activity." If built as routed, he says, and Palestinian geographers concur, the barrier will mark another massive step in effectively severing East Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland, dividing the West Bank into two northern and southern halves and sub-dividing the southern West Bank between its main Palestinian cities of Hebron and Bethlehem. "It's Sharon's Bantustan plan, imposed unilaterally," says former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, one of the few Israelis who protested against the Cabinet decision. Is there anything that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) can do about it? During his election campaign he vowed that "pulling down" the West Bank barrier would be one of the main goals of his leadership. And, say his aides, he will demand action on "the annexation wall" in his upcoming meetings with Sharon, Tony Blair in London on 1 March and George Bush in Washington next month. It is unclear whether he will get any traction. Sharon has repeatedly said he sees the withdrawal from Gaza as the "price" for Israel's annexation of settlements like Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion. Israeli officials say the latest route of the barrier was charted with the knowledge and approval of the Bush administration. And Blair has a history of deferring to Israeli and American policies in the occupied territories, even when he disagrees with them. As for the rest of Europe, the applause with which it has greeted the "disengagement plan" has served only to heighten its silence over the course of the barrier. This silence is dangerous. Whatever domestic support Abbas has received for his commitment to reform and ability to reduce Palestinian violence, it will account for nothing if he cannot halt Israel's ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land. He will simply be exposed as having no more clout with world leaders than had Yasser Arafat. And as with Arafat, the power vacuum will be filled by others. On 21 February, one day after the Cabinet vote, 10 Palestinians were wounded in confrontations with the army along the barrier already built in the northern West Bank. Protests are being planned at sites at the barrier in and around East Jerusalem. If these peaceful demonstrations fail, Palestinians need only take their cue from Gaza. There, Hamas and the other resistance factions have emptied the settlements and circumvented the walls that enclose their Bantustan, not by diplomacy and "waiting for the world" but by digging tunnels that go under them and firing missiles that fly over them.
