Israel plans to ask Washington to accept a huge West Bank land grab in return for a Gaza withdrawal, reports Khalid Amayreh from the West Bank Israel is reportedly pressing Washington to agree to a fresh Israeli plan to annex a huge swathe of territory in the West Bank in return for the implementation of a purported Israeli plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. According to thenew annexation plan, endorsed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week, Israel will annex the large settlements of Ariel in the northern West Bank, Ma'ali Adomim east of Jerusalem and the so- called Gush Etzion bloc north of Hebron. The annexation would mean that Israel would gobble up as much as a fourth of the total area of the West Bank and irreversibly dash any possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state. Moreover, the annexation by Israel of Ma'ali Adomim, which lies between Jericho and Jerusalem, would effectively cut off the Hebron and Bethlehem regions in the southern West Bank from the Ramallah region in the central part of the West Bank. Meanwhile, Sharon's political adviser, Dov Weisglass, held talks on Monday with United States Secretary of State Collin Powell in Washington in an effort to "convince" the Bush administration to accept the huge land grab. According to the Israeli Hebrew press, Weisglass asked the Americans to accept the revised route of the Israeli separation wall which meanders deep into the West Bank especially in the occupied region's central and northern parts. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled more than two months ago that the entire wall, which the Palestinians call "apartheid wall", was illegal and should be dismantled. Moreover, the Israeli High Court of Justice had issued a ruling ordering the Israeli government to see to it that the construction of the wall would not unduly impinge on Palestinian civilians' rights and that a "proportionality" be established between Israel's "security needs" and "Palestinian rights and needs". The Israeli government, capitalising on nearly unrestricted support and backing from the US, makes a mockery of the ICJ ruling and dismisses it as "biased". More to the point, the Sharon government has also been seeking to water down the court's ruling, claiming that the building of the wall deep into the West Bank and the resulting annexation of large tracts of the West Bank will meet the court's ruling. This week, Israeli army bulldozers began destroying Palestinian farms and orchards in the southern West Bank, particularly in the western Hebron hills. Palestinian sources and human rights activists said that thousands of olive trees were wantonly uprooted and utterly destroyed in the past few days for the purpose of building the separation wall. Not a single Jewish tree was uprooted or destroyed in the area, a fact reflecting Israel's striking racism and repression against the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority (PA) reacted angrily to Israeli efforts to get the US to accept the annexation of large parts of the West Bank. PA cabinet Minister Ghassan Al-Khatib accused Sharon of "exploiting the 'political paralysis' in Washington to create facts on the ground in the West Bank". "He knows that Bush and his administration can't say 'no' to any Israeli request, especially during this crucial election year," Al-Khatib told Al-Ahram Weekly. The Palestinian official argued that American consent to Israel's territorial expansion in the West Bank would issue the death certificate for the American-backed roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. "The roadmap is already moribund. This is why Sharon has instructed his ministers to stop talking about it," said the PA official in a clearly frustrated tone. Asked if the PA would go once again to the United Nations General Assembly to issue another resolution condemning the construction of the separation wall, Al- Khatib said that a new resolution would not make any difference. "The problem lies not in a shortage of UN resolutions denouncing Israel. The real problem lies in Israel's defiance and contempt of the international community and also in the American collusion with Israel. Israel, in the final analysis, can't defy the UN without US approval." Abdullah Abdullah, another Palestinian official, accused the US of "applying double standards" when dealing with the Arabs and the Israelis. Abdullah said that US officials were telling the Egyptians and other Arabs that the US is against Israel's settlement expansion and at the same time they tell Israel that it could quietly keep the land grab. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Amira Oron, told aljazeera.net that Israel was hoping to receive a favourable response from Washington to the annexation plan. "The Bush administration has already voiced support of the Israeli position that the big settlements in the West Bank would have to be part of Israel in the context of a final settlement with the Palestinians," said Oron. Earlier this year, US President George W Bush promised Sharon that Israel wouldn't have to return to the 1967 borders between Israel and the West Bank and that Palestinian refugees expelled from what is now Israel wouldn't be allowed to return to their homes in the Jewish state. The pledge was viewed as the most serious departure by the Bush administration from the long-standing US policy on the Middle East, based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the peace-for-land formula. The rampant proliferation of Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank has convinced many Palestinians and some Israelis that the two-state solution, which foresees the creation of a viable Palestinian state, is utterly unrealistic if not outright impossible. Hence, a growing number of activists and intellectuals on both sides have come to explore and advocate the creation of a united, democratic and civil state in all of mandatory Palestine (Israel and the Occupied Territories) where Jews and Palestinians live equally as citizens regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. Needless to say, the Israeli Zionist establishment vehemently rejects the concept as a prescription for the destruction of the "Jewish identity" of Israel. However, the Israeli policy of settlement expansion, financed largely by American taxpayers, has ironically served those who champion the one-state solution. The other, far less attractive alternative, would be perpetual occupation by Israel and continued violent resistance by the Palestinians and political instability in the Middle East.
