What kind of state is being proposed in this "two-state" solution, asks Ibrahim Nafie Ariel Sharon this week appointed Major-General Giora Eiland to head a new national security council charged with implementing his "unilateral disengagement plan". The plan, which calls for new lines of deployment and other so- called security measures that will establish new realities on the ground, is Sharon's answer to an intensified Arab and international drive to create a climate conducive to the resumption of peace talks. For months Sharon has been waiting for the opportunity to deliver a slap in the face of the roadmap and then to continue battering the Palestinians into accepting his terms for a settlement. This is perfectly in keeping with his approach to the peace process since coming to power in 2001. His response to the Arab peace initiative adopted at the Beirut summit that year was to launch a massive incursion into Palestinian territories. When Sharon realised how difficult it was to achieve his ends by force of arms, he engaged in other tactics. He tightened the stranglehold on the Palestinian people and attempted to ignite internecine strife by demanding that Palestinian resistance organisations be dismantled. In spite of the intensity of this onslaught the Palestinians demonstrated an exemplary degree of responsibility, as was apparent in the truce agreement reached by the Palestinian factions under the Abu Mazen government. Simultaneously, other factors helped keep the situation in the Palestinian territories from boiling over. Foremost among these was Egypt's unremitting support of the Palestinian leadership combined with its mediating efforts with the Palestinian factions and its continued diplomatic drive to promote the peace process. Also of major importance was the Quartet's roadmap and Bush's personal commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Now Sharon is determined to snuff out the glimmer of hope these efforts had revived. The unilateral disengagement plan is clearly another phase in the Israeli government's plans to carve off a large chunk of the territories occupied in June 1967. And Sharon would not have declared his intention to press ahead with this plan had he not felt he had some understanding with Washington. That this understanding exists is evident from American attitudes towards the implementation of the roadmap. While Washington has hounded the Palestinians into abiding by every obligation to the letter it has been ever indulgent with Israeli ploys to dodge its commitments. But, more pertinent here is the sudden shift in the American position on the separating wall. Not that long ago senior officials had expressed grave misgivings over that project, objecting to its course inside the West Bank and to the injustices it would inflict on thousands of Palestinians. Their criticisms soon subsided as work on the wall continued. Then Washington began to lend active support, firstly vetoing a Security Council resolution calling upon Israel to halt construction of the wall and then fighting the passage of a General Assembly resolution condemning the wall and demanding that the question be brought before the International Court of Justice. Increasingly, Washington's positions grew more and more in tune with Sharon's policy of imposing a solution by force. Epitomising this development is former State Department Peace Process Coordinator Dennis Ross who, in a recent interview with Yediot Aharanot, shared Israel's anxieties over the "Arab demographic peril". If Israel continues on its current course, he warned, the Arabs under its rule will soon outnumber Jews. "Therefore, there must be a wall. I would prefer a wall built through negotiations. However, in the absence of that option, you [the Israelis] must take steps towards the creation of two states. The wall will provide a solution to both the security and population questions. It should be built in the western, not the eastern, portion of the West Bank. If you want a two state solution, you must have a wall." How considerate of the erstwhile peace coordinator to counsel Israelis, in effect, to annex a large tract of the West Bank and to expel the Arabs on the Israeli side of the wall because, otherwise, the Jews will become a minority. How kind of him to urge Israel forward with an illegal project that the UN General Assembly wants brought before the International Court of Justice. That Ross reflects current thinking in Washington is evident from the reaction of the White House to the disengagement plan that Sharon unveiled at the Herzliya Conference. That a White House spokesman said that the substance of the Israeli prime minister's Herzliya speech affirmed his commitment to the roadmap seems to sum up the situation. One is left wondering what kind of roadmap remains, and what kind of state it is that Bush is personally pledged to create by 2005? Ross's appeal to the two state solution is only playing with names and his advocacy of the wall is just another way of telling Israel to go ahead and help itself to more than half of the West Bank and to pay no heed at all to all those calls about returning land occupied by force, or about the right of return of a people brutally expelled from their homes. Merely to contemplate the impact of Sharon's disengagement plan on the peace process and the stability of this region makes one shudder. If implemented these unilateral measures will give all opposed to a negotiated settlement the perfect excuse to charge that negotiations are a sham. And, because of Washington's support for these measures, they will make it all the easier for certain forces to fuel anti-American hostility in the region. The solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the realisaton of peace in the Middle East can only be achieved when the relevant parties sit down at the negotiating table and hammer out a just and lasting peace. What Sharon has up his sleeve, especially if backed by Washington, will only feed conspiracy theories, stoke tensions and propel the region closer to the brink of catastrophe.
