The Situation

Unilateralism and a sense of urgency

Friday, December 05, 2003

Tropical landscape, 70x50 canvas by Silvia Rosenberg

gyptian Intelligence Services Minister Omar Suleiman, the host of the Palestinian conference in Cairo is in a hurry – and so apparently is Deputy Prime Minister (or Vice Premier, depending whom you ask) Ehud Olmert.

Suleiman wants the Palestinians to come up with a plan for a ceasefire by tomorrow so Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’ can take it to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- after Suleiman takes it first to Washington and then to Jerusalem.

Olmert meanwhile announced this week that he has seen the light and that Ben Gurion, if not the Left in general, was right: It’s better to have a small Jewish, democratic state than the Greater Land of Israel.

He hinted as much last month in Haaretz. Today he says so bluntly to Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth, explaining that the decision is coming sooner than most people realize for a unilateral move that draws the borders of an Israel that has a population that is 80 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab. That’s more or less the ratio that exists nowadays in the sovereign Israel inside the pre-Six Day War Green Line.

uleiman’s hopes for a new pan-Palestinian ‘national leadership’ that gives Qurei’ the mandate to negotiate with Sharon are understandable, but given the mood in Jerusalem, even if Qurei’ gets his chance to make a presentation to Sharon, the prime minister appears to be gearing up for unilateral moves.

The pressure on Sharon for action has been mounting for weeks, this week climaxing in President Bush turning down Israeli pleas to reject the Geneva Accord. Bush calling the Accord ‘productive’ was another blow to Sharon, who has seen his intimacy with Bush whittled away by his own failure to live up to his promises to the American president to dismantle illegal outposts and ease conditions for the Palestinians.

Sharon, about whom Ben Gurion once said he’d be a good officer if he learned to tell the truth, is learning the hard way something that an old Republican – Abraham Lincoln – once pointed out: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of them all of the time.

Thus, Sharon’s procrastination of a decision is heading toward a climax this month, presumably at a December 18 conference on national security at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. Just as he used the national security conference last year to accept the roadmap in principle (though attached so many conditions, reservations, comments and corrections that it essentially hollowed out Israel’s commitments in the roadmap as much as the ongoing refusal by successive PA governments to combat terror hollowed out Palestinian commitments), Sharon is expected to use the conference this year to ‘clarify’ his recent comments about the need for unilateral steps.

lmert’s change of heart regarding the territories (he says he’s still a Rightist, accusing the Leftists of not having ‘Jewish spines’), now understanding that Israel cannot remain Jewish and democratic while holding onto them, is not the same as what Sharon will propose – at least according to the speculation about the prime minister’s plan.

The prevailing speculation is Sharon will start moving toward his longstanding plan that goes back to the late 1970s and 1980s when he was ‘the bulldozer’ building settlements, to prevent the Palestinians from ever getting a state, or at the very least guaranteeing they never have anything more than a canton in the southern West Bank and another in the northern West Bank.

Despite the differences between what Olmert is implying – a massive withdrawal form the territories, leaving only a couple of settlement blocs and even giving up parts of East Jerusalem – and what Sharon is likely to present, the fact that they are both speaking in terms of unilaterally drawing Israel’s borders is a dramatic development.

Sharon is already hinting stating bluntly to the Palestinians that they will get far more from Israel through negotiations – but only if they take real action to end terror. Olmert is saying he would prefer to negotiate the withdrawal and even after a unilateral withdrawal envisions economic cooperation between the two states. But both are publicly doubtful that Qurei’, because of Arafat lurking in the background, will be able to do more than talk.

That leads back to Cairo and Suleiman’s plan. According to Israeli media reports about the Egyptian plan for the Palestinians, the consensual cease-fire would not be limited to promises by the 12 armed Palestinian political parties that they hold their fire. Everyone in the West Bank – and in Israeli intelligence – knows that the problem is on the ground in places like Jenin’s refugee camp and the Nablus casbah, where street gangs operating on their own interpretation of what Arafat wants, and often with money that comes from Iran via Lebanon, are not disciplined enough to obey any orders.

Thus, Suleiman is pushing for a deal in which PA security services might not proactively ‘dismantle the terror infrastructure’ as Israel wants, but will take harsh action against anyone who violates a cease-fire. That would be enough, Suleiman and Qurei’ believe, to put some real pressure on Israel to comply with international demands to evacuate outposts, ease conditions for Palestinians, and either halt the construction of the separation fence or at least shift its route to the Green Line, something that Sharon would never do, and Olmert says he is loathe to do. Of course, only a few months ago, Olmert was saying unilateral withdrawal from the territories would be a prize for terror.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation