The process of awakening to reality, aka the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, will take many years, and it has many aspects. Last week there were two major breakthroughs. They are unofficial breakthroughs to be sure, but very important ones. Palestinian political figures agreed to the Geneva Accord, which essentially gives up on the right of return of Palestinian refugees and recognizes the state of Israel.

On the Israeli side, Ehud Olmert, a pillar of the Likud party, former mayor of Jerusalem and currently Deputy Prime Minister, announced his support for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from significant portions of the occupied territories. He doesn't support this policy because he loves Palestinians or is preparing to join the Tanzim. Olmert supports this policy because he has finally heard what we of the left have been saying for thirty years. The purpose of Zionism is to create a national home for the Jews. If Israel keeps the territories it will have a majority of Arabs within its borders. It will cease to be a national home for the Jews. We cannot build our future either on schemes of transferring Palestinians out of Israel or on gerrymandering them out of their rights. It is wrong and it won't work. If we cannot find a peace partner, unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories becomes the only viable option.

Olmert told Yedioth Ahronot reporter Nahum Barne'a in an interview last weekend:

"We are approaching the point where more and more Palestinians will say: we have been won over. We agree with [National Union leader Avigdor] Liberman. There is no room for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All that we want is the right to vote.

"The day they do that, is the day we lose everything. Even when they carry out terror, it is very difficult for us to persuade the world of the justice of our cause. We see this on a daily basis. All the more so when there is only one demand: an equal right to vote.

"The thought that the struggle against us will be headed by liberal Jewish organizations who shouldered the burden of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa scares me."

Barne'a asked Olmert about a proposal of the Israeli right to give the right to vote to Israeli emigres wherever they are or to all the Jews around the world. He replied.

"All these smart-alecky solutions," Olmert says, "will not rescue us from a boycott, isolation, and other scenarios that I prefer not to go into.."

The essence of Olmert's position is that there is no chance of reaching an agreement, and that being the case, Israel will soon be faced by a choice between partial withdrawal and total war. He said:

"Had I believed that there is a real chance of reaching an agreement, I would have recommended making an effort. But that is not the case. The choice we will be facing will be between less than a Geneva Accord -- which means a return to the 1967 border, the crushing of Jerusalem, and a struggle to our last breath to ward off the international pressure to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees into the shrinking State of Israel -- and a comprehensive unilateral move, and I stress the word comprehensive. Through such a move we will define our borders, which under no circumstances will be identical to the Green Line and will include Jerusalem as a united city under our sovereignty."

The shock value of Olmert's statements is increased by the fact that Olmert is a member of the Likud party, formerly Herut, and an inheritor of the ideological bible of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Menahem Begin, defenders of Greater Israel and no dismantling of settlement. The shock value is increased by the fact that several Herut/Likud members including Tzippi Livni and Dan Meridor support Olmert. He is not going to be excommunicated. As for Ariel Sharon, who is often pictured abroad as the Jewish version of Godzilla, Sharon was never a member of Herut or a student of Jabotinsky, but rather a scion of the Labor party. It is probable that he supports Olmert, and it is even possible that Sharon put Olmert up to it, to advance the idea of unilateral withdrawal, which Sharon himself has said the advocates.

It should not escape our notice that just previously, Sharon was talking about unilateral concessions, and just before that, as we may recall, Shinui party leader Tomi Lapid was pushing a plan for Israeli withdrawal from the isolated Netzarim settlement in Gaza. Nor should we forget that not so very long ago, Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna campaigned on a platform of unilateral withdrawal, not too different from these ideas of Olmert. Mitzna's ideas were branded dangerous to Israel by the right, and Mitzna lost the election by a large margin. When Olmert and Sharon voice the same ideas however, they are likely to get a better hearing. Much of the value of such proposals lies in who backs them, rather than actual content.

Unlike the Geneva Accord, for better or worse, Olmert's ideas are very likely to become the policy of the Israeli government. Rght-wing Israelis claimed that the plan was suicidal. Posters of Olmert in uniform a sort of badge of political sanity appeared all over Jerusalem. But the reality is something else.

Olmert intends to withdraw in such a way as to preserve demographic balance. Presumably, Israel will withdraw from all of Gaza, and from populous parts of the West Bank, and the Palestinians can do what they want there. It will probably leave the Palestinians with about 60% of the land more or less, in non-contiguous lumps It is hard to see how they can form a state or carry on any sort of orderly life in these enclaves. Very probably, the Israeli withdrawal would not be so different from what Sharon would offer the Palestinians as an interim provisional state to be established under the road map. It is questionable whether a "solution" of that type would really stave off the pressures that Olmert discussed. After all, the world was not fooled by South African Bantustans. If the Palestinians cannot set up a viable state in the land that Israel cedes, Israel will be subject to the same boycotts and pressures that Olmert mentioned.

However, the basic idea is that Sharon has to show some progress toward peace in order to deflect mounting pressure from the US, and has to get the Intifada ended and off the national agenda. As there is less and less hope of doing this through the road map, and as pressure rises for a solution, politicians of the right are looking to unilateral solutions as a way of putting the conflict in deep freeze and moving on. However, with or without unilateral steps, the Greater Israel lobby is going to have to come to terms with the idea that keeping the occupied territories indefinitely is just not an option.

This article, along with the entire Yedioth Ahronoth interview with Olmert, is also posted at the MidEastWeb Web log, where you may also comment on the article and the issues.