Bantustan Plan For an Apartheid Israel

The Guardian (UK)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1203156,00.html

Sharon’s separation scheme is doomed to fail once it
becomes clear what it means

By Meron Benvenisti

When George Bush referred to Ariel Sharon’s unilateral
separation plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip as a
historic event, he wasn’t exaggerating - even if it is
not clear that he grasped the implications of his words
for the future of the Jewish state. Nor did the
Palestinians err when they compared his statement to
the Balfour Declaration (the British government’s first
world war promise to establish a "national home for the
Jewish people" in Palestine) - even if they perhaps
failed to grasp that the statement is liable to have
implications yet more grave than the 1917 pledge, and
will compel a substantive strategic change in their
struggle.

And Sharon - crowned by victory and convinced that he
has unveiled a daring new initiative that will foil all
schemes - will be surprised to discover that in
Washington he was pushed into embracing an accelerated
process of founding the state of Israel as a binational
state based on apartheid.

What’s the connection between, on the one hand, the end
of the conquest in the Gaza Strip and the dismantling
of settlements and, on the other, the establishment of
a binational state? After all, the goal of
disengagement is to improve the demographic situation
by removing a million and a half Palestinians from
Israeli control and thereby reducing the danger that
the country will cease to be a Jewish state. The
surprising fact is that this "conceptual transfer" is
accepted by the Israeli left, which continues to
believe in anachronistic slogans about the "end of the
conquest" and the "dismantling of settlements".

The report about a tacit agreement being reached
between the Peace Now movement and Sharon’s aides -
Peace Now will suspend its "evacuate settlements,
choose life" campaign so as not to harm public
relations efforts for Sharon’s separation plan -
illustrates the profoundly confused state of public
discourse in Israel. As the Israeli left sees it, the
confinement of one and a half million people in a huge
holding pen fulfils the ideal of putting an end to the
occupation, and furnishes some relief about how "we are
not responsible".

Similarly, when in South Africa a failed attempt was
made to solve demographic problems by creating
"homelands for the blacks", liberals originally
supported the idea, and even a portion of the
international community viewed the measure as a step
toward "decolonisation". But, after a short time, it
became clear that the ploy was designed to confer
legitimacy on the expulsion of black people, and their
uprooting. The bantustans collapsed, demands for civil
equality intensified, and the world mobilised for the
defeat of apartheid.

The bantustan model for Gaza, as depicted in the
disengagement plan, is a model that Sharon plans to
copy on the West Bank. His announcement that he will
not start to disengage before construction of the fence
is completed along a route that will include all
settlement blocs (in keeping with Binyamin Netanyahu’s
demand), underscores the continuity of the bantustan
concept. The fence creates three bantustans on the West
Bank - Jenin- Nablus, Bethlehem-Hebron and Ramallah.
This is the real link between the Gaza and West Bank
plans. The link is not what those politicians who will
provide a "security net" for Sharon in a Knesset no-
confidence vote call "the precedent of the dismantling
of settlements".

And thus, with breathtaking daring, Sharon submits a
plan that appears to promise the existence of a "Jewish
democratic state" via "separation", "the end of the
conquest", the "dismantling of settlements" - and also
the imprisonment of some 3 million Palestinians in
bantustans. This is an "interim plan" that is meant to
last forever. The plan will last, however, only as long
as the illusion is sustained that "separation" is a
means to end the conflict.

The day will come when believers in this illusion will
realise that "separation" is a means to oppress and
dominate, and then they will mobilise to dismantle the
apartheid apparatus. The last ones who will consent to
abandon the ideal of "separation" and uphold rights
will be the Palestinians, but - to some extent -
Sharon’s separation plan and Bush’s declaration will
provoke them.

In this way, Sharon’s rhetorical victory is sown with
the seeds of its own destruction. The bantustan plan is
now in swing, and the scenario that Sharon so badly
wanted to avoid will unfold.

· Meron Benvenisti is an Israeli writer and political
scientist, and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. This
is an edited version of an article that first appeared
in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz (haaretz.com).