What What Does Sharon Want From The Disengagement Plan?

By Hanna Amireh*

There is no doubt that the current extensive contacts
and meetings between the US and Israeli officials are
actually American-Israeli negotiations to impose a
unilateral settlement to the conflict in the region
away and far from the Palestinian people and their
leadership and this is unprecedented hegemony and
intransigence.

Following the US approval to Sharon’s disengagement
plan, the extensive contacts and consultations started
moving to discuss the details of the plan and its
expected ramifications on the Palestinian internal
condition and on the Arab neighboring countries and on
the capacity of the US Administration to mobilize Arab
and international support to the plan or even to
neutralize any potential opposition to the plan.

We can recall here the statements of Israeli PM Areil
Sharon who said: "the US support and what Washington
can offer in return constitute two vital factors
working for the disengagement plan. This takes us back
once again to the issue of American-Israeli contacts
and the price Sharon has set!

What Sharon wants in return for withdrawal from Gaza
according to his statements is a new defense line
inside the West Bank according to which the course of
the separation wall is defined and which is eating up
half of the Palestinian territories. Moreover, he wants
to consolidate control over the major settlement blocs
in Areil, Gosh Atsion, and the Jordan Valley and around
the settlements of Amanuel and Karneh Shomron i.e. in
the northern, southern and central regions in the West
Bank in addition to an official US recognition to the
annexation of the city of Jerusalem as the eternal
capital of Israel.

That is, the separation wall and the settlement blocs
and Jerusalem constitute the basic part of Sharon’s
plan; these issues are non-negotiable from his point of
view and they are subject to the so-called unilateral
solution. As to the part which is subject to
negotiations, it is the second part of his plan or what
might be left for the Palestinians after Sharon takes
what he wants, such as the establishment of a besieged
Palestinian state with temporary borders and
superficial signs of sovereignty as an interim solution
without any definite time ceiling and facilities in the
economic field and also facilities in crossing to
Jordan and Egypt and other so-called facilities in the
economic and humanitarian fields.

As for the negotiations, they will never take place
until the Palestinian side deals with two basic
conditions: dismantling the terrorism infrastructure
and replace the current Palestinian leadership with a
leadership that can do the job. It is no secret that
these two conditions were set up in the first place by
Sharon in order to implement the first phase of the
roadmap. According to statements of Israeli Defense
Minister Shaoul Mofaz, unilateral separation opens the
door for resumption of negotiations with the
Palestinians on the basis of the roadmap. But these
negotiations will be delayed from three to five years
as of today. This means that the aim of the
negotiations is to impose the roadmap on the
Palestinian people with the Israeli conditions,
interpretations and the 14 reservations which Sharon
has set up. Therefore, the situation will settle down
on a permanent interim settlement to be executed
unilaterally by Israel with US support until it is
proven that there is a Palestinian partner with whom
they can negotiate after three or five years on some
necessary details to bring about this settlement in a
beautified manner that can be accepted by some
Palestinian, Arab and international circles.

In this sense, Sharon’s disengagement plan is a means
through which he can freeze the final settlement and
reinforce the policy of the occupation status quo
indefinitely. Sharon is currently discussing with the
Bush Administration the best means to achieve this; in
fact, this is the real content of the current American-
Israeli contacts at this phase.

Thus, Sharon’s plan must be taken very seriously since
it is not a tactical maneuver, as some like to describe
it, or a new trick or game that this man excels in or
that it is impossible to imagine that the godfather of
settlements would evacuate settlements even remote
ones.

What Sharon is presenting these days in the name of the
Israeli right conservative or extremist wing is
unprecedented because he is working on formulating an
amended version of the self-rule project which was
posed by Menahem Begin 25 years ago. This is a project
which comes as an alternative to Oslo Accord and goes
beyond the security for withdrawal formula which was
the basis of that accord. It is an imposed unilateral
scheme and not a negotiable solution; it is a solution
that gives up settlements in Gaza Strip and the West
Bank in return for seizing more than half of the area
of the Palestinian territories after surrounding them
with the separation wall.

This is Sharon’s scheme and he is presenting it with
the full support of the US and in light of an
ineffective European official role and absence of any
Arab role.

Why now and is there any significance for the timing?
It seems he wants to make maximum use and exploitation
of the regional implications emerging from the US
occupation of Iraq before it is too late. He also wants
to make use of the start of changes in positions of
some Arab countries and to use the time factor as put
by Sharon himself: "Either we do it ourselves now or
end up losing everything".

The question remains: Will Sharon succeed through the
disengagement plan to freeze the final status solution
indefinitely? Will he be able to transform his scheme
into a permanent solution to the Palestinian cause?

This is impossible according to all criteria and
standards and the experience of past years. Sharon’s
scheme came because the Israeli policy failed in
achieving what it considered objectives in the recent
years. It failed in imposing a solution on the
Palestinian people through military means and other
means of pressure. It failed in imposing a solution on
the Palestinian people that does not conform to the
international legitimacy resolutions. It also failed in
keeping the occupation in its current form
indefinitely; it failed in removing the Palestinian
leadership and its President from the scene of events;
it could not find any alternative or any Palestinian
collaborator. After failing in achieving the announced
goals, the Israeli governments exhausted all military
and non-military means to impose an unjust solution on
the Palestinian people, Sharon comes these days to
legitimatize the use of force and the imposition of the
status quo and to present them as a new invention, but
in reality it is a further retreat and setback.

As we look into the negative aspects of the
disengagement plan and the evacuation of settlements,
we have to note also the signs of retreat in the
Israeli official positions, especially when they
repeated on many occasions last year on the possibility
of military victory and the defeat of the Intifada and
on implementing the model of Iraq on the Palestinian
leadership; Israel said 2003 will be the year of
military decisiveness and the toppling of Yasser Arafat
and clung to the position of refusing to evacuate any
settlement or settler without a permanent settlement
with the Palestinians.

This retreat - although it seems superficial at this
phase - does not tackle the real and core of the
expansionist policy of the occupation and entails an
initial recognition that the current policies cannot
continue and that they cannot afford the costs of such
policies indefinitely. The current changes on the shape
of the Israeli policies, no matter how small or
superficial, will make an impact by time on the content
of those policies, whether it is positive or negative.

For the above reasons and other factors, we are
standing now at an important and critical juncture
through which the course of the framework of evacuating
the settlements will be decided. Will it be the
framework of Sharon, i.e. the disengagement plan and
reinforcement of occupation under the name of interim
solution and making it a permanent solution of the
Palestinian cause? Alternatively, will it be the
framework of international legitimacy resolutions and
the transferring of the withdrawal from Gaza and
evacuation of settlements into a preliminary step
towards the implementation of those resolutions. The
external Arab and international factors, which have
been suspended so far, will have major impact in
frustrating Sharon’s scheme. The emergence of the
Palestinian factor will play a key role in activating
the above-mentioned factors. The struggle against the
wall will constitute the key element in building a
Palestinian-Arab-international alliance to frustrate
those schemes.

There is no doubt that the unity of the Palestinian
people and their various forces and the performance of
their leadership should play a decisive role in this
confrontation.

* Member of the PLO Executive Committee and Politburo
Member of the Palestinian People’s Party

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