After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30 children, often by "excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which neither the lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger, resulting in unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the U.S. The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli dead was then about 15-1, reflecting the resources of force available.
Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar: they conform to the "final status map" presented by the U.S.-Israel as the basis for the Camp David negotiations that collapsed in July. This plan, extending U.S.-Israeli rejectionist proposals of earlier years, called for canonization of the territories that Israel had conquered in 1967, with mechanisms to ensure that usable land and resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious analog.
In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include Nablus and other Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in Ramallah, and a southern canton in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain isolated.
Palestinians would be effectively cut off from Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the southern coastal region and a small settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the recent atrocities), which is hardly more than an excuse for a large military presence and roads splitting the strip below Gaza city.
These proposals formalize the vast settlement and construction programs that Israel has been conducting, thanks to munificent U.S. aid, with increasing energy since the U.S. was able to implement its version of the "peace process" after the Persian Gulf War.
For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25 commentary; and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom, Oct. 10.
The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to this project.
Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of violence began. Tensions, always high, were raised when the Barak government authorized a visit by Ariel Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a Thursday (Sept. 28). Sharon is the very symbol of Israeli state terror and aggression, with a rich record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's announced purpose was to demonstrate "Jewish sovereignty" over the Al-Aqsa compound, but as the veteran correspondent Graham Usher points out, the "Al-Aqsa Intifada," as Palestinians call it, was not initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive and intimidating police and military presence that Barak introduced the following day, the day of prayers.
Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people streamed out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded.
Whatever Barak's purpose, there could hardly have been a more efficient way to set the stage for the shocking atrocities of the following weeks. The same can be said about the failed negotiations, which focused on Jerusalem, a condition observed strictly by U.S. commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this problem "could have been reached in five minutes," but he is right to say that "by any diplomatic logic should have been the easiest issue to solve (Ha'aretz, Oct. 4).
It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to suppress what they are doing in the occupied territories, which is far more important.
Why did Arafat agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the leadership of the Arab states regard the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have little problem with the Bantustan-style settlement, but cannot overlook administration of the religious sites, fearing the reaction of their own populations. Nothing could be better calculated to set off a confrontation with religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as centuries of experience reveal.
The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the U.S.-Israeli demands are to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a harsher form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely.
The outlines are in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the Allon Plan), and variants that have been proposed since by both political groupings (the Sharon Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the support of the U.S. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the "Oslo process.
" Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the U.S., it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded.
As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water, telecommunications, and other services that are doled out in meager rations to the Palestinian population, who are now under virtual siege.
(To Be Contd.)