<This is classic, "Nixon in China." >
Sharon hasn't actually given up anything. Sharon's words about dismantling settlements, are the exact equivalent of Arafat's promises to stop terror attacks. Words, vague words, words to mollify the Americans, words disconnected from any action. Meanwhile, the colonization policy goes on, unchanged. If he actually sent soldiers to arrest settlers, and bulldozers to level their settlement (and that's what it would take), that would be believable.
The settlers are Rejectionists, Maximalists, true fanatics, willing to do any violence, to maintain total Jewish control of every last bit of dirt (and water and air and money and trees and roads and....) from the Jordan to the Med. They have developed the same glorification of martyrdom, that Hamas has. They willingly, joyously, die for their Sacred Cause and their Sacred Land.
Sharon, he's a bit to the Dovish side of that position. A bit more moderate. Akin to saying that Bush is a bit to the left of Attila the Hun.
Sharon's plan, is to give the Palestinians 4 tiny cantons, each totally surrounded by Jewish settlements, cut off from each other and from other Arab nations. Nothing that adds up to a viable economic unit. Israel will control all the borders. The point of this, is to maintain total domination, without having to give the Palestinians the rights of Israeli citizens. Power, without responsibility, is what Sharon wants. And that may mean dismantling a few, a very few, of the smaller Israeli settlements.
The next obvious step, is to deprive all the Palestinians on the wrong side of the Wall, of Israeli citizenship, and/or put pressure on them, to move to the cantons. This can be done in a thousand subtle ways: multiple checkpoints, with 6 hour waits (when they aren't randomly closed). Endless denials of permits for buildings, wells, schools, anything else they want. Police and soldiers who look the other way, or blame the victims, when violence is done to Palestinians, when their orchards are unrooted. Knocking down houses, on the slightest pretext. Continuosly confiscating Palestinian land. It won't happen overnite, but it will happen, it is happening, inexorably. This process is already far advanced. |
