The long road ahead
CONAL URQUHART
Toronto Star, Jun. 1, 2003.
Jerusalem—The meeting was "very positive," the Israelis said. "Serious, candid and beneficial," said the Palestinians.
One Israeli official even said that people were smiling in the street as a result of it.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, met on Thursday night and Israel agreed to release some prisoners and ease some restrictions on Palestinians. Abbas promised to prepare to take responsibility for security in certain areas.
Sharon and Abbas head to Jordan for a Wednesday meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush on a wave of euphoria.
The prime ministers appear to have reversed their national roles — Abbas promising to crack down on terrorists, or "the deviant element in the Palestinian street" as he called it, and Sharon decrying the Israeli occupation of Palestinian cities.
The rhetoric is hopeful, but the buoyant atmosphere of Ramallah and Jerusalem is far from the tectonic plates of the conflict, where friction is continuous, although there may be calm on the surface.
The first phase of the "road map" — the peace plan sponsored by the United States, as well as the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — demands the end of Palestinians violence and the dismantling of settlements or outposts built since 2000.
These are the real tests for the road map, rather than the warm diplomatic relationship that is developing between Abbas and Sharon.
One of the most offensive issues for Palestinian is the 200,000-strong settler community, until now actively encouraged by Sharon.
Migron is one of the newest settlements. It is a trailer park on a West Bank hilltop, surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guarded by Alsatian dogs on long chains at 20-metre intervals.
The accommodation is cramped, but the views are spectacular, taking in Ramallah, Jerusalem and the Jordanian frontier.
It is home to some 40 families, but if the first phase of the supposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to be completed, the families will have to be evicted and their homes dismantled.
Migron has been in existence for little more than a year, but it has an air of permanence. The trailers are surrounded by flowerbeds and arranged around communal lawns. The road to the outpost is new and superior to many in the region.
Yet the road map is unequivocal about its status: "Government of Israel immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March, 2001."
Israeli officials have promised to dismantle up to 12 outposts. Migron, one of the larger outposts, is not on the initial list, but its status in the coming year will be a clear yardstick by which to judge Israel's commitment to the peace process.
As a rule, settlers are cool toward the foreign media, if not outright aggressive. In Migron, most settlers politely decline to talk, but Yishai Ivri, 25, is happy to discuss his travels in the U.K. and Australia and his nonchalance about the road map.
"I have lived in settlements all my life and every couple of years there is a new plan," he says as he pulls guard duty in a hut next to a clothed dummy.
"It always has a different name, but it is essentially the same plan and look, we are still here and there are more of us than ever before. We have no intention of going away."
On the hills around Migron are newly built settlements, with compact blocks of red-roofed houses and more houses in construction. Below the hilltop settlements are sprawling villages of flat-roofed houses, where the Palestinians live.
"We are building all the time, but so are they. It will take some time before we come into our inheritance," says Ivri, cradling an old, wooden-butted Uzi machine-gun as he watches over the settlement gate.
All the inhabitants of Migron are members of young families. The women are either pregnant or caring for newborn babies.
Ivri, who became a father for the first time last month, says life in the settlement is cheap and enjoyable.
Even if he were living in a more-established settlement, he says, a young family like his would have to live in a trailer.
"It is temporary," he says. "We will build houses here, but it takes time. In the meantime, we live in caravans."
Migron's young inhabitants are modern Orthodox Jews.
The women wear long skirts and cover their hair in much the fashion of the Ultra-orthodox.
The men mix traditional and Western clothes — Ivri wears a colourful knitted kippah on his head, gray cargo pants, sandals and a tzit tzit religious garment underneath his T-shirt.
The 613 strings of the tzit tzit, which correspond to the 613 commandments in the Old Testament, spill out over his trousers.
Israel has evacuated settlements in the past. As part of the 1978 Camp David accords, the Israeli government under right-winger Menachem Begin pulled out of its settlements in the Sinai, despite resistance by settlers.
But any attempted evacuations of West Bank settlements would be extremely traumatic for Israelis, many of whom believe that God gave the land to them and that the claims of the Palestinian majority are therefore irrelevant.
"We believe that we have a right to this place according to the Bible, and they might say the same thing," says Ivri, gesturing at the Arab village of Burka across the valley.
"We disagree, but I think we have history on our side.
"We do not agree with the road map process, but we are not afraid and we are certainly not afraid of our neighbours."
Ivri says he's concerned about the theoretical possibility of dismantling the outposts, "but I just don't think it will happen here. We are always concerned about bigger forces such as the United States coming into play, but we have heard it all so many times before."
If Migron is the bastion of Israeli resistance to the road map, then Balata refugee camp is its Palestinian counterpart.
The camp is a densely packed mass of flimsy concrete buildings built around narrow alleyways. It is home to 30,000 people and has a tradition of radicalism. The only decorations are hundreds of posters of the camp's "martyrs" and bullet holes.
It was here that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the most-prolific militant group in the current intifada, was formed.
Last week, in response to the diplomatic euphoria, the Brigades issued a press release claiming it would "continue attacks in any time and in any place while the occupiers are taking our land, our prisoners are still in prison and our refugees are living outside their homes."
The statement continued: "We reject the road map to hell and any ceasefire until the rights of the Palestinian people are restored without condition."
In Balata, which is adjacent to the city of Nablus, the leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have a limited shelf life: They are either killed or arrested by the Israelis.
In a recent interview, the most recent leader said the sacrifices of Palestinians in places like Balata must not be ignored by the politicians in Ramallah.
"All we care about is the continuation of the resistance," he said. "If the Palestinian Authority wants us to stop, let them arrange the release of Nasser Awais (leader of the Brigades currently in an Israeli jail). If they want, they can talk to him. Mahmoud Abbas did not form the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
"We are monitoring the Israelis. The house demolitions continue, the killing continues. They do not seem about to stop to help any peace process. Why should we?"
Within days of the interview, the leader who did not want to give his name was arrested by the Israelis and returned to prison, the place where he had spent most of his adult life.
Taysir Nasrallah, a senior Fatah activist in Nablus, says it sometimes feels as if he's inhabiting a different planet from the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.
"People here continue to suffer every day. They will not easily give up their sacrifices without a reward. The settlements need to be dismantled and Israeli forces must withdraw to their 1967 borders.
"Under the road map, it seems that the Israelis want the Palestinian Authority to be a guard for Israeli security, but the people want the PA to get a Palestinian state.
"If the siege and occupation are lifted and the killings stop, the people will support anyone and any plan. But if the PA just becomes an accessory of the Israeli security apparatus, there will be only anger."
Nasrallah says it's possible that the Palestinian Authority could persuade the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to stop their operations.
"Hani al Hassan (the former interior minister) tried to buy the Brigades, but not everyone can be bought. If Mohammad Dahlan (the new security chief) opens a dialogue and convinces them that a ceasefire is in the strategic interests of the Palestinian people, they might agree."
Balata and Migron have yet to feel the euphoria of recent political developments. And whatever happens in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba when Bush, Sharon and Abbas meet Wednesday, ultimate success of the road map to peace will depend on Migron and Balata.
It is impossible that both communities will be happy.
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