Good analysis from Barry Rubin on Sharon's Herzoliya speech. In fact, I think he may have understood what no other commentator has understood:
The Region: Israel has a policy
By BARRY RUBIN
It's astonishing to read interpretations of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's speech at the Interdisciplinary Center's Herzliya conference.
On one hand, it is being analyzed as a unilateral withdrawal bordering on surrender to terrorism; on the other hand, others are saying that the plan is a meaningless gesture or trick.
In other words, in typical Middle East fashion, everyone is focusing on what they don't like – and expected to find – rather than what Sharon actually said. While no one knows what the implementation of this new doctrine will look like in detail, or even whether it will happen, the idea is quite different from either of these concepts.
To understand what it is going, on let's look at two apparently obvious but extraordinarily important issues: the timing and the territory involved.
Nothing could seem more obvious than to say that the Oslo peace process era is over. The rejection of two good offers by the Palestinian leadership in 2000, plus the launching by them of a terrorist war against Israel that year, marked the collapse of that effort.
Yet the world is still acting as if things have not changed very much. There are many who still expect peace around the corner while even the minimum goal – a real cease-fire – seems beyond reach.
The road map plan is, in a sense, the last vestige of the Oslo period. It asserts, as did many failed conceptions during the previous decade, that a series of mutually agreed-upon confidence-building steps will produce a comprehensive peace agreement within two years.
Even in Israel, many people assert – quite understandably, given the readiness to make peace on reasonable terms that prevails here, as well as disgust with the current deadlock – that there really are people to talk with on the Palestinian side. They are right: there are people you can talk with; they just don't have any power and aren't going to do anything.
Sharon's new approach is to assert formally that we are in a new era. Let's call it, simply, the Interim Era. There will be peace some day, and a Palestinian state, when there is a leadership ready to negotiate seriously and sincerely.
But that day has not yet come. Consequently, Israel must set a strategy for this situation. The door is still open to compromise, but the measures taken respond to the immediate situation. There is no sense making dramatic concessions when these would just lead to more terrorism and extreme demands.
As a result, Israel has the right to hold on temporarily to whatever territory it wants or needs given the absence of a real partner.
What does this mean in practice?
LET'S TURN to the second point, the delineation of territory in this context. Again, the following points are completely obvious, but many people seem to have forgotten them.
In 1967, Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thereafter, it ruled them for the next quarter-century. At that time, Israel was in daily control of all the territory. In the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel agreed to hand over land to a Palestinian regime in return for the implementation of specific tasks – stopping terrorism and incitement being two important considerations – and an understanding that a comprehensive peace agreement would result.
During that time, Israel turned over most of the Gaza Strip and about 40 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. Almost all Palestinians lived under that government.
The lines of control existing in September 2000, when the new Palestinian war on Israel began, have now taken on an aura of sacredness in international terms.
The Israeli Left has proposed that Israel pull back to a line close to the 1967 borders. By giving the Palestinians almost all the territory they claim to desire, this is supposed to defuse the extremism and the violence on the other side. It is rightly argued that the opposite would more likely be the case, as the South Lebanon precedent showed.
This is not what Sharon is proposing. His approach is to ask which specific pieces of territory it is in Israel's interest to hold, with a view both to short-term security during the Interim Era and in some cases to obtain as a result of a peace agreement if and when that happens.
In some cases, this could mean pulling out of areas which Israel controlled at the end of the Oslo process in September 2000. Illegal outposts would be removed, which the government already agreed to do in the road map. Some small settlements which were judged to be of little value and big security problems would be dismantled.
By the same token, however, there might be other small, uninhabited areas under Palestinian control as of September 2000 where Israel might remain.
And on top of this, Israel continues to insist on its right to enter any place in the West Bank or Gaza Strip if security needs require.
In short, combined with the completion of the security fence, this is a rational reevaluation of policy. It is not intended to prefigure a comprehensive peace treaty, but rather to govern Israeli behavior in the Interim Era.
Only the Israeli government will determine, in conjunction with its international commitments where it needs to be to protect its citizens and interests.
This is hardly some wholesale retreat to the 1967 borders or attempt to block a peaceful compromise in the future.
Needless to say, the PA is hardly celebrating Sharon's new policy as some great victory that proves the utility of terrorist violence.
Sharon was simply saying: Let's deal with reality rather than pretend Israel is always going to rule all of the West Bank and Gaza or that it should expect a quick diplomatic solution. How can we protect ourselves in light of the murder of almost 1,000 Israeli citizens by terrorism without damaging the chances for a negotiated agreement in future?
Perhaps such a step will even give the Palestinians an incentive to call a cease-fire or negotiate seriously, as they see the cost of their intransigence and resort to violence.
Obviously, everything depends on how this would be implemented. Each specific decision about any particular place will be controversial. But for the first time since Arafat turned down Ehud Barak's peace efforts, Israel has the basis for a strategy.
jpost.com |
