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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (4810)	4/23/2004 5:01:23 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Sharon's plan dooms Mideast to more conflict By H.D.S. Greenway \| April 23, 2004 MORE THAN 25 years ago Moshe Dayan, then Israel's foreign minister, was showing me his beloved collection of Egyptian artifacts, some of which he had helped dig from the desert in Gaza. With a wink of his one good eye, Dayan said that he hoped that the remains of an ancient synagogue would never be found in the Gaza Strip. What he meant was that he hoped Gaza would never become so embedded in the Zionist dreams of his boss, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and his right-wing Likud Party that it could never be given up. After the 1967 Six Day War, Dayan had hoped that the entire West Bank and Gaza, which Israel had just captured, could be given back in exchange for a peace with the Arab states. But the expected "telephone call" from Arab capitals never came. Instead, the Arabs hurled their defiance, stating there would be no negotiations, no peace, and no recognition of Israel. And so the long occupation began. At first, the left-leaning Labor Party sought to keep Israelis from living in the occupied territories, believing that Jewish settlements would inflame the Arabs and make territorial compromise all the more difficult. But how, it was argued, could Jews be kept from Hebron, where they had lived from time immemorial until they were murdered and expelled by Arab mobs during the British Mandate? So the Labor government let just a few Jews set up shop above Hebron. But the seeds had been sown, and when the Likud Party took power, Jewish settlements became official policy and Ariel Sharon their biggest backer. More and more of Arab land was taken. For the roots of the Likud Party are to be found in the philosophy of Zeev Jabotinsky, who died before the Israeli state was born. His "revisionist" Zionism was much less compromising than the mainstream Zionist movement and advocated force "without paying attention to the mood of the natives." The Arabs would be contained behind "an iron wall" of Zionist resolve "which they will be powerless to break down," he wrote in 1923. He considered a "voluntary agreement between us and the Arabs of Palestine" as "inconceivable now or in the foreseeable future." When the state of Israel was born in compromise, Begin, a Jabotinsky disciple, broke with David Ben Gurion because Begin could not agree to giving up any of the sacred soil of Israel. Indeed, the original goals of Begin's Irgun movement, which many mainstream Jews considered a terrorist organization, was a Greater Israel to include what is now Jordan. There will be settlers who will tell you differently, but Gaza has never loomed as large in Jewish tradition as the hill towns of the West Bank. Giving up Gaza has been talked about for decades. But by the time the Arab states got around to recognizing Israel within its pre-1967 borders, Israel had become accustomed to its post-1967 borders, and some of the settler movement became the home of religious fanatics. When Egypt's Anwar Sadat came to Israel to make peace a quarter of a century ago, he said it would be part of a package deal that would bring a solution to the Palestinian issue as well. But while Begin was willing to give back the Sinai and remove Jewish settlements, he never intended to give up the West Bank. Now another Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is willing to disengage in Gaza, which seethes with poverty, unemployment, and discontent, leaving it to its own devices while maintaining control of its borders, coastline, and airspace -- a vast prison. What is left of the West Bank in Sharon's plan will be cut up into separated territories that are being compared to apartheid South Africa's Bantustans. Gaza is to be traded for much of the West Bank. There is no surprise in Sharon's plans. He at least has remained consistent. The wonder is that George W. Bush should rip up his own "road map," undo 37 years of American policy, and go along with a plan that leaves the Palestinians no hope for a viable state of their own. It is not only morally wrong; it dooms Palestinians and Israelis to generations more of conflict and endangers America's entire position in the Middle East. Friends are betrayed and moderates marginalized. Democracy and a better life will not come to the region if the Palestinians are excluded from it. H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com