READER'S COMMENT
"Reading your
response to the capture of Saddam shows
once again
that the most honest, the most comprehensive and most
mobilizing
news and analysis on the Middle East always comes from
MER.
It is indispensable. Keep up the great work."
Robert Silverman
Salamanca, Spain - 12/14/2003
SHARON - MORE BIG TRICKS COMING THIS WEEK
" 'Unilateral steps': There will be no
peace
agreement with the Palestinians.
They will be imprisoned behind the walls and the fences,
a continuation of the
occupation by other means.The
peace plan of Sharon and Olmert proclaims
the
continuation of the war
against the Palestinian people. It is a provocation to
the United
States and world public
opinion."
Balloons
By Uri Avnery
Tel
Aviv - 12-13-03:
He is at it again, and again it is working. He
is launching colorful
balloons, and the
whole world is looking on with rapture and wonderment.
Ariel Sharon needs to divert attention. His
popularity has dropped in
recent opinion polls.
The Geneva initiative has captured the national
and
international agenda.
The police investigations into his corruption
affairs
have reappeared in the
headlines. Army and Security Services officers
have criticized him
publicly. He has been accused of immobility, foot-
dragging, the lack of
a plan.
So he is launching balloons: "Unilateral
steps". Sensation! "In the
future we shall not be
in all the places we are now". Shock! "We shall
be
moving settlements".
Uproar!
He has sent Ehud Olmert to exercise his jaw on
every talk-show,
warning against the
terrible danger of a "bi-national state". His plan,
Olmert declares, will
ensure the existence of a "Jewish state", 80% of
whose population will
be Jewish. Since already more than 78% of
Israel's
citizens are Jewish,
this must mean that densely populated Palestinian
territories would not
be annexed. Sharon's office has leaked reports
that
Olmert is echoing
Sharon's own view, and that Sharon himself will make
a
sensational statement
to this effect next week in Herzlia.
General turmoil! The Geneva Initiative is
almost forgotten. All the
pundits are busy with
wild speculation: What is Sharon up to? What does
he mean? What is he
going to do? Is Bush compelling him to change his
spots?
Olmert's conversion from screeching hawk to
cooing dove has been all
the more convincing
because at the same time, quite by accident, he has
been forced to accede
to an European demand to mark the "place of
origin" on all Israeli
exports to Europe. This is meant to block
preferential
customs treatment for
the products of the settlements. The settlers
have
started a furious
campaign against him. They have plastered the walls
of
Jerusalem with posters
showing Olmert stamping settlement products with
a Nazi-style yellow
star of David, with the word "Jude" on it. (For
good
measure, they have put
my picture on the poster as well, just to show
who
is pulling the
strings.)
So now it is clear: Olmert is a dove, a
reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah,
announcing (according
to Jewish tradition) the coming of Sharon, the
Messiah.
The leaders of the Labor Party are already
taking the nylon covers off
their ministerial
suits. Any moment now, they believe, Sharon will call
on
them to take the
places of the extreme right-wing ministers in his
government. Shimon
Peres is about to fulfil his dream and become a
minister again.
Who would have believed it! Sharon is the
Israeli de Gaulle, after all!
Peace is on the way!
All this confirms the old American adage: A
sucker is born every
minute.
I have already warned a dozen times: Don't pay
attention to what
Sharon says, pay
attention to what Sharon does. His pronouncements can
be ignored, they serve
only to fulfil the tactical requirements of the
moment. But his
actions are very, very important.
And his actions are quite clear: The Wall is
being extended at a frenzied
pace. In the Sharon
tradition, it is creating "Facts on the Ground."
The
Palestinian territory
is being cut into ribbons. Before our eyes,
isolated
Palestinian enclaves
are appearing, each of them an open air prison.
And
while the army is
removing one uninhabited mobile home in one "illegal"
hilltop outpost, the
government is pushing the enlargement of the
settlements by all
available means.
This is a vigorous campaign, employing all
arms of the government.
Only a person
completely cut off from what's happening in the occupied
territories can claim
that things are "frozen". Only a person living in
the
virtual world of the
media could believe that Sharon has no plan.
He does have a plan, the same one that he has
been following for
decades. His and
Olmert's statements do not contradict it, quite the
contrary. Here are its
basic principles:
- "Unilateral steps": There will be no peace
agreement with the
Palestinians. They
will be imprisoned behind the walls and the fences,
a
continuation of the
occupation by other means.
- "A state with an 80% Jewish majority": All
sparsely populated
Palestinian
territories will be annexed. That will include half the
West Bank
(the former Area C),
all the major highways, the entire Jordan valley,
many
of the olive groves
and fields of the Palestinian villages (but not the
villages themselves.)
- "Painful concessions": Israel will give up
the Palestinian population
centers, towns and
blocs of Palestinian villages (the former Areas A
and
B) and most of the
Gaza Strip. All the enclaves together will
amount to
some 45% of the West
Bank. Together with the Gaza Strip, they will
constitute only some
10-12% of the original territory of Palestine
before
1948.
- "A Palestinian state": Sharon is ready -
indeed, keen - to have these
enclaves called "a
Palestinian state". This will free Israel from
taking any
responsibility for the
population. If they starve or decide to move
elsewhere - so much
the better.
- "Moving settlements": The dozens of small
settlements built in the
Palestinian population
centers will be transferred to the areas that
will be
annexed to Israel,
enlarging the Jewish component.
- "The terrorism will continue": This will not
end the war. Indeed,
Sharon and his people
have no interest in ending it. As far as they are
concerned, it can go
on forever. The Palestinians will always be
blamed.
The redeployment will
make life much easier for the army, since there
will
no longer be a need to
devote substantial forces to the defense of
isolated
settlements.
This is the opposite of the Geneva Initiative,
which is based on the
belief that an
agreement with the Palestinians can be achieved. It is
also
the opposite of the
Road Map, to which both sides still pay lip
service,
while treating it as a
whim of President Bush that has been forsaken by
Bush himself. Sharon
"accepted" it at the time - with 14 reservations
that
emptied it of all
meaning. In practice, he did not take even the first
step
along this road (any
more than the Palestinians did).
The peace plan of Sharon and Olmert proclaims
the continuation of the
war against the
Palestinian people. It is a provocation to the United
States
and world public
opinion.
How will it affect opinion in Israel? Perhaps
it will divert into another
channel the growing
longing for peace, which found some expression in
the Geneva Initiative.
Sharon and Olmert play upon two powerful
tendencies in the
Israeli subconscious: (a) racist attitudes towards
Arabs,
which undermine belief
in the possibility of peace with them, and (b)
the
desire for a Jewish
state, without Goyim (non-Jews) in general and
Arabs
in particular.
Some say that the Sharon initiative is nothing
but media spin. Just
another of Sharon's
utterances that have little to do with reality. But
anyone who sees the
walls and fences that are now going up, will
recognize the new
reality that is being created.
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[MER - Of course the
semi-oficial presentation of all this in the pages of the Jerusalem
Post -- with considerable propaganda preparations no doubt underway to
follow the speech and to impose the 'plan' -- is far more benign...and
far less on target]
Sharon plan aims to minimize
confrontation with Palestinians
By GIL HOFFMAN
[Jerusalem Post -
Dec. 12, 2003] The goal of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
new diplomatic plan will be
to give the Palestinian Authority a contiguous state that would
minimize the points of confrontation with Israel, Sharon's ally Knesset
Speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Thursday.
Sharon is expected to outline the plan in a major policy address at the
Herzliya Conference on Thursday.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and
Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert will also address the
conference.
Sharon's spokesman said that the prime minister is considering several
options, and has not yet fully decided in which direction to go in the
Herzliya speech.
Rivlin, who himself opposes the plan, said Sharon believes that to
achieve contiguity for the Palestinian state, several isolated
settlements will have to be dismantled or moved, including Ganim and
Kadim in northern Samaria. Rivlin said Sharon is also under pressure
from Shinui to dismantle isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip like
Netzarim and Morag.
According to Rivlin, another of Sharon's goals will be to avoid a
confrontation with either Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed
Qurei (Abu Ala) or US President George W. Bush. To that end, Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom left Rome for Washington on Thursday and
meetings are continuing with Palestinian officials to arrange an
eventual meeting with Qurei.
"Sharon can't afford to do anything that would embarrass Abu Ala,
because he cannot afford to be blamed for another Palestinian prime
minister being toppled," Rivlin said. "He also has to be very careful
not to do anything that Washington wouldn't want."
The prime minister met on Thursday with cabinet ministers Tzahi Hanegbi
and Dan Naveh, and Likud MKs Roni Bar-On, Majallie Whbee, as well as
Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, and has met in recent days with Mofaz,
opposition leader Shimon Peres, and several Likud officials. He is set
to meet separately next week with Labor MKs Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Matan
Vilna'i, and Shalom Simhon.
Ma'ariv reported on Thursday that a majority of Labor MKs would agree
to joining a national unity government if Sharon is ready to withdraw
from settlements and take other serious diplomatic steps. The MKs who
said they would be ready under those circumstances to join the
coalition surprisingly even included dovish MKs Colette Avital and Yuli
Tamir, who signed the Geneva Accord.
Avital said she would agree to join the coalition on the basis of an
agreement with a plan of action and a timetable that would include a
pullout from Gaza and a withdrawal from settlements in the West Bank.
Tamir said her conditions include a total settlement freeze and a
withdrawal from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a
confidence-building measure for negotiations on a final-status
agreement that would result in a Jewish majority for Israel and a
Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
"If that happens it would be a new reality," Tamir said. "But I think
Arik is only talking. I think the chance of him meeting all those
conditions is close to zero. I can't rule out sitting in a Sharon-led
coalition and say nothing he does would let us join. We need to give
him an incentive that if he goes far enough, he will get our support,
first from outside, and upon implementation, inside the government."
Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman met top Likud officials at
Likud Party headquarters in Tel Aviv on Thursday in an effort to unify
the Right against Sharon and Olmert's plans for unilateral separation
from the Palestinians. Lieberman and Tourism Minister Benny Elon have
met Likud ministers in recent days to strategize.
The Likud Bureau is set to meet on Sunday to express opposition to the
plans.
All of the Likud's MKs have been invited to the meeting, which will be
the first forum for the MKs to criticize Olmert in full force.
A draft resolution of Sunday's bureau meeting that has already been
signed by half the Likud faction calls for a rejection of any
unilateral withdrawal, a delay in negotiations until the Palestinians
end terror and incitement, and a new commitment to the Central
Committee's controversial decision last year ruling out the creation of
a Palestinian state.
A poll broadcast on Israel Radio on Thursday found that 54 percent of
people who said they voted Likud oppose Olmert's plan, while 81% of
Labor voters support it. Forty-five percent of those polled said they
support the plan.
Fifty-two percent said they want a national unity government and 31%
said they believe the current government should be maintained. The poll
was of 560 people and it had a 4.5% margin of error.
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