The Results Are in, and Peace Lost
By Gadi Taub
Amram Mitzna, the leader of the Labor Party, offered Israelis the most realistic solution to the Palestinian conflict. With Labor’s defeat in yesterday’s elections, prospects for peace are now even more remote and once again rest with the two men – Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat – whose unspoken alliance has frustrated the hopes of Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The cornerstone of Mr. Mitzna’s plan was that if negotiations fail to yield agreement within one year, Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the territories and impose independence on a reluctant Palestinian leadership. This plan is not just different from that of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It is an utter reversal of the basic assumptions of Israel’s prevailing political discourse. According to Mr. Mitzna, leaving the territories is not a concession to the Palestinians; it is in Israel’s most vital and urgent self-interest. If they do not withdraw, Jews will soon be a minority in their own country.
Mr. Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, surely knows this. He does not explicitly support Mr. Sharon. But the uncompromising positions of Mr. Sharon’s party, Likud, better suit his purposes than Labor’s.
Mr. Arafat condemns terrorism just enough – and in English – to keep himself from becoming a political leper in the West. And he fails to condemn terrorism just enough – and in Arabic – to let Palestinians know he will not move to stop it. Had he moved decisively to limit suicide bombings to the territories, Israelis might have concluded he favors partition. Instead, terrorism in Tel Aviv shows the Israeli public that he seeks to replace Israel with Palestine.
Suicide bombings also enable Mr. Sharon to get away with his own doublespeak: talk peace but build up the settlements. Mr. Sharon, like Mr. Arafat, talks of negotiations just enough to maintain the support of America and some of Israel’s moderate center. And he raises the specter of terrorism more than enough to foment Israeli anger and conceal the actual thrust of his policy, which is strengthening Israel’s hold on the territories.
Thus Mr. Sharon’s inexcusable delays in the construction of Israel’s most effective defense against terrorists – a fence. Building a fence around the West Bank would help stop terrorists from entering Israel. The fence already in place around the Gaza Strip is an almost foolproof barrier against suicide bombers. From the West Bank, in contrast, Palestinians can take what some call “Bus No. 11” to inner Israel: their own two legs.
A fence, however, will eventually become a border, and any settlements on the other side of that border would have to be abandoned. This Mr. Sharon will not do.
Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat reinforce each other’s positions in an even more important way. Terrorism merely conceals the crucial questions of demographics and partition. On these issues, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat share something far more essential. Both want to blur the Green Line, the pre-1967 border, thereby undermining the prospect of territorial partition.
If there were any doubts about this, Camp David should have dispelled them. The two-state solution presented at Camp David in 2000 would have given Palestinians control of almost all of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip, in addition to other benefits. Yet Mr. Arafat rejected it. His assumption seems to be what the Israeli left has long believed: Israel cannot survive a prolonged occupation. Only partition can save the Jewish state.
The problem is demographics. A Jewish democratic state can survive only with a Jewish majority. Without the territories, Jews are about 80 percent of Israel’s population. With the territories, Jews are just barely a majority. With Palestinian birthrates in the territories among the highest in the world, an Arab majority in a Jewish state that includes the territories is all but inevitable.
So if Israel does not give up the territories, it will face a choice: relinquish either democracy or the ideal of a Jewish state. Granting Palestinians in the territories the right to vote would turn Israel into an Arab state with a Jewish minority. Not allowing them to vote would result in a form of permanent apartheid. Either way, Zionism will perish.
Each leader thinks he can eventually grab the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Mr. Sharon is right to think that his settlement and road-building policies will prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. Mr. Arafat is right to assume that, in the long run, these same policies will bring Israel’s downfall. Yet both are also wrong: without partition, neither people will have its own state.
The alternative to partition is civil war. The rejection of Mr. Mitzna’s plan, coupled with Mr. Sharon’s clear victory, could be one more step toward turning Israel into another Lebanon.
The source: Gadi Taub, author of “A Dispirited Rebellion: Essays on Contemporary Israel Culture,” teaches communications at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.