What happens to Migron, and dozens of other budding settlements like it, could well determine the future of the Mideast peace process. This week U.S. President George W. Bush, Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will gather for a historic summit in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, Jordan. They’ll inaugurate the so-called Roadmap–the eight-page document drafted by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations that could lead to the creation of a provisional Palestinian state by the end of this year and a permanent state in 2005. After two-and-a-half years of bloodshed and deep distrust in the Middle East, the Roadmap aims to ease the Israelis and Palestinians toward reconciliation through a series of confidence-boosting measures. Israel is to begin the process by lifting the state of siege in the West Bank and dismantling settlement outposts such as Migron. At the same time, the Palestinians must bring a halt to violence in both the occupied territories and in Israel, and disarm militant groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement.
Last week, in a sign that the protracted conflict may have reached a turning point, longtime hawk Sharon stunned his country’s right wing by referring to Israel’s control of the West Bank and Gaza as an “occupation.” It was the first time that he’d used the word publicly. But even as Sharon and his cabinet, under unprecedented U.S. pressure, embraced the Roadmap, there were disturbing signs that the conciliatory rhetoric did not match reality on the ground. Israeli settlements on the West Bank continue to grow–in size and in number–and a massive security fence is slicing Palestinian territory into a series of noncontiguous Bantustans. “Sharon is changing his lexicon but not his ideology,” charges Yossi Beilin, minister of Justice under former Labor prime minister Ehud Barak and a negotiator at Oslo in the early 1990s. The Palestinians, too, seem caught between words and deeds–between the moderate Abu Mazen’s good intentions and the harsh reality of internecine warfare within the leadership and among Palestinian factions.
Western diplomats say the first big test of Sharon’s commitment is likely to come immediately after the Aqaba summit. In the first phase of the Roadmap, Israel must begin dismantling all of the 60 illegal outposts built across the West Bank since March 2001. Most consist of clusters of trailer homes on isolated hilltops–some built on land appropriated illegally from Palestinians, some constructed inside the boundaries of existing settlements but without building permits. “Those people are challenging the authority of the state of Israel,” says one Western diplomat in Jerusalem.
Under U.S. pressure, the Israeli Defense Forces dismantled a dozen outposts last year. But settlers brought in new caravan homes after the Army left, and Sharon has turned a blind eye to them. Last week he said he would discuss the issue with Washington “outside the framework” of the Roadmap, a clear violation of the peace plan’s principles. The Roadmap also requires that Sharon declare an immediate settlement freeze, but the prime minister has been moving in the opposite direction. In recent weeks Effi Eitam, Israel’s minister of Housing, has quietly initiated construction of 11,000 additional units in four major settlements in the West Bank, including Maale Adumim on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Last week Sharon assured the Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza, “There is no restriction here, and you can build for your children and grandchildren, and I hope for your great-grandchildren as well.”
The illegal outposts aren’t the only projects that raise questions about Sharon’s intentions. The Israeli Defense Forces are building a 150-mile security barrier along the Green Line that divides Israel and the West Bank. The barricade has gobbled up large chunks of West Bank farmland, trapped 11,000 Palestinians in the no man’s land between the wall and the Green –Line, and almost completely encircled the large West Bank town of Qalqilya. The wall, which is about half finished, will soon cut off the nearby town of Tulkarm as well. Western diplomats say that the barrier is incompatible with the Roadmap. “You don’t make peace while you’re encircling two of the most important Palestinian cities and don’t let the people inside live freely,” says a Western diplomat in Jerusalem. An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman insists that the project will move ahead “in spite of pressure from the Bush administration.”
Abu Mazen’s own efforts, meanwhile, are struggling to gain traction. After talks with Hamas leaders in Gaza, the Palestinian prime minister asserted that he could quickly persuade the radical Islamic group to declare a limited ceasefire, or hudna. But, he added, that would be just the first step. “I don’t want to talk of a hudna but about absolute calm,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Truces, however, have fallen apart repeatedly in the past two years, and two other militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, remain uncommitted to the peace process. The Israeli government insists that it won’t move ahead with the Roadmap unless the Palestinian Authority disarms the radicals and arrests key members of the military wing of Hamas. “The [Palestinian leadership] understands that a ceasefire isn’t enough. It means uprooting Hamas,” says a top Israeli official.
That may prove impossible. Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin recently said that Hamas won’t give up its guns until Palestinian statehood is achieved. What’s more, the Palestinian Authority security forces have been so weakened by the violence and destruction of the past two years that experts say they’re incapable of cracking down on the militants. U.S. officials say they’re helping the Palestinians draw up a credible security plan for taking over sections of Gaza, and also supporting efforts to provide the new security services with police equipment. Much help is needed. “These guys have no headquarters, no jails, no cars,” says a Western diplomat. “Even the security chiefs move around in taxis.”
Meanwhile, Arafat continues to sabotage Abu Mazen, diplomatic sources say, by backing cronies inside Fatah and the security apparatus who see their interests threatened by a peace deal with Israel. And Israel remains reluctant to bolster Palestinian security by allowing the PA forces to retrain, build up their arms and move freely about the occupied territories. “Without total U.S. commitment to making this project work,” the diplomat says, “Abu Mazen’s efforts will be doomed.”
At least Abu Mazen’s sincerity is generally accepted. Sharon, on the other hand, may be prepared to follow the Roadmap through its first two stages–dismantling outposts, freezing settlement growth, easing closure and withdrawing from Palestinian territory in phase one, then declaring a provisional Palestinian state with still-undefined boundaries in phase two. But according to high-ranking Israeli sources, the prime minister will continue –to pursue his vision of a scaled-down Palestinian state by, in effect, redesigning the entire West Bank. Israel’s Ministry of Defense recently approved a scheme to extend the security barrier 20 kilometers east of the Green Line to encompass a block of West Bank settlements, including Ariel, inhabited by 60,000 people. The Israeli government has also drawn up plans to construct a fence that would seal off Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank.
Israeli politicians and human-rights groups say that if the partitions are finished, they will effectively divide Palestinian territory into three islands cut off from one another by Jewish settlement blocks. The total amount of land reserved for Palestinians would be about 42 percent of the West Bank–roughly equivalent to what Sharon has offered for a Palestinian state in the past. Hemmed in by fences, this truncated state would pose no security threat–and be completely dependent on Israel for water, jobs, commerce and its very survival. “Sharon showed me a map [of his scheme] 25 years ago,” says Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, who spearheaded the drive to enclose his settlement in the Israeli military’s security fence. “His idea was to cut the region into three parts. That idea hasn’t changed.”
Could Sharon force the Palestinians to accept such a deal? The prime minister may believe that, after nearly three years of violence and occupation, the Palestinians will be too weak to offer much resistance. Or Sharon could drag out the negotiations until he retires from office–leaving his successor to come to a final agreement. “He counts on himself to be strong enough and clever enough to stall in a way which won’t be seen as anti-peace [by the Americans],” says Beilin.
Palestinian leaders insist that their people will drive a hard bargain. “People feel they have sacrificed so much–thousands of martyrs, all this destruction,” says Ziad Abu Ziad, a former Palestinian Authority cabinet minister. “If anything, [the intifada] has made their expectations higher than they were at Camp David three years ago.” The difficulties presented by the first two stages of the Roadmap could pale in comparison with those of the third and final stages, which will establish a permanent Palestinian state with mutually agreed-upon boundaries. With so much mistrust and hostility on both sides, the question is whether the peace process can first build, and then maintain, momentum. The alternative is yet another round of bloodshed.
