Sharon Plan May Foil Palestine State, Historians Say

At the same time, by agreeing to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip and some outposts in the West Bank, Sharon has broken an Israeli taboo on dismantling settlements, the historians say.

``Sharon had vowed he'd never dismantle settlements, and now you have his right-wing, nationalist government doing just that,'' said Segev, 59, who wrote ``1949: The First Israelis,'' a 1986 bestseller. ``Once you have dismantled one, you can dismantle others. There's no reason a different government couldn't negotiate further withdrawals,'' he said in a telephone interview from Tel Aviv.

U.S. President George W. Bush on April 14 backed Sharon's plan, which calls for Israel to evacuate all 7,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip, while holding on to its larger West Bank settlements. A Palestinian state would be formed later, taking in the Gaza Strip and the remaining areas of the West Bank.

Bush's endorsement came at a time of deepening crisis in the region.

Rantisi Killed

Israel on April 17 killed Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, four weeks after assassinating his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Hamas sponsored more than 50 suicide bombings since November 2000, according to the Web site of the Israeli Defense Force.

One of Hamas's founders, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was secretly elected to succeed al-Rantisi, the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported April 26, citing unidentified people familiar with the workings of the organization.

In endorsing Sharon's plan, Bush reversed a four-decade-old U.S. position of refusing to recognize permanent Israeli control over settlements built on land taken from the Arabs after the 1967 war, which pitted Israel against the forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

``He threw 37 years of U.S. policy out the window,'' said Rashid Khalidi, 55, director of Columbia University's Middle East Institute, who wrote ``Palestinian Identity'' in 1998.

Bush Reversal

Bush also broke with U.S. policy by agreeing with Sharon that Palestinians who lived outside Israel as refugees since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war wouldn't be allowed to return to Israeli- controlled areas. Previously, the U.S. wanted ``final status'' issues such as borders and refugees to be negotiated with Palestinians. Bush cited ``new realities on the ground,'' such as Israeli population centers in the occupied lands, for the change.

Sharon, 76, said his plan will help end the violence. ``It will improve Israel's security and economy and reduce friction and tension between Israelis and Palestinians,'' he said after meeting with Bush in Washington on April 14.

Historians such as Israel's Avi Shlaim questioned that, saying Sharon's plan keeps most of the West Bank under Israeli occupation.

``Israel can have land or peace; it cannot have both,'' said Shlaim, 58, an international affairs professor at Oxford University's St. Antony's College who wrote ``The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World'' in 2000.

The Israeli pullback from Gaza would allow residents to run most of their own affairs. Gaza, a desert area bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, southern Israel and northern Egypt, has about 1.3 million Palestinian residents.

West Bank

The West Bank, which separates Israel and Jordan, has about 220,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians. An additional 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas that Israel annexed in 1967.

``Sharon has always been deliberately vague about how much land he intends to leave to the Palestinians,'' said Henry Siegman, director of the U.S. Middle East Project at the Council on Foreign Relations, a policy-research group in New York. ``But it would probably be about 50 percent of the West Bank, which means the possibility of a viable Palestinian state is almost nil.'' Siegman wrote ``U.S. Middle East Policy & the Peace Process'' in 1997.

Sharon refuses to negotiate with Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Authority. He says Arafat hasn't done enough to combat the terrorism that has killed 667 Israeli civilians and 277 security personnel since the September 2000 start of the latest Palestinian uprising, according to Israeli Defense Force figures.

The Israeli army has killed about 2,838 Palestinians during the same period, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society says.

Roots of Uprising

The uprising, or intifada, began in 2000 after Israeli and Palestinian negotiators failed to agree on the status of Jerusalem and the refugees' right of return, according to published accounts by participants including European Union special envoy Miguel Moratinos.

The violence in the ensuing years may have prompted Bush to support Sharon's plan, said Ian Lesser, a U.S. State Department policy planner specializing in the Middle East under President Bill Clinton and a contributor to ``Countering the New Terrorism'' in 1999.

``It reflects a degree of frustration,'' said Lesser, 46, now director of studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles.

Bush's war against terrorism also played a role, he said. ``The administration, and the president especially, views this through the lens of counter-terrorism policy,'' he said. ``It's not about the specifics of the settlements or the Mideast peace process.''

Imposed Solution

Siegman said Israel chose to ignore potential partners such as the Palestinian Authority's current prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, because Sharon would rather impose a solution than negotiate.

``Israel has worked extremely hard to weaken the authority, its institutions and political standing among the Palestinians,'' said Hassan Abdel Rahman, the chief representative of the Palestinian Authority in Washington.

Oxford's Shlaim said Sharon chose this moment to announce his plan because holding on to the settlements in the Gaza Strip had increased military costs, and because he knew that Bush wouldn't confront Israel in a U.S. presidential election year.

``Sharon knew he had Bush over a barrel,'' Shlaim said. ``The situation in Iraq has deteriorated so badly that Bush desperately needs something he can try to present as a foreign-policy success.''

Deadly April

More than 110 U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month since the war began on March 19, 2003.

Jordan's King Abdullah II on April 20 postponed a meeting with Bush to protest his endorsement of the Sharon plan.

French President Jacques Chirac and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said at a joint press conference on April 19 in Paris that negotiations must take place to reach a solution that everyone can accept.

European Union foreign affairs ministers meeting on April 16 in Tullamore, Ireland, said they wouldn't accept changes to Israel's 1967 borders without the consent of Palestinian leaders.

``Peace treaties are made with enemies, not friends,'' Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said at the meeting. Israel needed to reach an agreement with Palestinians, not the U.S., said Cowen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

Edward Walker Jr., U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1997 to 1999, defended Sharon's plan as ``the only one that has any imagination.''

A Precedent

``If it leads to a withdrawal in Gaza and some West Bank settlements, it sets a precedent,'' said Walker, 63, president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. ``It's a precedent. It doesn't close the door on any of the final settlement issues.''

The 7,000 Israelis living in the Gaza Strip take up 30 percent of the land, with the 1.3 million Palestinians living on the rest, according to Americans for Peace Now, a Washington-based group that monitors the settlements.

While Israeli settlements in the West Bank occupy about 3 percent of the land, the roads and security zones around them keep about half the territory off limits to Palestinians, said Lewis Roth, assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now.

The Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem says the Israeli army maintains 56 staffed checkpoints and 607 roadblocks in the West Bank to prevent Palestinian cars and trucks from traveling between towns.

Potential Split

Columbia University's Khalidi said Israel's retention of six settlement blocs in the West Bank that Sharon mentioned -- Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Givat Ze'ev, Ariel, Kiryat Arba and Hebron -- would split any Palestinian state into as many as five enclaves.

Should the Israelis withdraw from only Gaza and minor settlements on the West Bank, the Palestinians would be worse off, said Aaron Miller, an adviser on the Middle East to six U.S. secretaries of state until he resigned in January 2003.

``It can't be Gaza first and Gaza only,'' said Miller, president of Seeds of Peace, a New York-based organization that brings children from conflict zones together. ``It must be Gaza first, and then we talk about the West Bank. Otherwise, it will turn what was an opportunity into a setback.''

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