For all the attention and hysteria the latest events in Gaza have generated since the Hamas “takeover,” for Israel they represent nothing but a minor blip in its inexorable drive towards its own unilateral “solution:” apartheid. Israel’s end-game, explicit and unruffled by the recent turmoil on the ground, is clear. It is laid out in detail in the Convergence Plan” Olmert presented to a joint session of the American Congress in May, 2006, based on Sharon’s plan of “cantonization.” With minor adjustments, it constitutes the plan Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is quietly advancing with the help of Condoleezza Rice, and it is accepted in its entirety by Ehud Barak, the newly-elected leader of the Labor Party, who played a key role in its formulation. The Israeli plan for apartheid is as follows:

(1) Creating a truncated Palestinian “state” comprised of four disconnected cantons, three in the West Bank and Gaza. By annexing its major settlement blocs defined by the Wall, Israel thereby expands onto 85% of the country, leaving the Palestinians confined to impoverished enclaves on the remaining 15% of the land. In such a “two-state solution” Israel would control the borders, external and internal Palestinian movement, the “Greater” Jerusalem area, all the water resources, the air space, the communications sphere and even the Palestinian state’s foreign policy. Such a Bantustan would have no genuine sovereignty or viable economy – but would have to accept all the traumatized and impoverished Palestinian refugees.

(2) If this fails, primarily because Israel cannot find the quisling Palestinian leader who would sign off on a Bantustan, Plan B – the Livni-Rice plan – calls for the unilateral declaration by the US of a “provisional” Palestinian state with no fixed borders, no meaningful sovereignty and no viable economy, squeezed between the Wall, Israel’s eastern “demographic” border incorporating the settlement blocs, and the Jordan Valley, Israel’s eastern “security” border. The Palestinians would thus be left in the limbo of a “provisional” state indefinitely – or until they agree to a Bantustan – all in conformity to the parameters of the “Road Map.”

Period. Regardless of the “peace initiative” of the moment – the Road Map, the Saudi initiative, the summit at Sharm el-sheikh, the appointment of a Middle East envoy – all these plans will have to conform to one of these alternatives or be doomed to irrelevance.

by Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolition

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