Editorial : Gaza Disengagement, Ongoing Displacement

Gaza Disengagement, Ongoing Displacement

will Ariel Sharon’s plan for disengagement from the Gaza Strip bring Palestinians and Israelis one step closer to a political settlement of the conflict? The international community (read ‘Quartet’) seems to think so. After all, not since Sinai has Israel been willing to dismantle colonies it established on illegally occupied land. The international community today speaks about a moment of promise and opportunity for Palestinians and Israelis. They point towards the election of Mahmoud Abbas as President of the Palestinian Authority, the Sharm ash-Sheikh summit (8 February 2005) between Ariel Sharon and Abbas at which Israel agreed to “cease all military activity against Palestinians” who agreed to “stop all acts of violence against Israelis”, and Palestinian municipal and Legislative Council elections later in the year.

 Nearly five years after the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada the international community has given the signal that now is the time to re-engage towards a political settlement of the conflict. The US has appointed a special security envoy (General Ward) who is stationed in the region, both Sharon and Abbas have been invited to the White House, the Quartet appointed a special envoy (James Wolfensohn), the UK organized a meeting in London on Palestinian reform, and Russia called for an international Middle East peace conference in Moscow.

 What are the indicators for success?
So what are the indicators that the Gaza disengagement plan will advance a political settlement on the conflict? Conventional wisdom says that the Gaza plan will lead to an end of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the creation of a Palestinian state and a resolution of the conflict. Sharon’s plan should thus be judged according to the degree to which it will end the occupation, contribute towards the establishment of the state of Palestine and resolve the conflict.

For the immediate future, however, Israel plans to retain effective control of the Gaza Strip by exercising control over the land borders, coastal waters and airspace. International law experts agree that the Gaza Strip will therefore continue to be occupied territory. Israeli government legal advisers concur. Progress towards the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, including the development of a vibrant Palestinian economy, at least as far as the Gaza Strip is concerned, thus seems doubtful.

The situation in the West Bank is no more promising. Israel has cleared the way for construction of the southern route of the separation (apartheid) Wall, it refuses to consider more than a paltry release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, the transfer of Palestinian towns to PA security forces has been beset by delay after delay, it continues to colonize the West Bank (especially in the Jerusalem area), and, armed operations against Palestinians in the occupied territories have not ended.

Managing one problem, creating another
But the problems with disengagement do not stop at the Gaza border. Israel’s right and left Zionist political parties alike have not been shy to state that one of the primary purposes of the disengagement plan is to maintain Israel's Jewish demographic majority. In exchange for redeployment from Gaza, it seems that Israel will be permitted to retain its large colonies in the West Bank. US President George Bush has already given his blessing to this expected trade-off.

Moreover, Ariel Sharon plans to leverage US support for his Gaza plan to underwrite a massive development plan to build a Jewish majority in the Naqab (Negev) and in the Galilee. The plan includes construction of more than two-dozen new Jewish communities (partly for the Gaza settlers), transfer of the Naqab Bedouin to so-called concentration points, expropriation of most of their remaining lands and ending all further land claims. Shimon Peres calls it the most important Zionist project of the coming years.

The process of colonization on both sides of the 'Green Line' – i.e. 1949 armistice line – thus continues unabated. Redeployment of Israeli military forces outside of the Gaza Strip and the transfer of Israeli settlers to the Naqab and the Galilee also enables Israel to manage its 'demographic problem' on both sides of the Green Line, by 'getting rid' of a large Palestinian population in Gaza and increasing the number of Jews in areas inside Israel where there is a Palestinian majority.

The Special Rapporteur has carefully refrained from using the terms colonies and colonists, preferred by more radical critics, to describe settlements and settlers. However, one wonders whether the time has not come for the international community to change its use of language, for settlements do constitute a form of colonization in a world that has outlawed colonialism. The policies of the Western imperial powers were once determined or influenced both at home and abroad by colonial interests. So too with Israel. The protection and advancement of the interests of its colonists/settlers determines its policies towards Palestine. Without settlements, a two-State solution is possible; with them, it becomes impossible.

Settlements constitute an illegality in the removal of which the international community has a legal and moral interest. The dismantling of settlements in the West Bank cannot be left to 'permanent status talks' between Israelis and Palestinians in the indefinite future. Like the settlements in Gaza, they must be dismantled.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2005/29/Add.1, 3 March 2005.

Constructive disengagement
Ongoing colonization also raises questions about the nature of the conflict. Is it possible to end the occupation without addressing Israel's very nature as a colonial state? Since 1967 international peacemaking efforts have been based on the assumption that the root cause of the conflict is Israel's illegal military occupation. But Israel did not 'invent' the legal measures and practices used in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1967. They are based on laws applied inside Israel since it was created.

Ongoing Jewish colonization also raises serious questions about whether the international community's policy of constructive engagement alone will be sufficient to gain Israel's compliance with its obligations under international law, the advisory opinion of the ICJ, and the Road Map. Constructive engagement has not brought an end to nearly four decades of military occupation. It has not brought an end to displacement and dispossession of Palestinians inside Israel.

This is no time for appeasement says the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories. "Israel's defiance of international law poses a threat not only to the international legal order but to the international order itself." Israel is preparing to 'disengage'. This is precisely the policy that the international community should adopt towards Israel: disengage and isolate, until Israel complies with international law as every other normal state.
 

New COHRE-BADIL Report!
 

 Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine

Written and prepared by by Souad R. Dajani

The report reveals in stark detail how Zionist leaders, and later successive Israeli Governments, manipulated key Ottoman and British laws and the Israeli legal system to dispossess Palestinians of their land and property. The report clearly documents how Israel has built a domestic legal framework which seeks to legitimise what are clearly discriminatory land and housing policies.

"Although the United States routinely supports the rights of refugees throughout the world to recover their former lands, homes and properties, it refuses to recognize that Palestinian refugees should also enjoy their legitimate property rights. The hypocrisy of the US stance which explicitly denies the property rights of Palestinian refugees is blatant and unjustifiable if terms such as human rights and the rule of law are to have universal application."

"As with the end of all enduring conflicts, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians will only be possible when ordinary Israelis acknowledge past wrongs, embrace the process of reconciliation and overcome their fear of their historic neighbors. We look forward to the day when both sides move beyond the current impasse of 'us vs. them' towards a mutual and equitable future where the rights of both peoples are respected in full."

COHRE Executive Director, Scott Leckie