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No peace without Jerusalem: Abbas Times of Oman
LONDON — Lasting peace will not come to the Middle East until Israel leaves the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip, and many Israelis know it, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday. In an interview with the BBC World Service, Abbas called the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza “a basic step” on the part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that needed to be treated “seriously”.
“I believe the withdrawal will lead to security and stability in the region,” he said.
“However, we want this step to be followed by further withdrawals, because the rest of our homeland, the West Bank, is still under occupation.”
“The step that Sharon is taking (in Gaza) must be followed by further steps that will lead to a lasting peace in the region.”
Abbas added: “I am optimistic. I see many people in Israel convinced of the need to dismantle settlements.”
“A few months ago this would have been impossible. Today they are convinced that this is the road to peace and security. If they want peace, they must allow the Palestinians to achieve their rights.” He said he regarded Sharon as “a partner in a political process because he is the leader of Israel, and the judge between us is international legitimacy”.
“I’m even willing to let the Israeli public be the judge. Are they expecting to give us no rights and get peace? I don’t think so.” Abbas said there was an ongoing “dialogue” with the Israeli authorities on free movement of Palestinians into and out of Gaza, including unhindered access to the West Bank. “There are signs of an agreement — not an agreement, but signs that the crossing (at Rafah, on the border with Egypt) will be controlled by Palestinians, Egyptians and a third party,” he said. “This will naturally enable Gaza not to be a prison.” He added: “There are also temporary agreements regarding Gaza and the West Bank to be followed by discussions about paving a road. I have no guarantees, but we are in discussions.” He defended his recent declaration that, after Gaza, the Palestinians will set their sights on regaining east Jerusalem, lost in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. “It is our right to demand that east Jerusalem be our capital, which is land occupied in 1967 — everyone knows that... It is not a risk to say we will celebrate in east Jerusalem.” “The Israeli leadership and the Israeli people must understand that without satisfying the Palestinians according to international legitimacy, in other words the 1967 borders, there will be no peace.” — AFP IsraCast
Israel's historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements is now moving into high gear. Amid the turmoil, the question for most Israelis now is whether the country will be better off or worse off after the withdrawal. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes he has firm U.S. backing that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas must first dismantle Hamas and the other terror organizations before Israel enters Roadmap negotiations. However, Hamas leaders have declared they will not give up their weapons and threaten a new wave of attacks from the West Bank. Sharon's critics charge the writing is on the wall; the current withdrawal will deal a severe blow to Israel's security.
Israel is dismantling settlements; it is not dismantling the IDF'. That is the laconic reaction of a senior Israeli official to the two mortar bombs fired by Palestinians at a Gaza settlements and the Hamas declaration to launch a new wave of attacks in the future. The insinuation is clear… if there is a new flare-up of Palestinian attacks, during or after the Israeli pullout, the IDF will react severely. But will the country's security be enhanced or harmed by leaving the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank? Opinion is divided.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eyval Giladi, a
strategic planner for Prime Minister Sharon is certain Israel will be
better off, On the other hand, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Ami-Dror has no
doubt it will turn out to be 'a disaster'. The two former IDF officers
debated the issue on Channel 10 TV. Giladi says there are five good
reasons for withdrawing from Gaza: 1. Tactically - Israel's security fence around the Gaza Strip has prevented terrorists from penetrating Israel to carry out attacks. Therefore, they have had to focus on settlements and IDF targets inside the Gaza Strip. Giladi says: 'After we leave, they will have no one there to shot at and attack there'.
3. Legitimization - if Palestinian
terrorism continues after Israel evacuates, Israel will have even
greater legitimization to act in self-defense. 4. Palestinian stake - the
Palestinians are interested in showing the world they can halt the
violence and after the evacuation it is only reasonable they will make a
greater effort to curb it. Giladi recounted that Palestinian official
Muhammed Dahlan had told him: 'It's tough for Palestinian security
forces to act against the militants in the shadow of Israeli tanks'. D.E. - the Palestinians have been promised more than $2 billion annually in foreign aid after Israel's evacuation; this will be jeopardized if the Palestinians do not keep fulfill their commitment to halt the violence. Moreover, a senior IDF officer has said the withdrawal will reduce significantly the size of Israeli forces required to defend Israel in the Gaza sector. He noted that after the IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon, northern Israel has enjoyed a period of quiet and prosperity and that Hezbollah has been deterred from attacking Galilee.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Ami-Dror rejects what he sees as the 'pie in the sky' approach that argues that Israel will be better off after the withdrawal. These are his arguments:
1. Tactically - it is not true that
most of the Palestinian attacks in the Gaza Strip are directed at
Israeli targets inside the Strip. Qassam rockets and mortars have been
launched from inside Gaza at Israeli towns like Sderot and other
communities inside Israel. The terrorists will now be able to move
closer, right up to the security fence and fire rockets at the city of
Ashqelon up the Israeli coast. (Indeed, Israeli communities just across
the border have been reinforced in case of more intense rocketing after
the withdrawal.) 2. Freedom of action - Israel will
have less freedom of action against terrorists after the withdrawal.
Ami-Dror argues that Israel had to wait until 800 Israeli civilians were
murdered and thousands more injured by Palestinian suicide bombers,
before it risked international condemnation by launching the Defensive
Shield operation on the West Bank in 2002. 3. Legitimization - again, if Israel
faces more attacks by Hamas and Islamic jihad, the U.S. and the rest of
the international community will press Israel to 'grin and bear it' and
make more concessions to Mahmoud Abbas to bolster him against the
terrorists and to advance on the Roadmap. 4. Returning to Oslo - Israel will be coerced into returning to the Oslo model of giving more and more to the Palestinian Authority. But this approach proved to be a disaster then and it will again because the PA will never combat terrorism. On the contrary, the Palestinians will view it as a capitulation to terrorism. Ami-Dror said a recent poll showed that 74% of Palestinians believe their attacks drove Israel out of Gaza. In his view, terrorism could not be defeated by fleeing from it; it had to be confronted and rooted out and only then would it be possible to enter peace negotiations such as the Roadmap. He went on to say that the Palestinians view the IDF's pullout from south Lebanon as a capitulation to Hezbollah terrorism which they took as an example in Gaza and will continue in the West Bank after the disengagement.
Giladi: Sharon's strategic advisor
rejected the idea that Israel would now be drawn into repeating the
mistakes of the Oslo process. He agreed Oslo was premised on the notion
that peace would bring Israel security because the Palestinians would
have no reason to attack Israel. However, the Roadmap is based on the
Palestinians first implementing security reforms and only then moving
into peace negotiations. Giladi said: 'If Oslo was postulated on peace
bringing security, the Roadmap is based on security bringing peace and
the U.S. and the whole world accepts this'. Ami-Dror: 'This is simply not true,
not only the Europeans but also the Europeans are prodding Israel about
what next after Gaza.' He explained that the international community
views further Israeli withdrawals as more important than Mahmoud Abbas
dismantling Hamas and the other terror organizations. Giladi: Israel enjoys military and economic superiority compared to the Palestinians and the world is mobilized against the threat of terrorism. We must utilize the current situation by taking our destiny in our hands and again seeking an agreement with the Palestinians, even if it is imperfect. The other alternative is to keep killing and being killed'.
David Essing, ISRACAST, Jerusalem
Jihad: no peace without justice Kristen Ess
Islamic Jihad spokesperson Mohammad Al Hindi told a press conference in Gaza yesterday that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza does not mean an end to the resistance.
Israeli PM Sharon says that the withdrawal from Gaza is fine as it is a tradeoff for major settlement blocs in the West Bank that will have territorial contiguity with Israel. He also suggested that Jerusalem will be under his control, despite all international law to the contrary.
Al Hindi said that the Zionists must end the occupation, not withdraw from certain areas only while keeping control over them. "The armed resistance will continue until it forces the occupation out of all our territories."
He said that the Israeli withdrawal is a result of all factions of resistance and that Palestinian steadfastness will not be deterred until achieving justice.
by Issa Samandar
"All Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law, which holds that the transfer of a civilian population into or out of occupied territory is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967), 446 (1979), 452 (1979) and 465 (1980) all call upon the Israeli government to cease and desist from any settlement activity."
Israeli strategists are not mistaken in identifying the settlement project as an intrinsic component in defining the territory of the Jewish state. Historical precedents, from the 1947 UN Partition Plan through to the "Clinton Parameters" of December 2000, have reinforced their belief that by manifesting a presence--no matter how small or how unjustly--on Palestinian land, eventual sovereignty is achieved, recognized and rendered irreversible.
The "tool" of settlement building, rather than that of diplomacy, is in fact Israel's first choice in creating, preserving and expanding a sovereign presence. As such, its seemingly extraordinary cost--in terms of political "awkwardness" as well as financial investment--is readily justified.
In the two years following the signing of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, the Rabin government presided over West Bank land confiscations averaging 220 dunums a day and totaling 170 square km. Although the current rate is less steep, the expansion has continued. The territory that today falls under settlement control is nearly half the total West Bank area.
By June 2002, the terms denoting areas A, B, and C, as outlined in the Oslo Accords, no longer referred to anything other than a historical geopolitical map. New territorial divisions in the West Bank have taken shape and follow distinctive patterns. Checkpoints now confine the non-Jewish population to immediate built-up areas; beyond those, settler and Israeli military exclusivity reigns. In many cases this effectively confines villages of 6-7,000 inhabitants to land areas of less than 10 percent of their ownership and places the remaining 90 percent within the military remit of the settlers and the Israeli army. In doing so, the exclusion policy need not rely on the legally tiresome and slow methods of expropriation, and so leaves little by way of a paper trail and affords total deniability in the unlikely event of some international objection being raised.
Settlements in the larger blocs (where over 77 percent of settlers reside) are now effectively being annexed to Israel with bypass roads, checkpoints and military installations forcibly preventing Palestinians from accessing these areas. Meanwhile, outposts (79 percent of all settlements with only 10 percent of all settlers) are being openly adopted as a primary tool of political and military strategy, in what is an effort to further dismember all remaining Palestinian land.
There are today at least 214 individual illegal settlements in the West Bank and a further 21 in the Gaza Strip. Of a total of 398,000 settlers (the exact figure is higher due to uncounted outpost dwellers), 197,000-200,000 reside in occupied East Jerusalem, nearly 9,000 in the Gaza Strip and the remaining 192,000 in the West Bank beyond Jerusalem. Seventy-nine percent of all settlement sites are either unpopulated (e.g. industrial zones) or home to under 1,000 settlers.
All Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law, which holds that the transfer of a civilian population into or out of occupied territory is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967), 446 (1979), 452 (1979) and 465 (1980) all call upon the Israeli government to cease and desist from any settlement activity.
Since 1967, the international community has consistently voiced its disapproval and even condemnation of the Israeli settlement activity. However, with such statements amounting to little more than lip-service to international law and human rights, illegal settlement building has continued apace. Members of the international community and especially representatives of its primary political powers, bear a responsibility for the upholding of ratified international law, for the upholding of human rights, and for the application of all due pressure on fellow members who are willfully in breach of these standards. The damage wrought by Israel's ongoing settlement activity stands as testimony to the failure of concerned parties to thus far properly meet those responsibilities.
The pretext of providing "security" to the tiny percentage of Israeli citizens living in small and remote outposts (0.8 percent of the population), is being exploited apace in a race to fragment, by use of settlements and bypass roads, the geographical remnants of Palestine, reducing it to a series of smaller and smaller cantons, each with its economy, transport and communications externally controlled by Israel.
Adding Israel's separation wall to all these both secret or clearly stated and public plans for settlement expansion and land appropriation, Palestinians have only one route to go: to fight for their land rights. Palestinian land rights on Palestinian land amount to an existential struggle. The non-violent activities organized by grassroots committees working against the wall have proven that there is an alternative way of doing this. But Israeli policies have not changed, and even non-violent demonstrations are not tolerated.
And all number crunching aside, let me also provide an example of what the settler presence physically means to Palestinians. This is not the most egregious example. It is not an example of the many fatalities Palestinians have suffered, either from being shot from settlements, beaten to death by settlers, or the many wounded and maimed trying to reap their harvests. It is not an example of the losses to the Palestinian economy, such as it is, or of the health or psychological impact of being confined and imprisoned in towns or villages with no freedom of movement. It is simply the latest incident, conveyed to me as I write this article.
On July 31, settlers from the Sa Nur settlement (incidentally one of four West Bank settlements slated to be dismantled as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" plan) prevented villagers from an area village from burying one of their dead. The dead man had to be returned to a hospital morgue. No reason or cause was stated.
Israeli human right organizations have issued numerous reports on the debilitating effects of the existence of settlements and the violence of settlers' behavior toward Palestinians. One doesn't have to dig deep for information on this subject. But the fact that Israel has not only gone unpunished, but has been actively encouraged and directly financed in its illegal policy of settlement and dispossession, casts real doubts on the willingness of leaders of the international community and its various diplomatic, legal and economic bodies to live up to their duties.
If the policy of settlement expansions and settlement building is not reversed, it will eventually lead to another phase of violence. This is no outrageous prophecy; the writing is on the wall. We know the settlers too well. They will do their utmost, using whatever means needed, to cement their presence and harm Palestinians.
But again, make no mistake: Palestinians are closer to another intifada against these fanatical thieves than ever. Palestinians have the right to be free on their own land without the existence of any manifestation or symbol of the Israeli occupation. The settlers have to leave our country and, accompanied by their army, go back to Israel. With settlers there will be no peace.
Abbas warns against no more Israeli withdrawals Middle East Online Palestinian leader says if Sharon only wants pullout from Gaza Strip, he does not want peace.
DUBAI - Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas warned in remarks Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would show he does not want peace if there were no more withdrawals after next month's Gaza Strip pullout.
"We know that he wants a (Palestinian) state with temporary borders, and maybe just a pullout from Gaza, but this would mean that he does not want peace," Abbas told the Dubai-based Al-Khaleej newspaper.
Israel has planned to uproot all soldiers and the 8,000 settlers living in the occupied Gaza Strip in mid-August and subsequently dismantle four isolated enclaves in the northern West Bank.
"We categorically refuse the idea that there will be something called 'the state of Gaza' and another called 'the West Bank state'," Abbas said.
"We fear that the Gaza Strip will be turned into a big jail, if it is not open enough to the outside world and the rest of the nation," he said.
Abbas said "there is something that we call a safe passage, and this is what we are talking about with the Israelis, and it should be implemented... so that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are a single geographical entity.
"This is what the (Israeli-Palestinian) Oslo agreement stipulated, and we insist on it, and if it does not happen now we will continue to exert efforts so that it happens in the near future," he said.
"Real peace is the end of the occupation of all the Palestinian territories, and the settlement of all final-stage issues, including the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees," he said.
"If Sharon wants peace, then this is the road to peace, and if he does not want it, then it is his business, and that means he will bear the responsibility of the troubles in the entire region and around the world."
Sharon, who hopes the Gaza pullout will ease calls for a more comprehensive departure from the West Bank, has said there are no further withdrawals in the pipeline. One of his top advisors has also said that the disengagement plan is designed to put the wider peace process into the deep freeze.
Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem’ Daniel Pipes
Are Israel's critics correct? Does the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza cause the Palestinians' antisemitism, their suicide factories, and their terrorism? And is it true these horrors will end only when Israeli civilians and troops leave the territories?
The answer is coming soon. Starting on Aug. 15, the Israeli government will evict some 8,000 Israelis from Gaza and turn their land over to the Palestinian Authority. In addition to being a unique event in modern history (no other democracy has forcibly uprooted thousands of its own citizens of one religion from their lawful homes), it also offers a rare, live, social-science experiment.
We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel's critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if "occupation" is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.
But I forecast a very different outcome. Given that some 80 percent of Palestinians continue to reject Israel's very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinians will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.
Palestinians themselves are openly saying as much. Ahmed al-Bahar, a top Hamas figure in Gaza, says that "Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today following more than four years of the intifada. Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews." Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, says likewise that the withdrawal is "due to the Palestinian resistance operations. … and we will continue our resistance."
Others are more specific. At a mass rally in Gaza City last Thursday, some 10,000 Palestinians danced, sang, and chanted, "Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem." Jamal Abu Samhadaneh, commander of Gaza's Popular Resistance Committees, announced on Sunday, "We will move our cells to the West Bank" and warned that "The withdrawal will not be complete without the West Bank and Jerusalem." The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Qurei also asserts, "Our march will stop only in Jerusalem."
Palestinian intentions worry even Israeli leftists. Danny Rubinstein, Arab affairs specialist for Ha'aretz, notes that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to leave Gaza only after anti-Israel carnage there had escalated. "Even if these attacks were not the reason why Sharon came up with the idea of disengagement, the Palestinians are certain that that is the case, and this has reinforced their belief that Israel only understands the language of terror attacks and violence."
Israel National News has collected other leftist comments.
Yossi Beilin, former justice minister and chairman of the Yahad/Meretz Party: "There is a concrete danger that following the disengagement, the violence will greatly increase in the West Bank in order to achieve the same thing as was achieved in Gaza."
Shlomo Ben-Ami, former foreign minister, Labor Party: "A unilateral retreat perpetuates Israel's image as a country that runs away under pressure... In Fatah and Hamas, they will assume that they must prepare for their third intifada - this time in [the West Bank]."
Ami Ayalon, former General Security Service chief: "Retreat without getting anything in return is liable to be interpreted by some of the Palestinians as surrender.... There is a high chance that shortly after the disengagement, the violence will be renewed."
Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, former Air Force commander: "There is no chance that the disengagement will guarantee long-term stability. The plan as it stands can only lead to a renewal of terrorism."
Events, I predict, will prove Israel's critics totally wrong but they will learn no lessons. Untroubled by facts, they will demand further Israeli withdrawals. Israel's one-car crash is dismally preparing the way for more disasters.
Gaza, The Day After 2: The Warfare Continues Yossi Klein Halevi - Special To The Jewish Week
I expect most of the worst-case scenarios of the settlers to be fulfilled.
The terrorists will present the withdrawal as a victory for terror, part of an arc of withdrawal under pressure that began in Lebanon, extended to Gaza and may well continue on into its next phase, the West Bank.
Gaza will become an armed camp dominated in effect by Hamas, if formally by an ineffectual PLO. As a result, we will be exposed to terror enclaves on our northern border and our southern border — and, perhaps, on our eastern border as well, in those parts of the West Bank we evacuate (though Israel will try to maintain a security presence there). The result is the end of Israel’s post-1967 strategy of attempting to prevent the creation of terrorist entities on our borders.
Missiles may well hit Israeli cities, forcing us to massively retaliate against the Palestinian state in Gaza. The mood of the Israeli public after withdrawal will be grim, and we are likely to show little restraint.
The war, then, will continue. The advantage is that this time, we won’t be fighting in Gaza to protect settlements lacking international legitimacy, but Israeli cities. Will that matter for Europe or the United Nations? Perhaps not. But it will matter for Washington and, in the end, that’s what matters.
If we’re heading toward some form of continued warfare with the Palestinians, why give them something for nothing, as Sharon’s opponents sensibly ask? The answer, for those of us in the Israeli center who support Sharon, is that the point of unilateral withdrawal is that we are disengaging from a dead-end negotiating process. For the first time we are establishing our own borders, without waiting for Palestinian approval. That, too, is the meaning of the West Bank fence.
The most important consequence of withdrawal will be intangible: We will be freed of the burden of 1.4 million Palestinians, and the threat of an international campaign to transform Israel into a binational state will be deferred.
My main concern is the state of Israeli society after withdrawal and the possibility of reopening the left-right schism, which until recent months had become dormant. Will the Israeli left be revitalized and demand additional Israeli withdrawals? Will the settlers and their supporters become even more desperate and initiate provocations in the West Bank?
During the course of the terror war, the Israeli army has proven its ability to deal with strategic threats from within. I’m far more concerned about our ability to handle bitter dissension from within.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and Israel correspondent for The New Republic.
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