This will require political changes, doubtless including the creation of a Delineating the cantons sovereign Palestinian state. In this sense the Beilins are not mistaken. But there will be a long battle inside the Israeli ruling class, between currents that are still tied objectively and ideologically to the Zionist past and those that represent the long-term interests of Israeli and international capital. The battle between the old imperialist order and the New Middle East has just begun. Among other things, it will redraw the Israeli political map.
But unfortunately all this has very little to do with the interests and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, or with peace and reconciliation. Justice for the Palestinians and Peace for Palestine's Two Peoples will be goals of another battle, this time among the Palestinians themselves. On the one hand is a leadership that seems to have sold out once and for all: on the other, a new generation of political cadres in the occupied territories and the refugee camps. This new generation will have to develop its own strategy for the 21st century, a strategy of struggle adapted to the context of the New World Order. Until then the Palestinians will remain largely the victims of a process whose contents and rules are decided by others. * identify with the hopes that Oslo gave rise to Successive Israeli governments have encouraged Zionist settlement in the among those same ordinary Israelis. That occupied territories. Tikva Honig-Parnass explains meant promoting peace as a choice for which it was worth taking risks and making substantial concessions. It meant reaffirming the PLO as the partner that itself had chosen peace and the Palestinians as neighbours with whom Israeli could neighbourly relations. In fact, as we have just shown, from early 1994 on Israeli government policy did exactly the opposite. It was a policy in the image of Generals Biran and Mofaz, who treated their Palestinian counterparts with the rudeness typical of those who have occupied a people for a quarter of a century. Yitzhak Rabin's statements, the arrogant behaviour of high officers, the systematic lack of educational work in the army (and among the public in general) made peace meaningless, until the moment when the last wave of attacks finally did away with peace in everyone's minds after having done away with it in reality.
From that moment on there was no reason any more to vote Labour: all the more so because what shone through the Labour speeches was the contradiction between an abstract reference to the peace process and a reality that had left hope behind long before. Peace is dead-Oslo lives on
Binyamin Netanyahu did not cause the death of the peace process: he is the expression of that death. The new Israeli government will carry on with the KabinPeres policies, albeit with still more arrogance, still more lies, and still more attacks against Palestinian rights, both their inalienable human rights and the rights 6 International Viewpoint
THe previous Labour government guaranteed settlers that it would "thicken" settlements in such a way as to ensure Israeli control over contiguous blocs in the West Bank. A secret agreement with Yasser Arafat projects the cantonisation of the West Bank, and annexation to Israel of the territory where 70% of the settlers live. Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and a Palestinian "capital", Al Quds, will be located in Abu Dis, just outside the boundaries of municipal Jerusalem. The limited re-deployment of the Israeli army is part of the implementation of this plan.
Meron Benevisti writes in Ha'aretz that "even if the territories annexed to Israel are not [geographically] extensive, what is significant... is the value of these territories in terms of control of water resources, in terms of contiguity between settlement blocs and in terms of control of security blocs and Greater Jerusalem. (2 August 1995).
The current government has its own plan. It follows the same basic principles as that of Labour, but is worded more explicitly. Like Labour, Likud will continue building settlements, and entrenching Israel's direct and indirect control over the entire West Bank. This will be accomplished by "delineating the borders of the Jewish and Palestinian population blocs and dividing the empty territory between the two sides." Netanyahu is also willing to connect the various Palestinian autonomy enclaves and create direct connections between Palestinian population centres. Water resources and other "transborder" matters will remain under Israeli control. Israel will also keep full possession of "zones important for security".
The only difference between the plans concerns the definition of the Palestinian entity. Labour agreed with the Palestinians that it should be called an independent Palestinian state." Netanyahu insists that it must be seen to be "less than a state, and not entitled to sovereignty". As Meron Benvenisti notes, "the difference is [merely] symbolic... What kind of state, except for a Bantustan, would be considered a sovereign entity on the basis of its rule over discontinuous sovereign blocks, lacking control over basic natural resources, and surrounded by areas belonging to another state which is capable of strangling it whenever it suits its interest?"
Netanyahu has ended the previous government's "freeze" on settlement construction. This hardly reflects a basic policy change. Labour "only" strove "to thicken settlements in accordance with their natural growth". The settler population grew by 40%. The new Likud administration now admits that the purpose of "thickening" is to delineate the borders between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the final settlement". Labour and Likud "thickening" plans have received stamps of approval from US President Clinton, Egyptian President Mubarak, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. * Source: News from Within, 8/1996, pp. 3-4