West Bank bantustan

Since the only Palestinian 'state' the current peace process can deliver is another Gaza-style enclave, this upsurge of violence is hardly encouraging


(Click on the map to enlarge)

A Very Good Comment
By Ben White
The Guardian

".....The IDF operations and rocket attacks are indeed linked to the so-called peace process, but not in the way that most have suggested. One cannot divorce events in Gaza and Sderot from the Annapolis agenda since, in fact, far from being a threatening interruption to Olmert-Abbas talks, the violence is sadly a natural extension of Roadmap logic.....

....From then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to veteran statesmen like Shimon Peres and US negotiator Dennis Ross, it was explained that disengagement was about demographics, the term preferred in polite conversation for the reality that Palestinians are considered a strategic threat on account of their race....

Weisglass boasted how disengagement legitimised "our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians", and moreover:

"... in regard to the large settlement blocs, thanks to the disengagement plan, we have in our hands a first-ever American statement that they will be part of Israel ... Sharon can tell the leaders of the settlers that he is evacuating 10,000 settlers and in the future he will be compelled to evacuate another 10,000, but he is strengthening the other 200,000, strengthening their hold in the soil.".....

It is a recipe for the creation of more, post-disengagement "Gazas". Proposals such as those made by former IDF deputy chief of staff and advisor to Barak and Sharon, Uzi Dayan, call for a West Bank "disengagement" to protect Israel's "Jewish-democratic character". It's the same "more land, fewer Arabs" mantra and, as Dayan's map shows, it means unilateral Israeli annexation of huge chunks of the West Bank and the creation of Palestinian bantustans......

....these artifical statelets will be subjected to the same kind of treatment urged by commentators such as Gilad Sharon, writing today in leading Israeli paper Yediot Aharanot:

"Even if ultimately we are forced to embark on a broad Gaza operation, we must not approach it as if it's a surgical operation requiring microscopic levels of accuracy ... We must tell Gaza residents: 'One way or another, quiet will prevail here. You can choose whether this will be done through sitting in the darkness or through turning your backyards into ruins.'"

....The Annapolis peace process, guided by the Quartet, leads us towards a Palestinian "state" that, notwithstanding Bush's adjectival outpourings, will resemble Gaza-esque enclaves declared "unoccupied" and subjected to brutal repression......"