This article by a professor from Tel Aviv
University I personally found interesting. The clarity of thought is far superior than
that which serves as scholarship in the U.S. or south-africa for that matter.
I think you
will enjoy this.
****

At the present, the Western world seems still under the
spell of the legend of Ariel Sharon, who, so the story
goes, has brought a gigantic change in Israeli policy -
from expansion and occupation to moderation and
concessions - a vision to be further implemented by his
successor, Ehud Olmert. Since the evacuation of the Gaza
Strip settlements, the dominant Western narrative has been
that Israel has done its part towards ending the
occupation and declared its readiness to take further
steps, and that now it is the Palestinians' turn to show
that they are able to live in peace with their
well-intending neighbor.

How did it happen that Sharon, the most brutal, cynical,
racist and manipulative leader Israel has ever had, ended
his political career as a legendary peace hero? The
answer, I believe, is that Sharon has not changed. Rather,
the myth built around him reflects the present omnipotence
of the propaganda system, which, to paraphrase a notion of
Chomsky's, has reached perfection in manufacturing
consciousness.

The magic that transformed Sharon in the eyes of the world
has been the evacuation of the Gaza settlements. I will
return to this point and argue that even this, Sharon did
not do out of his own will, but because of unprecedented
pressure on him by the U.S. In any case, Sharon clarified
right from the start that the evacuation of the
settlements does not mean letting Gaza free. The
disengagement plan, published in the Israeli papers in
April 16, 2004, specified in advance that "Israel will
supervise and guard the external envelope on land, will
maintain exclusive control in the air space of Gaza, and
will continue to conduct military activities in the sea
space of the Gaza Strip". [1]

Let us look briefly at Sharon's other record.

During his four years in office, Sharon stalled any chance
of negotiations with the Palestinians: -In 2003 - the road
map period - the Palestinians accepted the plan and
declared a cease fire, but while the Western world was
celebrating the new era of peace, the Israeli army, under
Sharon, intensified its policy of assassinations,
maintained the daily harassment of the occupied
Palestinians, and eventually declared an all-out war on
Hamas, killing all its first rank of military and
political leaders.

Later, as the Western world was holding its breath again,
in a year and a half of waiting for the planned Gaza
pullout, Sharon did everything possible to fail the
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected in
January 2005. Sharon declared that Abbas is not a suitable
partner (because he does not fight terror) and turned down
all his offers of renewed negotiations. The daily reality
of the Palestinians in the occupied territories was never
as grim as in the period of Sharon. In the West Bank,
Sharon started a massive project of ethnic cleansing in
the areas bordering with Israel. His wall project robs the
land of the Palestinian villages in these areas, imprisons
whole towns, and leaves their residents with no means of
sustenance. If the project continues, many of the 400.000
Palestinians affected by it will have to leave and seek
their livelihood in the outskirts of cities in the center
of the West Bank, as happened already in northern West
Bank town of Qalqilia.

The Israeli settlements were evacuated from the Gaza
Strip, but the Strip remains a big prison, completely
sealed from the outside world, nearing starvation and
terrorized from land, sea and air by the Israeli army. The
question that preoccupied the Israeli political and
military elites since the seizure of the Palestinian
territories in 1967, was how to maintain maximum area of
land with minimum number of Palestinians. The Labor
party's Alon plan, which was realized in Oslo, was to keep
about 40% of the West Bank, but allow the Palestinians
autonomy in the other 60%. However, Barak and Sharon
destroyed the Oslo arrangements. The model that Israel has
developed under Sharon is a complex system of prisons. The
Palestinians are being pushed into locked and sealed
enclaves, fully controlled from the outside by the Israeli
army, who enters the enclaves at will. As far as I know
this imprisonment of a whole people is an unprecedented
model of occupation, and it is being executed with
frightening speed and efficiency.

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At the same time, what Sharon has brought to perfection
was the manufacturing of consciousness, showing that war
can be always marketed as the tireless pursuit of peace.
He proved that Israel can imprison the Palestinians,
bombard them from the air, steal their land in the West
Bank, stall any chance for peace, and still be hailed by
the Western world as the peaceful side in the
Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sharon has now retired from political life, but that alone
does not bid any change. Sharon's legacy is well alive. It
has brewed for over a decade in the Israeli military,
which, in effect, is the dominant factor in Israeli
politics.

The military is the most stable - and most dangerous -
political factor in Israel. As an Israeli analyst stated
it already in 2001, "in the last six years, since October
1995, there were five prime ministers and six defense
ministers, but only two chiefs-of-staff." [2] Israeli
military and political systems have always been closely
intertwined, with generals moving from the army straight
to the government, but the army's political status was
further solidified during Sharon's cadency. It is often
apparent that the real decisions are made by the military
rather than the political echelon. Military seniors brief
the press (they capture at least half of the news space in
the Israeli media), and brief and shape the views of
foreign diplomats; they go abroad on diplomatic missions,
outline political plans for the government, and express
their political views on any occasion.

In contrast to the military's stability, the Israeli
political system is in a gradual process of
disintegration. In a World Bank report of April 2005,
Israel is found to be one of the most corrupt and least
efficient in the Western world, second only to Italy in
the government corruption index, and lowest in the index
of political stability. [3] Sharon personally was
associated, together with his sons, with severe bribery
charges that have never reached the court. The new party
that Sharon has founded, Kadima, and which now heads the
government, is a hierarchical conglomeration of
individuals with no party institutions or local branches.
Its guidelines, published in November 22, 2005, enable its
leader to bypass all standard democratic processes and to
appoint the list of the party's candidates to the
parliament without voting or approval of any party body.
[4]

The Labor party has not been able to offer an alternative.
In the last two Israeli elections, Labor elected dovish
candidates for prime minister Amram Mitzna in 2003, and
Amir Peretz in 2006. Both were received initially with
enormous enthusiasm, but were immediately silenced by
their party and campaign advisors and by self imposed
censorship, aiming to situate themselves "at the center of
the political map". Soon, their program became
indistinguishable from that of Sharon. Peretz even
declared that on "foreign and security" matters he will do
exactly as Sharon, or later Olmert, and he only differs
from them on social issues. Thus, these candidates helped
convince the Israeli voters that Sharon's way is the right
way. In recent years, there has never been a substantial
left-wing opposition to the rule of Sharon and the
generals, since after the elections, Labor would always
join the government, providing the dovish image that the
generals need for the international show.

With the collapse of the political system, the army
remains the body that shapes and executes Israel's
policies, and as is already obvious in the few months
since Sharon left office, the army is determined to carry
out his legacy, together with Sharon's successor, Ehud
Olmert. For this, it is essential that whatever Israel
does be packaged as painful concessions. Right now, we are
at the dawn of a new "peace plan" promoted by Olmert.

Olmert may have coined the name of this plan, but the
copyright belongs to Sharon. On January 2nd 2006, shortly
before Sharon left office, the Israeli paper Ma'ariv
disclosed the plan he intended to present for the West
Bank. The plan rests on US eventual acknowledgment that
the Road Map was stalemated - and that in fact it has
always been a "non-starter", given that (according to
Israel's official line), there has never been a genuine
Palestinian partner for peace. This was still before the
Palestinian elections that brought Hamas to power, but
from Israel's perspective no Palestinian leadership was
ever an appropriate partner. Sharon argued that the PA
under Abbas failed to fulfill its obligations to combat
the terror network. In the absence of a suitable partner,
Israel should set its borders unilaterally - that is to
say, decide for itself how much Palestinian land it needs
to take, and disengage from the rest. According to this
plan, negotiations with the U.S. should lead to a "signed
agreement with Washington that determines the final
eastern border of Israel." The American-Israeli agreement
will include "fast completion of the fence [wall]... that
would become a real border fence." [5]

Continued below...
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On the eve of the Israeli elections Olmert publicly
unveiled the plan, which later became the official plan of
the new Israeli government, under the title consolidation,
or convergence. He emphasized that Israel's new border
would correspond to the route of the Wall, which would be
completed before the disengagement starts. [6] To bring
the plan to fruition, the wall would have to move even
further east than its present route, and Olmert is
explicit in outlining his views on its final location. He
wants to make sure that "Israel holds on to [the
settlements of] Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim, the Jerusalem
envelope and Gush Etzion," as well as establishing Israeli
control in the Jordan Valley. [7] A glance at the map
would reveal that the areas Israel would annex
unilaterally under this plan amount to about 40% of the
West Bank.

Olmert believes that circumstances are currently favorable
for enforcing this "solution" on the Palestinians, because
following Hamas' victory in the Palestinian election it
should become even more evident to the world that there is
no Palestinian partner for peace negotiations. He said:
"There is now a 'window of opportunity' for reaching an
international agreement on setting the border, in the wake
of Hamas' rise to power and... support following the Gaza
pullout." [8] At the level of declaration, the plan
includes potential evacuation of settlements east of the
new border. However, unlike the Gaza disengagement plan,
no time table is set for this intended evacuation, and no
list of the settlements to be evacuated was published. In
any case, should a scenario of evacuation arise, the plan
is to keep the West Bank Palestinian enclaves under full
Israeli control, as happened in Gaza. Olmert was explicit
about this in the public announcement of his plan. The
arrangements after the disengagement will "provide the
Israel Defense Forces with freedom of action in the West
Bank, similar to the post-disengagement situation in the
Gaza Strip." [9]

Olmert's plan, then, is to turn Sharon's legacy into
reality annex to Israel 40% of the West Bank and apply the
Gaza model of prison to the remaining Palestinian
enclaves. But Olmert is Israel's new man of peace.

These are difficult times, when Sharon's legacy seems to
be winning, with no barriers of international law or
justice on its road of destruction.

Less then two years ago, on July 9 2004, the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its ruling on the "Legal
Consequence of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory". The court found the current route
of the wall to be a serious and egregious violation of
international law. The first reactions in Israel were of
worried concern. In mid August 2004, Attorney General
Menachem Mazuz presented the government with a report
stating: "It is hard to exaggerate the negative
ramifications the International Court ruling will have on
Israel on many levels, even on matters that lie beyond the
separation fence. The decision creates a political reality
for Israel on the international level, that may be used to
expedite actions against Israel in international forums,
to the point that they may result in sanctions." [10]
Israel hastened to clarify that the wall is a temporary
security barrier, which in no way would determine facts on
the ground. But in the current political atmosphere,
Israel declares it intends to make this wall its border,
and no European government even blinks.

Still a year ago, the Western world was celebrating the
dawn of democracy in the Middle East. Following Arafat's
departure, the Palestinians were engaging in a real
election campaign. Hamas declared its intention to
participate in the elections, and to shift from armed
struggle to working in the political arena. One would
think that this would be viewed as an encouraging and
positive development after years of bloodshed. Indeed, the
U.S. insisted on the election taking place, despite
Israel's objections. But alas, the Palestinians have
elected the wrong party. How natural it seems to the
Western world that the Palestinian people should be
collectively punished for their wrong understanding of
democracy. The U.S. dictates, and Europe agrees that all
aid to Palestinians should be cut, leaving them close to
starvation, with the remaining infra-structure and health
system crumbling.

Nevertheless, the last few years were not just years of
victory for Israel's expansion. From the long run
perspective of maintaining Israel's occupation of the West
Bank, the evacuation of the Gaza settlements was a defeat.

A prevailing view in critical circles is that Sharon
decided to evacuate the Gaza settlements because
maintaining them was too costly, and he decided to focus
efforts on his central goal of keeping the West Bank and
expanding its settlements. But, in fact, there is no real
evidence for this view.

Continued below...
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Of course, the occupation of Gaza has always been costly,
and even from the perspective of the most committed
Israeli expansionists, Israel does not need this piece of
land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and
lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one
cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank.
A third of the occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza
strip. If they are given freedom, they would become the
center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free
access to the Western and Arab world. To control the West
Bank, Israel had to stick to Gaza. And once it is clear
that Gaza needs to be occupied and controlled, the
previous model of occupation was the optimal choice. The
Strip was controlled from the inside by the army, and the
settlements provided the support system for the army, and
the moral justification for the soldiers' brutal job of
occupation. It makes their presence there a mission of
protecting the homeland. Control from the outside may be
cheaper, but in the long run, it has no guarantee of
success.

Furthermore, since the Oslo years, the settlements were
conceived both locally and internationally as a tragic
problem that, despite Israel's good intentions to end the
occupation, cannot be solved. This useful myth was broken
with the evacuation of the Gaza settlements, which showed
how easy it is, in fact, to evacuate settlements, and how
big the support is in Israeli society for doing that.

Although I cannot go into the details here, I argue in
l'heritage de Sharon,[11] that Sharon did not evacuate the
Gaza settlements out of his own will, but rather, that he
was forced to do so. Sharon cooked up his disengagement
plan as a means to gain time, at the peak of international
pressure that followed Israel's sabotaging of the road map
and its construction of the West Bank wall. Still, at
every moment since then, till the very end, he was looking
for ways to sneak out of this commitment, as he did with
all his commitments before. But this time he was forced to
actually carry it out by the Bush administration. Though
it was kept fully behind the screens, the pressure was
quite massive, including military sanctions. The official
pretext for the sanctions was Israel's arm sale to China,
but in previous occasions, the crisis was over as soon as
Israel agreed to cancel the deal. This time, the sanctions
were unprecedented, and lasted until the signing of the
crossing agreement in November 2005.

The story of the Gaza evacuation shows that international
pressure can force Israel into concessions. I argue there
(l'heritage de Sharon) that he reason the U.S. exerted
pressure on Israel, for the first time in recent history,
was because at that time, as the U.S. was sinking in the
mire of Iraq, it was impossible to ignore the widespread
global discontent over Israel's policies and unswerving US
support of them. (For example, in a comprehensive European
poll, the majority viewed Israel as the country most
threatening to world peace. [12]) The US had to yield to
public opinion.

From the U.S. perspective, its goal of appeasing
international pressure had been achieved with the
evacuation of the Gaza settlements. Western leaders and
media were euphoric over the new developments in the
Middle East. As long as international calm is maintained,
Palestinian suffering plays no role in US calculations.
The U.S. administration has made it clear "to its friends
in Europe and the Arab world that Israel has fulfilled its
part of the process, and now it is time to leave Israel
alone and expect the Palestinians to do their part." [13]

Nevertheless the fact that pressure was put on Israel even
for a short while, also shows the limits of power and
propaganda. Despite the apparent success of pro Israeli
lobbies in silencing any criticism of Israeli policies in
Western political discourse, the Palestinian struggle for
justice has penetrated global consciousness. This begins
with the Palestinian people, who have withstood years of
brutal oppression and through their daily endurance,
organizing and resistance, have managed to keep the
Palestinian cause alive, something that not all oppressed
nations have managed to do.

It continues with international struggle solidarity
movements that send their people to the occupied
territories and stand in vigils at home, professors
signing boycott petitions, subjecting themselves to daily
harassment, a few courageous journalists that insist on
covering the truth, against the pressure of acquiescent
media and pro-Israel lobbies. Often this struggle seems
futile, but still it has penetrated global consciousness.

It is this collective consciousness that eventually forced
the U.S. to pressure Israel into some, albeit limited,
concessions. The Palestinian cause can be silenced for a
while, as is happening now, but it will resurface.

------------------------------------------------------------
Tanya Reinhart is a lecturer in linguistics, media and
cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and the University
of Utrecht. She is the author of several books, including
Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War (Seven Stories
Press, 2002).
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