Works In Progress - August 2003 - Roadmap Diplomacy Conceals Israeli Apartheid Policies

Having just spent nearly a month traveling in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories has led me to conclude that talk about "progress" and "momentum" regarding President Bush's peace initiative known as the roadmap is largely a deception. This view is shared not only by Palestinians but also by the majority of activists in the Israeli peace camp with whom I met during my stay.

To play along with the roadmap game is to play into President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's desire to shift attention from the ground in both Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories toward the appearance of a peace process.

The roadmap process is little more than a diplomatic deception manufactured by the Bush administration. With soldiers killed on a daily basis and mounting questions about false pretenses for the war on Iraq, Bush desperately needs a forum to appear statesmanlike and shore up his foreign policy credentials for the coming Presidential campaign.

Likewise, it provides Ariel Sharon a platform to appear diplomatic and to enhance his recent efforts to portray himself as an advocate of peace, despite his long-standing goals of destroying Palestinian national existence and colonizing Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. Sharon knows that Bush needs a semblance of Israeli diplomacy in exchange for the Bush administration's full support for his right-wing policies.

Watching the extensive news coverage of the roadmap diplomacy is like watching an Orwellian air-brushing of reality while the real story is being dropped down the memory hole. The real story is on the ground, happening daily as we speak. This reality has nearly nothing to do with White House meetings, Israeli "concessions" or anything else being discussed in the media.

The real story is the daily suffocation and delimitation of Palestinian political, economic and cultural life in an apartheid-like system of Israeli rule.This is done through a two-part Israeli strategy of cutting off all Palestinian movement from one town to another and by building a huge fence and wall around the Palestinian people that separates them from their land and water and leaves thousands more stranded outside of it. None of this has stopped for a moment during the past two months of diplomatic talks.

First, nearly every road that connects a Palestinian town to another town is either destroyed or blocked by huge gravel barriers so that Palestinians cannot drive out of their towns. Anyone who wants to travel, provided they have received an Israeli permit in some cases, must get out of their vehicle and walk over the barriers, hoping to catch a van or taxi on the other side. No supplies can pass that cannot be carried over the barrier. This state of siege has destroyed the economy and infrastructure of many towns. I witnessed a huge truck carrying supplies trying to ram one of these dirt barriers near Hebron get stuck on top, with its wheels spinninga fitting metaphor for the Palestinian economy.

Israel says this policy of "internal closure" is for security, but it has next to nothing to do with the security of those in Israel, though it may help the 400,000 settlers inside the West Bank. Anyone determined to take a bomb to Tel Aviv, for example, could do this by walking around these barricades and finding other means to cross into Israel, as we were shown several times. The point of "internal closure" is to suffocate Palestinian society so that Palestinians will either submit to Israel's political plan for them or get so desperate that they leave. Israeli peace activists, such as the new group T'Ayyush (Living Together) have tried to address this problem by sending convoys to bring food, water and supplies to besieged Palestinian towns.

Secondly, the most startling new story in the entire West Bank is the relentless plowing and building of the new Israeli "separation barrier." In most places it is a huge fence with multiple ditches and barriers on either side averaging sixty meters wide and in some places it is actually a "Berlin Wall" with concrete walls and towers averaging twenty-feet high. Palestinians call this the "Apartheid Wall" because it is not being built on the border of the West Bank, which many would accept, but far inside it around Palestinian population centers, ensuring maximum Israeli land expansion for settlements. It is creating a series of Palestinian Bantustans that resemble those that existed in South Africa before the end of apartheid. It separates Palestinian towns from their agricultural land leaving them impoverished and isolated and could leave nearly two hundred thousand Palestinians trapped outside the barrier, cut off from their compatriots.

Again, this "separation barrier" has very little to do with Israeli security, but everything to do with securing more land for Israeli settlements. It is a political attempt to fence in the Palestinian people into tiny areas, roughly fifty per cent of the West Bank, and compel those outside the fence to either leave or move behind the barrier, ethnically cleansing more land for Israeli settlements. Not only are walls and fences ultimately unable to stop those who really want to commit terrorist actions, for they always find another way. But the brutal and unjust nature of the placement of this barrier guarantees more hatred and desire for revenge against Israel. In effect, Israel is trying to fence in a nation and suffocate their national existence, a recipe for further bloodshed. Both Israeli and Palestinian activist groups have taken the lead in raising awareness about this frightening prospect.

Taken together, these two policies amount to a process of further institutionalizing an apartheid system, plus ethnic cleansing. Both are at work. The Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, in a new book, has labeled this unique set of policies promoted by Ariel Sharon and his right-wing allies "politicide." By politicide he means a process that has as its ultimate goal the dissolution of the Palestinians existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity with national rights. This process may also but not necessarily entail their partial or complete ethnic cleansing from the West Bank and Gaza strip and is primarily aimed at destroying and disrupting the public and personal spheres of Palestinian life in order to get them to accept Israeli dictation or to leave altogether.

Contrary to the image of moderation that he has so assiduously - and effectively - cultivated these past two years, Sharon remains single-mindedly committed to preventing the emergence of a viable and independent Palestinian state. Sharon learned during his first term of office not to reveal his true intentions in the face of an American president, particularly one already inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead he has missed no occasion to declare his support for President Bush's vague "vision" of a two-state solution, even as he intensifies settlement activity and builds a wall that assures the defeat of such a vision.

It may seem puzzling that the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has so strongly embraced the roadmap deception. But one look at the overwhelming balance of power stacked against Palestinians and the immense suffering of Palestinian people helps one understand why he feels he has no choice but to submit. He understands that the Iraq fiasco has put Bush under some pressure and hopes that jumping through Bush's hoops will result in at least a partial Israeli withdrawal from some Palestinian towns, a prisoner release of some magnitude and pressure on Israel to dismantle some new settler outposts. Any one of these would allow Abu Mazen to remain in power, at least in the short term.

Most importantly, it would give a boost to Palestinian proponents of the roadmap and help marginalize the militant groups who only gain from Palestinian suffering and pessimism. It would give the Palestinian government the strength it needs to move forward in dismantling the militant groups that have inflicted so much damage on Israeli civilians through their criminal and brutal suicide bomb attacks.

But while one can take some hope that at least President Bush and his National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice have raised objections to Israel's "separation barrier" and have asked that Sharon make some concessions on issues of importance to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas, it is important not to believe that this will lead to anything of substance.

In the next weeks or months we should expect Sharon to announce that he will release some more prisoners, remove some roadblocks and will consider withdrawing forces from some Palestinian towns. It will be token gestures.

No doubt CNN and Fox News will be there to broadcast in detail and hype these moves as "painful concessions" by Israel. But the real story, the ongoing apartheid policies and the politicide against the Palestinian people, under the cover of the roadmap diplomatic process, will not be televised.

STEVE NIVA teaches international politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. He is an associate of The Middle East Research and Information Project ( http://merip.org ) and its magazine Middle East Report, and has had articles recently published in Al-Ahram Weekly, The Jordan Times and Peace Review. He traveled to the region as part of a tour organized by Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace ( http://FFIPP.org ).