Palestine
The final straw by Michel Warshawsky
Jerusalem
"BUT THIS IS CANTONISATION!" cried Yasser Arafat, one week before he signed the Oslo B accords on the redeployment of the Israeli army on the West Bank. "Cantonisation" is the right word. One year too late, the Palestinian negotiators have discovered the essence of the Israeli project. The West Bank and Gaza strip are being dismantled into little islands managed by the Palestinians, but surrounded by territory administered by Israel.! The Israelis will decide who comes in and out of the Palestinian zones, and how and when you can travel from one zone to another. Oslo B divides the West Bank into three zones.
* ZONE A: Seven towns, from which the Israeli army will withdraw within six months, passing administrative and police control to the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli army will no longer have the right to enter zone A, except for the city of Hebron, where it retains responsibility for the "protection" of some 400 Zionist colonists, who continue to disturb the life of the town's other 120,000 residents.
* ZONE B: The Palestinian Authority will administer these 450 villages. "Order" will be maintained jointly by he Palestinian police and the Israeli army.
* ZONE C: 68% of the West Bank, including most of the
Zionist colonies, the lands they cultivate, and the roads which link them, will remain entirely under Israeli control. This redeployment will permit the Palestinian Authority to organise elections to the 82-member Council which will manage the life of Palestinians. Without the slightest control over the West Bank's natural resources, nor over entry into and departure from the territories administered. "This isn't a good accord," admits the chief Palestinian negotiator Abu Ala. "But it is the best we could obtain" The Israeli promises are vague even on the concrete question of the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners. The timetable is long, and their proposals cover only one third of the estimated 6,000 detainees. One understands why Hamas spokesman Imad Faluji could say, a few days before the signature of Oslo B, "the terms of the negotiations under way will make the Palestinian authority into a police force serving the Israeli occupier." After 25 years in exile, Hamid Al Ghul of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) returns to discover that
"here in Gaza, we find ourselves in a large prison, guarded and controlled by Israel. And after these accords, the West Bank too will be a prison, and there will be a complicated system of passes and permissions to move from one section to another. And there will be a kapo in charge of each cell." For Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority, the presence of 12,000 Palestinian police officers with machine guns, even if they are limited to 30% of the West Bank, will push developments past the point of no return, and confirm a process which can only lead to independence. Liberal Israelis like the journalist Nahum Barnea agree. "The accord is the end for the political concept of "Judea and Samaria'. From now on, there will be lots of Judeas, and lots of Samarias. And all round them there will be the West Bank" 2 But the facts and numbers are hard-headed, and they challenge these optimistic prognosis. There will not be a West Bank, with "lots of Judeas, and lots of Samarias" . There will be a Greater Israel, with lots of little Palestinustans. The Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin and Environment Minister Yossed Sarid see this accord as tracing the contours of the 21st century map of historic Palestine. Israel will annex more than one third of the West Bank and Gaza, including most of the Zionist colonies and the land Israel has appropriated over the last 25 years. The rest of the West Bank will be cantonised, and administered by the Palestinians under the close surveillance of the Israelis, and maybe the Jordanians too. If the Palestinians want, Israel will not really object to them giving these cantons the title of "Free and Independent State of Palestine". Or Holy Islamic Palestinian Empire, for all the difference it makes. This is what Yitshak Rabin meant when he says that "today, I am opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. I stress the word 'today'. Later on, we will be looking at all kinds of solutions." 3 Notes Reprinted from Rouge, 28 September 1995 1. 83% at the beginning of negotiations, 68% in the final Oslo B document. 2. Yediot Aharonot, 24 September 1995 3. Yediot Aharonot, on the eve of the Jewish New Year
International Viewpoint n°271 - November 1995 3
Palestine