Sat and his fellow pioneers didn’t bother to apply for building permits; the right-wing government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, they knew, practiced a policy of benign neglect toward such illegal outposts. The settlement, called Migron, now consists of 35 dun-colored mobile homes, two playgrounds and a guardhouse surrounded by a flimsy wire fence. Asked how he feels about the latest diplomatic initiative that could force him to leave his isolated enclave, home now to 200 Jewish settlers, Sat shrugs. “We’re not worried,” he insists. “We’ve seen the peacemakers come and go… but nothing ever changes.”
Sadly, he’s right. And that is important to keep in mind this week as George Bush, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gather for a historic summit in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, Jordan. The three leaders will inaugurate the so-called Roadmap–a step-by-step series of confidence-building measures that could lead to a Palestinian state in 2005. Already, both Israelis and Palestinians are making nice sounds. Sharon last week referred to Israel’s control over Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps as an “occupation”–which stunned Israel’s right wing. Abbas said he believed that he could quickly persuade Hamas to declare a limited ceasefire, and told the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that he expected that to be a first step toward achieving “absolute calm.” But in the Mideast, soft words often are a means to avoid hard actions. The key now is to watch what the two sides do, not what they say.
Sat’s hilltop caravan, and others like it, will be the first big test of Sharon’s commitment. In the initial phase of the Roadmap, Israel must begin dismantling all of the 60 outposts built without permits across the West Bank since March 2001. Under U.S. pressure, the Israeli Army dismantled a dozen outposts last year. But settlers brought in new caravan homes after the Army left, and Sharon ignored them. The Roadmap also requires that Sharon declare an immediate settlement freeze, but the prime minister has been moving in the opposite direction. In recent weeks, Israeli Minister of Housing Effi Eitam has quietly initiated construction of 11,000 additional units in four major settlements in the West Bank. Last week Sharon assured the Jewish settlers “there is no restriction here, and you can build for your children and grandchildren, and I hope for your great-grandchildren as well.”
The outposts aren’t the only projects –that raise questions about Sharon’s intentions. His most ambitious construction scheme is a 150-mile security barrier currently going up along the Green Line that divides Israel and the West Bank. The barricade has gobbled up large chunks of West Bank farmland, trapped 11,000 Palestinians in the no man’s land between the wall and the Green Line and almost completely encircled the large West Bank town of Qalqilya. The nearby town of Tulkarm will soon be surrounded too. “You don’t make peace while you’re encircling two of the most important Palestinian cities,” says a Western diplomat in Jerusalem. An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman insists that the project will move ahead “in spite of pressure from the Bush administration.”
Abbas’s own efforts, meanwhile, are struggling to gain momentum. After repeated talks with Hamas leaders in Gaza, the Palestinian prime minister told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth last week that he expected to get the radical Islamic group to agree to a ceasefire in the next few days. But truces have fallen apart repeatedly in the past two years, and the Israeli government insists that the Palestinian Authority must disarm the radicals and arrest key members of the military wing. “The [Palestinian leadership] understands that a ceasefire isn’t enough,” says a top Israeli official.
More than that will prove very difficult. Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin recently said that Hamas won’t give up its guns until statehood is achieved. The Palestinian Authority’s security forces have been severely weakened by the violence and destruction of the past two years, and they may not have the muscle necessary to subdue the militants. “These guys have no headquarters, no jails, no cars,” says a Western diplomat. “Even the security chiefs move around in taxis.”
What’s Sharon’s game plan? Israeli officials on both left and right say that he may dismantle outposts, withdraw from some Palestinian territory, even agree to a provisional state–but will never give up more than half of the West Bank in a final deal. The Israeli government is reportedly moving forward on a scheme to build a vast new security fence around Jewish settlements near Nablus and the Jordan Valley; when finished, the partitions will effectively divide Palestinian territory into Bantustans cut off from one another by Jewish settlement blocs. The total amount of land reserved for Palestinians would be about 42 percent of the West Bank–roughly equivalent to what Sharon has offered for a Palestinian state in the past. But by then, the peace process may have collapsed again in a new round of bloodshed.
