Formalizing Apartheid Packages As Peace Initiative
By Neta Golan & Mohammed Khatib 18 October, 2007 The Electronic Intifada
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well-guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.”
Political maneuvers can be spun to sound good if the details are kept vague, but when held to scrutiny it becomes obvious that the upcoming Israeli offer is not so generous. Like the Oslo Accords and the “disengagement” from Gaza, the peace process being cooked now is a move to consolidate Israeli control of all of historic Palestine while taking a large portion of the Palestinian population off Israel’s hands. The devil is in the details that follow.
The agreement on the table offers Palestinians what Israel’s president Shimon Peres calls “the equivalent of 100 percent of the territory occupied in 1967.” According to Peres, Israel will retain its major West Bank population centers, also known as settlement blocs, which Peres claims make up only five percent of the West Bank. In exchange Israel will offer to give the Palestinians the same amount of territory elsewhere. According to Peres, Israel will exchange land in Israel populated by Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. This will allow Israel to remove some of its Palestinian Arab population, whom most Jewish Israelis perceive as “demographic threat” to the nature of the Jewish state.
When Israeli politicians like Peres talk about retaining five percent of the West Bank, they do not include occupied East Jerusalem. Israel illegally and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967-68. Hence, Israeli sources claim there are 250,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, completely discounting the estimated additional 250,000 settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. [more]