Onward, "Western Democracy", onward deeper into the bloody muck and mire!
"THE SECOND HALF OF 48"
THE SHARON-YA'ALON PLAN
By Tanya Reinhart
Official declarations and many reports in the Israeli
media indicate that the Israeli military and political
leadership are aiming, eventually, at a total
destruction of the Palestinian authority, and, with it,
the process of Oslo, which is now dominantly
considered by them a 'historical mistake'. What can
they be after? -Let us trace some of the background
for this development.
Ever since the 1967 occupation, the military and
political elites (which have been always closely
intertwined in Israel) deliberated over the question of
how to keep maximum land with minimum
Palestinian population. The leaders of the '1948
generation' - Alon, Sharon, Dayan, Rabin and Peres
- were raised on the myth of redemption of land. But
a simple solution of annexation of the occupied
territories would have turned the occupied
Palestinians into Israeli citizens, and this would have
caused what has been labeled the "demographic
problem" - the fear that the Jewish majority could not
be preserved. Therefore, two basic conceptions
were developed.
The Alon plan consisted of annexation of 35-40% of
the territories to Israel, and self-rule or partnership in
a confederation of the rest, the land on which the
Palestinians actually live. In the eyes of its
proponents, this plan represented a necessary
compromise, because they believed it is impossible
to repeat the 1948 'solution' of mass expulsion,
either for moral considerations, or because world
public opinion would not allow this to happen again.
The second conception, whose primary spokesman
was Sharon, assumed that it is possible to find more
acceptable and sophisticated ways to achieve a
1948 style 'solution' - it is only necessary to find
another state for the Palestinians. -"Jordan is
Palestine" - was the phrase that Sharon coined. So
future arrangements should guarantee that as many
as possible of the Palestinians in the occupied
territories will move there. For Sharon, this was part
of a more global world view, by which Israel can
establish "new orders" in the region - a view which
he experimented with in the Lebanon war of 1982.
In Oslo, the Alon plan route triumphed, where
gradually it became apparent that it is even possible
to extend the "Arab-free" areas. In practice, the
Palestinians have already been dispossessed of
half of their lands, which are now state lands,
security zones and "land reserves for the
settlements". However, it appeared that Israel will be
satisfied with that, and will allow the PA to run the
enclaves in which the Palestinians still reside, in
some form of self-rule which may even be called a
Palestinian 'state'. The security establishment
expressed full confidence in the ability of the
Palestinian security forces - which were created and
trained in cooperation with the Israeli ones - to
control the frustration of the Palestinians and protect
the security of the settlers and the Israeli home front.
But the victory of the Alon plan wasn't complete.
Even the little that the Palestinians did get, seemed
too much to some in the military circles, whose most
vocal spokesman in the early years of Oslo was then
chief of staff, Ehud Barak. Another consistent voice
which has emerged is that of Brigadier Moshe
(Bugi) Ya'alon, who is also known for his
connections with the settlers. As head of the military
intelligence -Ama"n- (1995-1998), Ya'alon
confronted the subsequent chief of staff, Amnon
Shahak, an Oslo supporter, and has consolidated
the anti-Oslo line which now dominates the military
intelligence view. Contradicting the position of the
security services' ('Shin Bet') and the many media
reports which praised the security cooperation
between Israel and the Palestinian authority, Ya'alon
claimed in a cabinet meeting in September 1997,
and later, that "Arafat is giving a green light to
terror".
The objection to the Oslo conception in the military
circles was based on the view that it will be
impossible to maintain such an arrangement in the
long term. If the Palestinians have a political
infrastructure and armed forces, they will eventually
try to rebel. Therefore, the only way is to overthrow
the Palestinian authority, and the whole Oslo
conception. The first step on this route is to convince
the public that Arafat is still a terrorist and is
personally responsible for the acts of all groups from
the Islamic Jihad to Hizbollah.
During Barak's days in office, Ya'alon became one
of his closets confidants in the restricted military
team which Barak has assembled to work with
(Amir Oren, Ha'aretz, Nov 17, 2000). The same
team was prepared already at the beginning of the
Intifada for a total attack on the Palestinian authority,
on both the military and the propaganda levels. On
the latter, this included the "White book" on the
crimes of Arafat and the PA. This is the same team
which is now briefing the political level, as well as
US representatives, and is responsible for the
dominance of the call for toppling the PA.
But what can they have in mind as a replacement of
the Oslo arrangements? One wave of rumors
(reported e.g.in March 9 in 'yediot') is that the IDF
plans to reinstall the Israeli military rule. But this
does not make any sense as a long term plan. The
Oslo agreements were conceived precisely
because that system could no longer work. The
burden of policing the territories was much too
heavy on the army, the reserves and the Israeli
society, and the IDF's success in preventing terror
was, in fact, much lower than that of the PA in later
years. After the Lebanon experience, and after the
seven years of Oslo, during which the Israeli society
got used to the idea that the occupation comes for
free, with the PA taking care of the settlers' security,
it is hard to imagine that anyone believes a pre-Oslo
arrangement can be reinstalled.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that after 30 years
of occupation, the two options competing in the
Israeli power system are precisely the same as
those set by the generation of 1948: Apartheid (the
Alon- Oslo plan), or transfer - mass evacuation of the
Palestinian residents, as happened in 1948 (the
Sharon plan). Those pushing for the destruction of
the Oslo infra-structure may still believe that under
the appropriate conditions of regional escalation,
the transfer plan would become feasible.
In modern times, wars aren't openly started over
land and water. In order to attack, you first need to
prove that the enemy isn't willing to live in peace and
is threatening our mere existence. Barak managed
to do that. Now conditions are ripe for executing
Sharon's plan, or as Ya'alon put it in November
2000, for "the second half of 1948".
Before we reach that dark day, there is one option
which was never tried before: Get out of the
occupied territories immediately.