Bush Backs Sharon's
Illegal Plan

by Nadia Hijab

A Palestinian carries his daughter into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after an Israeli helicopter raid on Al-Shati refugee camp on March 16.

How can anyone find fault with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new plan to withdraw from the occupied Gaza Strip? After all, isn't freedom from occupation just what Palestinians have been asking for since Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967?

Unfortunately Sharon's plan is actually a major new step toward making the occupation permanent. Although Sharon plans to pull Israeli settlers and troops out of Gaza, Palestinians in Gaza will remain encircled by barriers guarded by the Israeli army.

Worse, as a trade off, Israel will establish "Israeli sovereignty" over four huge settlement blocs in the Palestinian West Bank--Maaleh Adumim and Givat Zeev north of Jerusalem, Ariel in the heart of the West Bank and the Etzion bloc in the south.

These settlements slice the West Bank into fourths, which are easily surrounded and controlled by Israel. As Sharon bluntly announced, his plan forces the Palestinians to "give up on their aspirations for many years to come," and makes them unable to set up a state. Israel punctuated this point by illegally assassinating the top leader of Hamas just one month after murdering his predecessor.

President Bush's support for Israel's plan destroys what little remaining credibility the world's superpower had in the vital Middle East.

White House recognition of the Israeli settlements departs from decades of U.S. policy and violates international law. Bush's previous policy--the so-called Road Map--called for a mutually negotiated comprehensive settlement with the goal of ending the Israeli occupation by 2005. Now Bush has approved Sharon's new plan for permanent occupation.

NO JUSTICE AND NO PEACE

Bush has closed the door to a just peace in three ways. First, he is allowing Israel to keep settlements that they have built on illegally occupied territory, gouging huge chunks out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that were supposed to be the Palestinian state.

Second, he is allowing Israel to redraw the borders by permitting construction of the grotesque Separation Wall, which is snaking into the West Bank, destroying homes and agricultural land en route and enabling an Israeli take-over of the Palestinian water supply.

Third, Bush dismisses the Palestinian right to return or receive compensation for their lands in the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948--78% of their country.

All these unilateral moves are in direct violation of international law and of agreements that Israel and the U.S. have signed, including U.N. Resolution 242, which provides for the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. Under international law, occupation is supposed to be a temporary phenomenon, and any change in the character of the occupied territory is prohibited.

As Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei declared, "Nobody in the world has the right to give up Palestinian rights."

Israel's hundreds of targeted assassinations, like the recent murders of Hamas leaders Shaikh Ahmad Yassin and Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, also violate international law. Yet the U.S. was virtually alone among nations in failing to strongly condemn these assassinations. The first of the Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel--which also violate international law--was carried out after 27 years of occupation and an attack by a fanatical settler on Muslims praying in a mosque.

Applying international law and securing a full unconditional withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied in 1967 would quickly bring peace to the region and save Palestinian and Israeli lives. Sharon and Bush's new plan will only intensify the conflict between the occupier and the occupied.

Nadia Hijab is executive director of The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C.

War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the
Center for Third World Organizing. • P.O. Box 22748 • Oakland CA 94609
www.war-times.org • info@war-times.org
© Copyright 2002–2008