Palestine: the shape of Israel's "final settlement"
On 15 November Yasser Arafat has threatened not for the first time to declare an independent state in Palestine. Israel has in turn plans in hand to retaliate by simply imposing its own boundaries on a separate Palestinian entity.
The intensive construction and settlement projects of the past years have been designed to "create facts" that would lead to this "permanent settlement."
Already the Gaza Strip is cut off from Israel by an electrified fence, breached by two border crossings: Karni for commercial goods, and Erez for tens of thousands of Palestinian workers.
According to one plan, Israel would build an $250 million exitless elevated highway from Gaza, ending near Hebron so that Palestinians could travel to the West Bank without setting foot on Israeli soil.
In May this year the government's outlined a "Final Status Map". It proposed a greatly expanded "Jerusalem" which would extend in all directions. To the north it reaches well past Ramallah, and to the south well past Bethlehem, the two major nearby Palestinian towns.
These are to be left under Palestinian control, but adjoining Israeli territory, and in the case of Ramallah, cut off from Palestinian territory to the east. Like all Palestinian territory, both towns are separated from Jerusalem, the centre of West Bank life, by territory annexed to Israel.
The entire Jordanian border is to be annexed to Israel along with the "Jerusalem" salient that partitions the West Bank. Another salient to be annexed farther north virtually imposes a second partition.
The intended result is that an eventual Palestinian state would consist of four areas on the West Bank: (1) Jericho, (2) the southern bantustan extending as far as Abu Dis (the new Arab "Jerusalem"), (3) a northern bantustan including the Palestinian cities of Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm, and (4) a central bantustan including Ramallah.
The bantustans are completely surrounded by territory to be annexed to Israel.
These outlines are consistent with the proposals that have been put forth since 1968 intended to incorporate about 40% of the West Bank within Israel. Since then specific plans have been proposed by the ultra-right Ariel Sharon, the Labour Party, and others. They are fairly similar in conception and outline.
The basic principle is that the usable territory within the West Bank, and the crucial resources (primarily water), will remain under Israeli control, but the population will be controlled by a Palestinian client regime, which is expected to be corrupt, barbaric, and compliant. The Palestinian-administered areas can then provide cheap and easily exploitable labour for the Israeli economy.
Palestine: victory to the new intifada!
Israel: history of an oppressor settler state
Palestinian Nationalism and the PLO
[LRCI 1988]