The Kadima party's victory in Israel's elections last month reveals the deep shift that has taken place in Israeli politics. By bringing Ehud Olmert into power with a solid leftwing majority in the Knesset, the Israeli public has made it clear to its politicians that it is ready to give up the dream of a Greater Israel. A leading hawk and life-long revisionist until only recently, Olmert based his electoral campaign on a promise to carry out his "convergence plan" (which in Hebrew rhymes with and evokes Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan") to evacuate settlers from the West Bank.
However, Olmert's actions since being elected suggest that he does not intend to act in accordance with the mandate given to him by the public. Olmert rejected talks with the Israeli Arab parties and has shown little enthusiasm for Meretz, despite the fact that these parties have been calling for the evacuation of settlements for years, making them the most natural partners for a government sincere about ending the settlement enterprise.
Instead Olmert began by courting the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose leader recently said that certain Israeli Arab members of the Knesset should be executed. He eventually brought the rightwing Shas party into his government, and may yet recruit another anti-pullout party for his coalition, in addition to the Labour Party and the Pensioners, to the left of Kadima. In light of this unexpected coalition, a closer look at the details of the convergence plan is in order.
Between the lines
The stated aim of the convergence plan is to evacuate approximately seventy thousand Jewish settlers from their homes on the other side of the fence separating Israel from the Palestinians. (Lately, Kadima members have been saying that the number of evacuated settlers will actually be lower). Even if Olmert keeps his promise, this figure represents less than a third of the Jewish settlers on the West Bank of the Jordan, not counting another 184,000 Jewish residents of East Jerusalem who also live over the Green Line, and are considered settlers by the Palestinians and much of the international community. Thus the convergence plan will not spell the end of the Jewish settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
Nor will the convergence plan end Israel's military occupation of the West Bank. Olmert has assured the public on several occasions that unlike in Gaza, where the army was pulled back to the Green Line, in the West Bank the army will remain even in those areas where settlements are to be evacuated. Thus Palestinian life will continue to be disrupted by military checkpoints; Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank will continue to be exposed to attacks by Palestinian militants; and Israel's military front lines will not be shortened (a step widely seen as a means to free up funds for education, health and other social spending).
Olmert's promise finally to determine permanent and recognised borders for Israel also appears doubtful. Recognised borders by definition must be agreed in negotiations with the Palestinians. Olmert has promised to hold an internal dialogue with the settler movement, and to coordinate his positions with the Bush Administration in Washington later this month, but he seems to have no intention of negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians.
In fact, the prime minister has stated on many occasions that he sees no partner for negotiations on the Palestinian side unless several preconditions are fulfilled, including a change in the democratically elected Hamas government. He has made it clear that he will implement his plan unilaterally if negotiations fail, despite the fact that its outlines have already been rejected by the Palestinians in past negotiations. They are roughly the same lines that Ehud Barak brought to Camp David in 2000, which the Palestinian leadership rejected out of hand. Barak's map was later reincarnated as the approximate route of Sharon's separation wall, and is now to form the basis of Olmert's proposed permanent eastern border.
For their part, the Palestinians have called on the new Israeli government to sit down for talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Neighbouring Arab countries have also called for negotiations rather than unilateral actions. The Hamas government has made it clear that it views Olmert's unilateralism as "a declaration of war", and experienced Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has stated that "peace and settlements cannot go together".
Maps produced in recent unofficial negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders provide a better picture of what a final negotiated settlement might look like. In these maps, certain settlement blocks disappear, while others are preserved in a scaled-down form.
Facts on the ground
Like Ariel Sharon before him, Olmert has pledged that the settlement blocks will be a part of Israel forever. The basis of this promise is a letter from George W Bush to Sharon last April recognizing the settlement blocks as "new realities on the ground". The Israeli government sees this as proof of the Bush Administration's acquiescence to Israel's territorial ambitions regarding these areas hence the urgency to accomplish the convergence by the end of Bush's term.
Labour chairman Amir Peretz has called on the new government to set up a legal and budgetary framework for the immediate evacuation of those settlers who are willing to move back over the Green Line. There are many of these, and early coordinated relocation is certainly preferable to coerced evacuation. There are also enough existing empty homes in communities and urban neighbourhoods within the Green Line to provide at least a partial solution for their absorption. But Olmert instead plans to build thousands of new housing units in the West Bank settlement blocks for the future evacuees. This will likely translate into reactivating controversial shelved building plans. One plan that has the potential to absorb at least half of the evacuees is the E1 plan, east of Jerusalem. Previously rejected by the US, and bitterly opposed by the Palestinians, the E1 plan now looks set to make a comeback. If built, E1 would sandwich Palestinian East Jerusalem between Jewish West Jerusalem and a massive block of Jewish settlements to the east.
Just as a former advisor to Sharon, Dov Weisglass, once revealed that the Gaza evacuation was meant to spoil any chance for peace negotiations with the Palestinians, it appears that relocating settlers en masse to Jewish settlement blocks would make future negotiations that much more difficult, if not impossible.
And just as Gaza evacuees were relocated to the Halutza area, previously seen as an area to be potentially handed over to the Palestinians in a land swap, settlers evacuated from isolated West Bank settlements will be shifted to consolidated settlement blocks to solidify Israel's hold on these territories. These blocks are unacceptable to the Palestinians, and the chances of evacuating settlers for a second time in the future are slim. It appears that Olmert is following Sharon's strategy of using ostensible peace moves to predetermine the results of any future agreement.
Thus the actual objectives of the convergence plan appear to be the following:
- to continue the military occupation of the West Bank;
- to expand settlement construction by winning US approval for building projects that until now have met with opposition in the Bush Administration;
- to continue the transfer of state resources to the settlers, against the wishes of the voting public, by providing them with massive compensation packages and new homes outside the Green Line;
- to use public funds to create profitable business opportunities for influential building contractors - who, with the completion of the separation wall over the next couple of years, will soon be keen for more massive government-funded projects - by fast-track approval of the construction of thousands of new apartments;
- to predetermine the results of any future negotiations with the Palestinians by cementing the status of the settlement blocks as irreversible "facts on the ground".
In any case, it is clear that the convergence plan will not end the conflict and bring peace in the middle east. The Gaza disengagement showed that unilateral actions strengthen radical elements on the Palestinian side, thus potentially raising the intensity of the conflict.
Olmert's convergence is scheduled to be completed by 2010, the same year his term in office ends. It appears that the Israelis and the Palestinians will have to wait until at least the next decade for a serious chance for peace in the region.
