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  Mideast Peace Conference: The Real Two-state Solution

Mideast Peace Conference The Real Two-state Solution

By Aluf Benn in Tel Aviv

Part 2: A Self-isolating Israel Has Flourished as a First-world, Western Wannabe -- But is it a Dangerous Allusion?

The detachment of Israelis from the occupied territories has not been only a voluntary reaction to Palestinian anger, violence and deadly terrorist attacks. It has been a deliberate government effort. In the past 15 years, all Israeli governments have implemented a policy of "separation," aimed at distancing and shielding the bulk of Israeli society from the unpleasant reality beyond the Green Line.

On May 24, 1992, Fouad el-Umarin, an 18-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, attacked Helena Rapp, a 15-year-old Israeli student on her way to school in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, stabbing her to death. At the time, Israel was only weeks away from a crucial election, in which Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin challenged the incumbent prime minister, Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin pledged to create Palestinian "autonomy" in the West Bank and Gaza, while Shamir, the last believer in Greater Israel, favored keeping the territories under full Israeli occupation. His idea of responding to the first intifada was to build more Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The murder of Helena Rapp was followed by three days of violent anti-Palestinian protest in Bat Yam. Mobs destroyed property and beat passersby who looked like Arabs. This gave the Rabin campaign an ace card. "We should take Gaza out of Tel Aviv," declared the former military leader, who held the respect of Israelis as "Mr. Security."

By August 1993, the newly elected Rabin signed the Oslo agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority, under Arafat's leadership, was formed in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, while Israel kept its overriding responsibility for security, including for the Jewish settlements there. Hamas, which opposed the peace process, launched a wave of terror -- first with knives and then with human bombs.

Rabin's response was to accelerate the separation process. Even before Oslo, his government declared a "full closure," forbidding Palestinians from entering Israel and working there. Then it built special roads for the Jewish settlers, saving them the unpleasant and increasingly dangerous drive through neighboring Palestinian towns. (In later years, Israel created two entirely separate road systems in the West Bank, forbidding Palestinians from using the "Israeli" roads.) A fence was built around the Gaza Strip, isolating it from Israel, which still kept more than 20 Israeli settlements on its other side.

These measures turned out to be irreversible. In a key shift, Israel began importing workers from Thailand, Romania and China to replace the Palestinians in the fields and on the scaffoldings. Independent from Palestinian labor, and more accepted globally, thanks to the Oslo peace process, Israel's economy geared itself rapidly toward the West and the new markets opened to it in Asia and the former Soviet Bloc. Its remaining ties with the dwindling Palestinian economy involved exports of basic products and services.

A second round of separation occurred under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, who took office in 2001. Sharon was a political pariah for many years, but his election was the response of angry and threatened Israelis to the collapse of the peace process and to the second intifada, which, unlike the angry stone throwing of the first one, exploded with weapons and suicide bombings. It was a first-rate historic irony that Sharon, an architect of the settlement project and Israel's long-term hold over the occupied territories, did more than his peers to scale it back. Facing the worst wave of suicide bombings in 2002, Sharon grudgingly agreed to build a security barrier to separate Israel from the West Bank. While its route, leaving about one-tenth of West Bank territory on the western, Israeli side remains controversial outside Israel, most Israelis view "the fence" as a blessing. Its construction coincided with a marked reduction in suicide bombings, which gave Israelis a renewed sense of security. More important, it created a physical division between the two sides. As it approaches completion today, it becomes increasingly impossible simply to cross the hills to the West Bank or vice versa.

In 2005, Sharon carried out his most daring endeavor, the "disengagement" from Gaza. He ordered the removal of all Israeli settlements and military posts, withdrawing to the pre-1967 line. While this move was supported by a majority of Israelis at the time, many had second thoughts later, when the evacuated area turned into a bastion of Hamas supporters and a basis for rocket attacks against Israeli border towns and villages. Nevertheless, the disengagement sealed Gaza behind high fences, and in the past two years, Israel has sought to cut its remaining ties and responsibilities there. The government declared Gaza "a hostile entity" and marked the crossings as border points.

The ever-increasing separation measures, the economic independence from the Palestinians and above all the physical barriers have isolated Israelis like never before from the "other side." This has enabled Israel to flourish as a first-world, Western wannabe, an enclave in the heart of an otherwise largely stagnant Arab world.

But this situation comes with a price. While allowing Israelis to ignore their unfriendly neighborhood, and live under the illusion that their country exists somewhere in Europe or North America, the status quo reduces Israelis' motivation to seek compromise and peace with the Palestinians. To observers of the Palestinians' deteriorating situation in the occupied territories, that symptom of Israeli denial can appear morally repugnant. And as the destitution in those areas mounts, the status quo is not likely to be sustainable -- a deeper chaos could erupt and become a much greater problem for Israel's government and people.

Perhaps most significant, the hardened status quo hinders the Jewish state's eventual acceptance in the Middle East, already a difficult goal. When Iran and its proxies aim to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, and even actively pursue its destruction, self-imposed isolation by Israel may be one of the biggest dangers of all.

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