Palestinian enclaves: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia


Article Images

Content deleted Content added

Line 57:

Avi Primor in 2002 described the implications of the plan: "Without anyone taking notice, a process is underway establishing a "Palestinian state" limited to the Palestinian cities, a "state" comprised of a number of separate, sovereign-less enclaves, with no resources for self-sustenance."{{sfn|Primor|2002}} Commenting on these plans in 2006, Elisha Efrat, Professor of urban geography at [[Tel Aviv University|TAU]] argued that any state created on these fragmented divisions would be neither economically viable nor amenable to administration.{{efn|'It is quite clear that a Palestinian State with so many territorial enclaves will not be able to manage economic functions and administration. Even if its sovereign territory were greater, and even if some of the enclaves were connected into a continued territorial unity, the main communications arteries that are under Israeli dominance running from north to south and from west to east, and those along the Judean Desert that are under Israeli dominance, might perpetuate their spatial fragmentation.' {{harv|Efrat|2006|p=199}}}}

Sharon eventually [[Israeli disengagement from Gaza|disengaged from the Gaza]] in 2005, and in the ensuing years, during the [[Kadima|Sharon-Peres]] interregnum and the government of [[Ehud Olmert]] it became a commonplace to speak of the result there, where [[Hamas]] assumed sole authority over the internal administration of the Strip, as the state of Hamastan.{{efn|'If Ariel Sharon were able to hear the news from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, he would call his loyal aide, [[Dov Weissglas]], and say with a big laugh: "We did it, Dubi." Sharon is in a coma, but his plan is alive and kicking. Everyone is now talking about the state of Hamastan. In his house, they called it a bantustan, after the South African protectorates designed to perpetuate apartheid.' {{harv|Eldar|2007}}}}{{efn|"Israeli politicians lost no time exploiting these fears increasingly employing the term ''Hamastan'' - a neologism for the concept of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian Islamist theocracy under Iranian tutelage - to describe these circumstances; "before our very eyes", as Netanyahu warned, "Hamastan has been established, the step-child of Iran and the Taliban"." {{harv|Ram|2009|p=82}}}} At the same time, according to [[Akiva Eldar]], the Sharon plan to apply the same policy of creating discontinuous enclaves for Palestinians in the West Bank was implemented.{{efn|'Alongside the severance of Gaza from the West Bank, a policy now called "isolation," the Sharon-Peres government and the Olmert-Peres government that succeeded it carried out the bantustan program in the West Bank. The Jordan Valley was separated from the rest of the West Bank; the south was severed from the north; and all three areas were severed from East Jerusalem. The "two states for two peoples" plan gave way to a "five states for two peoples" plan: one contiguous state, surrounded by settlement blocs, for Israel, and four isolated enclaves for the Palestinians.' {{harv|Eldar|2007}}}}The maps for Sharon's disengagement from Gaza, Camp David and Oslo are similar to each other and to the 1967 Allon plan.{{sfn|Makdisi|2012|p=92}} By 2005, together with the Separation Wall, that area had been potted with 605 closure barriers whose overall effect was to create a 'matrix of contained quadrants controllable from well-defended, fixed military positions and settlements.{{efn|"To make this grid possible, more than 2,710 homes and workplaces in the West Bank have been completely destroyed, and an additional 39,964 others have been damaged, since the beginning of the Intifada." {{harv|Haddad|2009|p=280}}}}{{efn|"At times, the politics of separation/partition has been dressed up as a formula for peaceful settlement at others as a bureaucratic-territorial arrangement of governance, and most recently as a means of unilaterally imposed domination, oppression and fragmentation of the Palestinian people and their land. The Oslo Accords of the 1990s left the Israeli military in control of the interstices of an archipelago of about two hundred separate zones of Palestinian restricted autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza." {{harv|Weizman|2012|pp=10–11}}}} Olmert's [[Realignment plan]] (or convergence plan) are terms used to describe a method whereby Israel creates a future Palestinian state of it's own design as foreseen by the Allon plan, to minimize the amount of land on which a Palestinian state would exist by fixing facts on the ground to affect future negotiations.{{sfn|Harris|Ferry|2017|p=211|ps='''{{red| ?}}'''}}

[[File:AllonDrobles.jpg|thumb|1967 Allon Plan and 1978 Drobles Plan{{sfn|Abu-Lughod|1981|p=61(V)}} ]]

According to professor Saeed Rahnema, the Allon, Drobles and Sharon plans envisaged "the establishment of settlements on the hilltops surrounding Palestinian towns and villages and the creation of as many Palestinian enclaves as possible." while many aspects formed the basis of all the failed "peace plans" that ensued.{{sfn|Rahnema|2014}} The [[Allon Plan]], the [[Matityahu Drobles|Drobles]] [[World Zionist Organization]] plan, [[Menachem Begin]]'s plan, [[Benjamin Netanyahu]]'s "Allon Plus" plan, the [[2000 Camp David Summit]], and Sharon's vision of a Palestinian state all foresaw a territory surrounded, divided, and, ultimately, controlled by Israel,{{efn|"Israel responded to the second intifada with a strategy of collective punishment aimed at a return to the logic of Oslo, whereby a weak Palestinian leadership would acquiesce to Israeli demands and a brutalized population would be compelled to accept a "state" made up of a series of Bantustans. Though the language may have changed slightly, the same structure that has characterized past plans remains. The Allon plan, the WZO plan, the Begin plan, Netanyahu's "Allon Plus" plan, Barak's "generous offer," and Sharon's vision of a Palestinian state all foresaw Israeli control of significant West Bank territory, a Palestinian existence on minimal territory surrounded, divided, and, ultimately, controlled by Israel, and a Palestinian or Arab entity that would assume responsibility for internal policing and civil matters." {{harv|Cook|Hanieh|2006|pp=346–347}}}}{{efn|The 1968 Allon Plan called for placing settlements in sparsely populated lands of the Jordan River Valley, thus ensuring Jewish demographic presence in the farthest location within biblical Israel. This was later complemented by the 1978 Drobles Plan, named after its author Matityahu Drobles, which called for a "belt of settlements in strategic locations … throughout the whole land of Israel … for security and by right." The logic of the Drobles Plan actually guided the wave of settlements that occurred in the 1990s, thus turning the settlements into an integral element of Israel's tactical control over and surveillance of Palestinians in the West Bank.