Palestinian Geography and the Peace Process: A Cartographic Addendum

Remy_3D · Post time 17-8-2004 12:02 AM

These maps add a graphic dimension that will help readers understand just what has, and has not, gone on in the Middle East peace process. In the years since the Oslo process began in 1993, Israel has claimed to adhere to a "land for peace" principle, asserting, in effect, that in return for secure national borders it would relinquish control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Implicit was the idea that in those territories a Palestinian state would be established.

The existence of the territories dates back to a 1947 United Nations mandated partition of Palestine into two national entities, one Jewish and one Arab. Neither side accepted that division but, following Israel's war against its Arab neighbors in 1948, a military cease-fire divided Palestine among the Jewish state and Jordan and Egypt; the latter two administering, respectively, what became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many Palestinians who, before 1948, lived in what became Israel, were driven out during the war and by Israel's seizure of land and commercial and residential property. They, and the indigenous Palestinian Arab population, now stateless, were confined to these territories, often in hideous refugee camps. (It was in these camps that the modem Palestinian national movements were born.) A further series of wars between Israel and its neighbors culminated in the 1967 seizure and occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Those territories are shaded on Map 1.

In 1993, following years of Palestinian uprising (the Intifada), peace negotiations began with the Palestinian side agreeing to accept the 1967 borders. The newly formed Palestinian Authority was given a kind of "sovereignty" over a number of towns and began to function as a government. At best, the seven years of sporadic negotiations were rocky, and it was not until 2000 that so-called Final Status talks began. Meanwhile, with the acquiescence of a succession of Israeli governments, both Likud and Labor, and often with their encouragement, support, and direct participation, many settlements were being built, mainly by Orthodox Jews who believed they were occupying the legendary ancient Jewish dominions of Judea and Samaria. This aggressive approach to settling Jews, in what are supposed to be Palestinian districts, was intended to create a new political reality. According to the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), using data supplied by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, by 2000, a pproximately 200,000 Jews have settled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 78 percent of whom were born in the U.S. or Europe. Public and private Israeli housing starts in the occupied territories are running at twice the per capita national rate: an average of 2,500 per year for the five most recent years for which data are available. The settler population of the Palestinian territories has doubled since 1993!

But the settlements never were an accidental consequence of a movement of the religious right. Civilian Israeli settlement throughout the occupied territories has been policy since the Six-Day War in 1967. The late Moshe Dayan, military commander in that war and the chief architect of the settlement policy said that their construction was essential "not because [settlements] can ensure security better than the army, but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the IDF [Israel's army] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population, rather than one defending its citizens in their homeland."

This was a central assumption of Israeli policy as the Oslo process began. It is clear that peace process or not, the settlers, and both Likud and Labor governments, believe they are there to stay.

As the growth of the settlements accelerated, Ehud Barak, then Israeli Prime Minister, confronting the "new reality" revised his understanding of Oslo and demanded territory occupied by sixty-nine settlements where 85 percent of the settlers live, about 10 percent of the West Bank, shown in black on Map 2. The way the map is drawn, control of internal movement, a hallmark of national sovereignty, would be impossible. But even that was not sufficient. Israel asked for "temporary control" of another 10 percent for the "natural growth" of Israeli population. Gush Shalom, an Israel-Palestine peace movement described Barak's "temporary control" as a unique concept: "It refers to sovereign Palestinian land that will remain under Israeli military and civil control for an indefinite time. This area too, [already] contains settlements, some of them are the most extreme zealots. It is unlikely that Israel will evacuate them in, say, fifty years time." That territory appears in black on Map 3.

Under this Barak proposal, what would the Palestinians be left with? Map 4, illustrating the 80 percent of the West Bank the Prime Minister proposed for Palestinian control, shows what appears to be a continuous territory, but is actually checkered with settlement blocs, bypass roads, and roadblocks. Territory that might otherwise be used by the new Palestinian state for development and for the assimilation of exiles would be subject to settlers' "security" needs. What this means for Palestinian access to historically scarce water resources is anyone's guess. If current Israeli behavior is a guide, the needs of its citizens will get priority no matter what the cost to Palestinian public health. Finally, in a gross diminution of Palestinian sovereignty, Israel would supervise border crossings, exercising their power to prohibit travel and commerce between Palestinian districts. That was the situation at the time of the breakdown of the Clinton-sponsored Camp David peace talks in 2000. Since then, the extreme p rovocations of Ariel Sharon have led both to his election as Prime Minister and the Al-Aqsa Intifada, indeed to a situation approaching all-out war.

In 2001, Israel's territorial demands continued to escalate precipitously. While Barak's announced territorial demand was for sovereignty over 6 percent of the occupied territory, Sharon now proposes, according to the July-August 2001 Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (published by FMEP), to maintain Israeli "control" of 57 percent of the West Bank. This makes a mockery not only of the "peace process," but of the very notion of an independent Palestine. (The Palestinian geographic "Swiss cheese" that results from Israeli actions and plans can be seen in even greater detail in maps available from FMEP [less than]www.fmep.org[greater than] and in the series of maps that can be found at Le Monde Diplomatique's website [less than]www.en.monde-deplomatique.ft/maps/[greater than].

It is clear from all these maps just how cynical the peace process has been. Without a determined effort to evacuate existing settlements, cease settlement construction, and guarantee Palestinian control even in areas where Israelis reside, Palestine will be condemned to a kind of Bantustan-like arrangement yielding a pseudo-state both politically and economically dependent on Israel. That is a prescription for endless bloodshed.

In an op-ed article in the September 2 New Yark Times entitled "Separate and Unequal on the West Bank", Amira Hass, who covers the Palestinian territories for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz wrote of the consequences of Israel's policy, "Anger has accumulated in every Palestinian heart--over scarce water, over each demolished Palestinian house, over the daily humiliation of waiting for a travel permit from an Israeli officer. A small match can cause this anger to explode, and in the past year it has."

ps: link ke map tersebut telah hilang, nanti aku cari semula hehehe