Sharon’s “Transformation”

By the end of 2002, the Palestinians and Israelis were both showing signs of wearying from the ongoing violence. For the Palestinians, however, it was more than that. Over two years of violence had devastated their lives. None were spared these effects, but they had nothing to show for their experiences. Indeed, the Palestinians’ position had gotten much worse over the course of the intifada. In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield, Ariel Sharon, confident he had severely crippled both the Palestinians’ pseudo-government and their civil society infrastructure, began adopting new tactics.

Sharon lifted two ideas from the Labor Party. The first, which he began implementing just after Operation Defensive Shield, was the so-called “separation barrier.” The second, which would take a while longer to get rolling, was the idea of “unilateral disengagement.”

 

A section of the West Bank barrier near Jerusalem

The separation barrier idea had first been floated by Ehud Barak, and preliminary plans for it had been drawn up during his administration. Sharon re-drew the map the barrier would take, but essentially kept the idea. For Sharon the barrier was a perfect tool. Politically, it was going to be very difficult to argue against what appeared to be a purely defensive and even non-violent response to Palestinian terrorist attacks inside Israel. Sharon correctly calculated that most people would pay little attention to the route along which the barrier would actually be built. They would not notice how it sliced the West Bank nearly in half; how it extended well into Palestinian areas, cutting West Bank Palestinians off, not from Israelis but from each other; how it completely encircled some Palestinian areas, like the town of Qalqilya; and how its construction would require a large number of existing Palestinian homes, farm and grazing lands to be destroyed.

 

In some parts, the wall is "only" a very high fence

The projected route of the barrier has been altered several times by the Israeli Supreme Court, but that court has implicitly expressed its tolerance of the principle of building the barrier, and that it will surround the so-called major settlement blocs. It is in this that we can witness the reality of Sharon’s alleged “transformation” from a brutal warrior to a “man of peace.”

Sharon had realized that no matter how bad the fighting with the Palestinians got, the world, and more importantly the United States, was not prepared to tolerate an Israeli refusal to allow a Palestinian state to come into existence. This did not, as it turns out, truly contradict Sharon’s own ambitions. He had long since known that Israel would not be able to simply drive away the nearly four million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Throughout his years in government, Sharon focused on building up the three major settlement blocs of Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel. If Israel could hold on to these, they could maintain control of much of the crucial West Bank water resources, as well as have their settlements, and protecting soldiers, within easy striking distance of virtually all the population centers of the Palestinian state.

The route Sharon laid out for the wall accomplished this and more. The “more” allowed Sharon to appear to be compromising consistently, while never having to worry that his true bottom line would be threatened. Sharon then laid out a “peace plan” wherein the Palestinians would get only 42% of the West Bank. From there, Sharon hoped that he would find a way not only to legitimize continued Israeli control of as much land as possible, as well as the Jordan Valley. Thus the envisioned Palestinian state, whatever its size, would be blanketed on both sides by Israel.

In the world of diplomacy, what was most emphasized was that Sharon was talking about the creation of a Palestinian state. No one took the 42% offer seriously; everyone knew Sharon would negotiate the number. In this way, Sharon could create a Palestinian state that was at Israel’s mercy and call it “viable”, even if it was not.