http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=65685&mador=4&datee=01/10/00
A struggle for the open spaces
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz, 01/10/2000
Next week, Israel is set to hand over another 6 percent of the West
Bank to full Palestinian control. This will complete the transfer of lands
in the framework of the first two stages of the withdrawal
(redeployment), and the Palestinian Authority will then have control of
42 percent of the West Bank. Some half of this land will be under full
Palestinian control, in other words area A, while the remaining half will
be defined as Area B, in which the Palestinians have civilian control but
security control remains in Israeli hands. The two sides are still in
disagreement as to the nature of territories to be handed over next
week. Will they be populated areas near Jerusalem, as the Palestinians
are demanding (referring to the large urban neighborhoods of a-Ram,
al-Azariya and Abu Dis), or will they be empty hilly areas in the heart
of Samaria or adjacent to the Jordan Valley, as Israel is proposing?
It is safe to assume that this dispute will be solved, but it provides a
foretaste of the main struggle with Israel over the fate of the remaining
60 percent of the West Bank, which is about to begin. Apparently, Israel
and the Palestinians are split on a host of well-known issues, but in
reality, there is little left to discuss on two of these matters: On the
question of statehood, Israel will agree to the establishment of a
Palestinian state in the territories, and on the matter of refugees there
will be no solution because Israel will not agree to the return of
Palestinians to its borders. What remain are the questions of Jerusalem,
the Jewish settlements and the borders, which are in fact all one
question: Territory.
In other words, separating Israel and the Palestinians ultimately comes
down to one central problem of how to divide the land. The struggle
over this question is split into two stages by the agreement: A battle
over the third redeployment, after which Israel is to remain in control
only of the settlements and "military areas" in the territories, and a
battle over the final status arrangement, in other words, over the
permanent borders between the state of Israel and the Palestinians.
These facts form the backdrop to an internal Palestinian debate on how
to conduct the negotiations with Israel. Some members of the
Palestinian negotiating team believe that there is no point in fighting with
Israel for full control of the populated areas surrounding Jerusalem
because Israel does not really want to control these areas. In their
opinion, it is important to fight even at this stage, for the 6 percent that is
to be handed over next week: for the remote and empty areas in the
Hebron hills and Samaria, the Jordan Valley and Judean desert, because
these are the territories that hold the potential for developing the West
Bank.
These territories, the vast majority of which are under full Israeli rule
(Area C), are vital for the Palestinians, because only there can they set
up development factories, expand the growing West Bank Arab
settlements, and most importantly, settle 1948 refugees from Gaza or
abroad. Two recent events have demonstrated to the Palestinians how
important these territories are. One is the opening of the safe passage
between Gaza and the West Bank, which has already been used by
some 20,000 Gazans coming to the West Bank in search of work. Most
are refugees trying to escape the hardships of life in besieged Gaza. But
the welcome they receive in the West Bank is not warm. They are
viewed as competition in the work force and the cause of social
problems. The Palestinian authorities have realized that they must plan
carefully for the possible absorption of hundreds of thousands of Gazans
into the West Bank, and that the only viable option is to set up new
development towns for them in the empty expanses of the Jordan Valley
and Judean Desert.
The second piece of evidence highlighting the importance of these
areas is the increasing hardship experienced by Palestinian refugees
living in Lebanon. If in Syria, Jordan and other Arab states the refugee
problem can wait a while, in Lebanon the situation is potentially
explosive. As the negotiations with Syria progress, the Lebanese are
demanding that the refugees be removed from their territory. The
Palestinian refugees themselves do not want to stay in Lebanon and are
eager to emigrate, but have nowhere to go. A few have managed to get
visas to various Scandinavian countries and to Canada, but the vast
majority are sitting on a keg of dynamite. Every day, there are reports in
the Palestinian press of tension and clashes in the refugee camps in
Lebanon. A senior PA official said last week that there were talks with
Israel on immediately moving several dozens refugees from Lebanon to
the Palestinian Authority, headed by Sultan Abu-Einein (the Fatah
leader sentenced to death by a Lebanese court and hiding somewhere
near Tyre). In the near future, some 100,000 to 200,000 refugees will be
forced to leave Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority believes that the
only place to absorb them will be those empty spaces in the West Bank,
over which the main struggle with Israel is about to begin.
