Dated for Saturday, posted 121203 online at
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Likud
Debate: A Palestinian State to Save Israel
By JAMES BENNET, NYT, December 13, 2003
JERUSALEM,
Dec. 12 — In this place that often seems burdened by the past, it is the
future that is suddenly bearing down.
Within the Likud, the dominant right-wing party, leaders who once
advocated holding every inch of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and who for
three years argued that Israel could make no concessions because it lacked a
Palestinian peace partner, are now debating how quickly to concede how much of
that territory.
The
Likud is publicly grappling with a prospect long raised by Israel's left: that
within a few years Arabs are likely be the majority in Israel and its occupied
territories, and that they may switch from demanding their own state to
demanding the right to vote in Israel, threatening its Jewish identity. The result is a
breathtaking inversion:
Though the Likud's platform opposes a Palestinian state west of the Jordan
River as a threat to Israel, some members of the party say they have concluded
that only
the creation of such a state can save Israel as a Jewish
democracy.
The
debate within Likud is the most surprising development in a fall that has
brought a two-month lull in the violence here and, with it, a series of
official and unofficial initiatives for peace.
Terje
Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special envoy here, told the Security Council
on Friday that peacemakers had a "narrow
window of opportunity," though he called the situation "very
fragile."
In
Washington on Friday,
the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, sat down with Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell. Mr. Shalom told reporters he hoped for a meeting "in the near
future" between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers. Mr. Powell met
Thursday with Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian who worked on an unofficial peace
initiative.
As
the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, struggles to cement a cease-fire
among Palestinian factions, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is acting
like a man in a hurry. The days when Mr. Sharon stressed reasons not to act —
like his demand for seven days of absolute quiet — are past. Now he is eager to meet with his
Palestinian counterpart. He is sitting privately with members of the
opposition Labor Party he had all but ignored. He is even talking about
unilaterally removing some of the settlers he worked so hard, for so many
years, to place in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr.
Sharon has said he will clarify his intentions soon, perhaps in a speech
planned for the middle of next week.
On
the right and left, many politicians believe that Mr. Sharon's
hints
may be political and diplomatic posturing, to satisfy the Bush administration,
to restore his sagging popularity, or perhaps to distract attention from a
widening corruption investigation.
Shimon
Peres, the Labor Party leader, who met with Mr. Sharon this week, said he was
skeptical. "You know, hints are not a policy," Mr. Peres said in a telephone
interview on Friday. "It's like all the time in Israel they say we have hints
of oil. The difference between hints of oil, and oil, is quite a major
one."
Mr.
Peres
said that there had been a change within the Likud,
an acceptance of the need for a Palestinian state, but that it had yet to
formulate a policy to express that. "The
Likud doesn't anymore have an ideology," he said, "but it doesn't have an
alternative."
Mr.
Sharon's advisers say he is committed to the road map, the peace initiative
promoted by the Bush administration. They say he is formulating possible
unilateral steps to take if, in six
months or so,
that initiative fails. At the same time, a senior Israeli official said, Mr.
Sharon is seeking to adjust the Likud to a political realignment in Israel.
"One of the things Sharon is doing is to inculcate a new approach," he said.
"The dream of Greater Israel is no longer there. We have to adjust our
sights."
Palestinians
argue that any unilateral withdrawal would be a cynical attempt to unload as
many Palestinians as possible into as little territory as possible. "All they're arguing is, how big a
reservation do they want to give to the Palestinians," said Michael Tarazi, a
lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Mr.
Qurei has criticized any possible unilateral Israeli action, while also saying
he welcomes that "Israelis
are beginning to think of a solution."
Mr.
Qurei says he believes that he can reach a deal with Mr. Sharon. More than two
years ago, he and Mr. Peres worked out an informal understanding that would
include an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank to create an
interim Palestinian state. Mr. Sharon, who has known Mr. Qurei for years, has
said privately that he backed the idea.
But
while Mr. Peres and Mr. Qurei envisioned rapid progress toward a final
settlement, Mr. Sharon envisioned freezing the handoff of territory at that
interim point for
as many as 12 years.
Some diplomats here say they believe that his talk of unilateral action is his
means of pressing Mr. Qurei to accept his terms.
The
Bush administration also opposes unilateral action, and it is pressing Israel
and the Palestinians to fulfill their commitments to the plan Mr. Bush
advocates.
Israel
was supposed to freeze growth of settlements and remove the dozens of clusters
of trailers that settlers have erected on West Bank hills since 2001. But
though Mr. Sharon speaks now of possibly evacuating some settlements, those
outposts are continuing to multiply and settlements continue to grow. Both sides say a new outbreak of
violence could upend any talks. In the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday,
Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded seven Jews who evaded Israeli restrictions
to visit a site they revere as the tomb of the Biblical
Joseph.
Fanned
by Mr. Sharon, the debate over a unilateral withdrawal broke into the open a
week ago with a newspaper interview by his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Mr.
Olmert, one of the so-called Likud princes bred to the dream of a Greater
Israel, suggested that Israel might have to part with even some neighborhoods
of Jerusalem. Mr. Olmert has been
attacked by Likud absolutists. But he has a reputation as a canny pragmatist,
and many Israeli politicians interpreted his move as recognition of where the
debate is headed.
At
the beginning of the year, Amram Mitzna, Labor's candidate for prime minister,
was derided on the right for proposing a complete, immediate withdrawal from
Gaza. Yet in a telephone
interview on Friday, Yuval Steinitz, a rising Likud leader who is chairman of
Parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, said he would be willing
to consider a complete unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, if that is
what Mr. Sharon proposes.
"From
a strategic perspective, we are between
a rock and a hard place,"
Mr. Steinitz said. He said the
demographic argument
demanded an Israeli withdrawal, while Israel's security
needs
demanded it retain at least some of the West Bank. "Our aim should be to find
the golden path, to pull out from the most populated areas, under minimal
conditions that will enable us to defend ourselves," he
said.
Unlike
some members of Likud, Mr. Steinitz never argued for keeping the West Bank and
Gaza out of a conviction that God had deeded them to the Jews. Mr. Sharon has
also advanced reasons of security, rather than belief, for holding on to the
territories.
The
Iraq war has not changed their views. Mr. Sharon's advisers say it is far too
soon to conclude that Iraq will not eventually menace Israel again. What is prompting the change appears
to be concern about demographics and politics, including Likud's own growth
from opposition to governing party.
"When
reality and vision meet, inevitably there is a mellowing down of the
vision,"
said Dan Meridor, another of the Likud princes, who before the last elections
served as an adviser to Mr. Sharon on the peace effort. "It is always less
than the dream." Mr. Meridor had
been a lonely voice in the Likud warning of the demographic shift.
The
figures are striking. About 5.2 million Jews and 1.3 million Arabs are Israeli
citizens, while roughly 3.5 million more Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. The Arab birth rate exceeds the Jewish
rate.
"If
we don't have a border within a short period of time, one day we will get up
and hear Arafat or his successor say, `I don't want a Palestinian state. I
want just one thing: Annex me,' " Mr. Meridor said. Put another way, he said: "The problem
now is not that we lose. The problem is that we might win."