Attached is an unsigned editorial that I think readers will find
fascinating.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m


Last update - 02:26 06/03/2006
Not good enough
By Haaretz Editorial

The unilateral approach is not unreasonable in the absence of a Palestinian partner for an agreement, but anyone who proposes withdrawing to defensible borders, getting out of the Palestinians' lives, liberating them from the regime of checkpoints and apartheid in the territories, and returning most of the settlers to Israel within its pre-1967 borders must propose a plan that has geographic and demographic logic - not a temporary political compromise that leaves the problem burning on a steady flame. If Israel believes that what is best for it is to draw its own borders, with the support of the international community, it must aspire to viable ones.

With the elections approaching, Kadima has remembered what it was founded for, and its leaders are promising, albeit somewhat weakly, that they intend to carry out an additional unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank after the elections, while canceling Israel's commitment to the road map. While the disengagement from Gaza involved withdrawing to the recognized international border, a kind of declaration that the era of settlement had ended, the withdrawal from the West Bank is much more than a political declaration. Its role is to enable the establishment of two states, which may in the future be led by reality to live in harmony and mutual affinity.

The number of seats that Kadima is receiving in the polls, combined with those received by other parties that favor leaving the territories, indicate that there is broad public support for another move, and a major one. The obstacle on the path to carrying out another withdrawal is not Hamas, because ending the occupation is a necessity that does not depend on the nature of the occupied party's leadership. Rather, it is the abstract term "settlement blocs," which has gained too much weight in Israeli discourse and appears to reflect a new mistaken idee fixe. The number of "blocs," as well as their size, changes constantly, and the appetite for annexing territory has not waned for a moment.

Avi Dichter, one of Kadima's senior members, talks of the Hebron-Kiryat Arba bloc, the Karnei Shomron-Kedumim bloc, the Ofra-Beit El bloc and three other blocs that would not be evacuated. This is not a withdrawal and it is not even worth discussing: It is merely talk about ending the occupation without ending it.

Simple fairness requires presenting a withdrawal plan that does not remove people from their houses in dribs and drabs, but rather makes the 1967 borders its basis, along with those adjustments required by genuine necessity - not by "facts on the ground" established in error. There is no reason to postpone dividing Jerusalem, when every year that passes makes it an even harder demographic mixture to separate. There is no reason to annex the Jordan Valley, which is a vital land reserve for the Palestinian Authority. There is no reason to annex the entire Ma'aleh Adumim bloc, which cuts the West Bank into pieces and makes the division into two states a stingy pretense.

The claim that Kadima has no platform and no plan, and is no more than a random collection of people seeking a safe Knesset seat, is unfair. Ehud Olmert is apparently determined to carry out another withdrawal. His proposal to exchange the road map for a unilateral plan with international backing is encouraging, and makes more sense than plans that aspire to topple Hamas. But so far, the plan he has proposed is insufficient.


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