BADLY KEPT SECRETS

Sharon's not-so-secret plan (Saul Singer, June 13, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

As another mass murder seems to snuff out the Aqaba summit's ray of hope, the unavoidable question screams out: When will this ever stop? At first glance, the road map now looks like a sick joke, a pathetic attempt to impose order on a conflict that has no end.

Yet within this chaos, a new structure is emerging that could well determine the sequence of events in the years to come, and their ultimate outcome for Israel. This structure is etched in invisible ink on the road map. Once described, it can be seen out in the open, but in practice it is Bush's and Sharon's secret plan. [...]

For Sharon, the road map's "independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" is not at the bottom of the slippery slope, but a brake that prevents precisely the slide that Begin fears. The deal Sharon is offering the Palestinians is a partial state in exchange for a partial peace. You don't want to renounce the "right of return" and accept Israel as a Jewish state? Fine, says Sharon, but for that all you get is a truncated state whose borders are controlled by Israel. Why would the Palestinians accept such a deal? Because they know that the only alternatives are the status quo, in which both sides bleed indefinitely, or making a full peace, neither of which they want.

Sharon's real objective is to get to the middle phase of the road map and park there until the Arab world is ready for peace, which may or may not ever happen. It is a reasonably comfortable place for a gradualist to be. Palestine may choose to be belligerent, but Israel will have a provisional border to defend and a state to hold accountable.

And that, of course, has been the point of statehood all along. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 9:47 AM