“Like a whale that has lost its sense of direction, you are storming the shore, storming itagain and again, wanting to commit suicide!” cried Haim Ramon excitedly from the rostrum ofthe Labor party to his party colleagues, in one of the great moments of his life.
That was in January 1994. Ramon was then Minister of Health. He wanted to enact a NationalHealth Insurance law, contrary to the will of his colleagues. “I, with my limited power, ampushing you back into the sea. And you do not want to go, and you do not want to go. You insist oncommitting suicide!”
Now Ramon is pushing in the opposite direction. He is trying to beach the whale.
He is doing this by promoting a political plan that bears the grandiose title “UnilateralSeparation”. Israel will not conduct any negotiations with the Palestinians and will make noeffort to reach an agreement with them. It will withdraw the army unilaterally from most of theWest Bank and the Gaza Strip, deciding on its own where the border between itself and thePalestinian territory will be. The settlements, where most of the settlers live, will beannexed to Israel, the others will be evacuated. Between Israel and the Palestinianterritories a barrier will be erected that will be defended by the army. All the other issueswill be postponed indefinitely, until the Palestinians are ready to accept the Israeliterms.
That sounds logical and looks simple. It’s exactly what is likely to convince those who do notwant to get to the bottom of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it is far from simple.
Of course, the Palestinians will not accept any Israeli plan that will be executed withoutagreement and without negotiations. If there were any chance of the Palestinians acceptingthis plan, there would be negotiations about it. The very fact that the idea of negotiations isbeing rejected shows that there is no chance of it’s being accepted by the other side.
For lack of having any alternative, the Palestinians will resist, of course, by the force ofarms to a plan that will wrench away great tracts of the land on which they want to set up theirstate (which comprises, one must remember, only 22% of what was Palestine before 1947). Thegame of percentages (“only 10%”, “only 8%”) is ludicrous – it’s not only percentages thatcounts, but their location. The “settlement blocs” cut, and not by accident, deep into thePalestinian territory and tear it apart.
It is not by accident, either, that Ramon has not produced a map – and neither has anyone of theother proponents of this plan.
Every Palestinian understands that the “temporary” line will become a permanent border,along which new settlements will spring up. It will be impossible to move this border in thefuture without war. Therefore, a permanent state of war will prevail. The “Ramon Line” willnot stop suicide bombers, mortars and Katyushas.
On the other hand – the idea that the settlers will evacuate dozens of settlements withoutarmed resistance is a pipe-dream. There is at present no government in Israel – neither of theLikud, nor of Labor, nor of both together – that would dare to remove even one single settlementfor such a plan.
This is a hopeless plan. So why does Ramon put it forward? He does not seriously intend it to beexecuted. It serves a quite different purpose: to help him to return to a central position inhis party, among whose ruins people like Burg, Ben-Eliezer, not to mention Peres, are runningamok. Ramon has almost been forgotten. He hopes to return with the help of a grandiose plan and a”public movement”.
The same hope lives in the heart of the real author of this plan, Shlomo Ben-Ami. His is a sadstory. The boy from a Moroccan harbor-town has become a brilliant professor of modern Spanishhistory, a friend of kings and nobles, and looked like a rising star on the firmament of theparty. Unfortunately he succumbed to the temptation of joining the disastrous Barakgovernment. He stood at Barak’s side when the former Chief-of-Staff, with a mixture ofbaseless arrogance and hopeless ignorance, caused the collapse of the negotiations with thePalestinians. In order to exonerate himself and his boss, Ben-Ami spread the mendaciouslegends of the “generous Barak offers” and “Arafat does not want peace”. The new plan is basedon this misrepresentation.
But – if this is the crux of the matter – if there is no partner for peace, if an eternal war isexpected – who needs Ramon and Ben-Ami? Who needs the pitiful Labor Party? If this is so, thepeople will elect Sharon, or worse – Netanyahu, or even worse – one of the prophets of”transfer”.
How did Ramon put it when he spoke about the Labor Party seven years ago? “Like a whale that haslost its sense of direction, you want to commit suicide!”