Sharon's nightmare

If Sharon is to be left unchecked by a president fearful of his re-election prospects and unwilling to provoke his Jewish and right-wing Christian constituencies, then the two-state solution is dead. As with the refugees, the principle of settling the future of Jerusalem by mutual negotiation will be lost. Jerusalem will never again be part of an independent Palestine. The only remaining option is a single state.......

A Palestinian state on Sharon's terms will not only be unsustainable, it will not be a state at all. The Gaza model is to be copied in the West Bank, reducing the territory to isolated ghettoes in Ramallah, Jenin-Nablus and Bethlehem-Hebron. Bush may publicly state his desire for a Palestinian state that is "viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent", but the president has already demonstrated that he will never intervene against Sharon's deliberate destruction of that state.

Sharon's vision for an independent Palestine is akin to the Bantustans established as homelands for black South Africans in 1951. Essentially ethnic reservations, these Bantustans were also depicted to the international community as a step towards decolonization and a solution to South Africa's demographic problem which, as in Palestine, saw the ruling minority outnumbered by an undesirable majority. It soon became clear, however, that the scheme was designed to legitimize the expulsion of the black population. The strategy collapsed and the world rallied to defeat Apartheid....

Last Wednesday, Sharon publicly declared the roadmap dead. He has left no room to maneuver even for his allies who have claimed the existing peace process could accommodate his plan. Yet the Likud vote against him demonstrates that the disengagement plan, bad as it is, is still a step too far for the Israeli right. The referendum can only convince the Palestinians that there is no hope for the peace process and that if two states are impossible, they have no option but to struggle for their freedom, survival and equal rights within a single state.....

http://www.amin.org/eng/mustafa_barghouthi/2004/may13.html