The new partition plan

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The gates of Gaza have been barely shut behind us, the settlements' debris is still strewn across the territory. Yet Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already is launching relations with the Palestinian Authority in the post-disengagement era with threats of disrupting West Bank elections should Hamas decide to contend in them.

This is the main message Sharon brought to the UN General Assembly and reiterated in every official meeting.

In demanding Hamas' exclusion, Sharon is defying PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' main effort to integrate the opposition and terror organizations into politics. Abbas says this is how they would become part of the establishment and fit in gradually to form "one authority, one law and one gun." Sharon also is placing the American administration in a dilemma between its two main principles: advancing Arab democracy in general, and Palestinian democracy in particular, versus the relentless war on terror and its organizations.


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Now the issue of the Palestinian elections has risen, and Sharon is again talking of partition. In Gaza, the Palestinians will do as they wish, while in the West Bank, they will be forced to accept Israel's dictates. If they don't, their candidates and voters will have difficulty moving on the blocked roads.

Clearly Sharon is using the separation of Gaza from the West Bank as a bargaining chip in his relations with Abbas, like a big stick perpetuating Israeli supremacy even after the disengagement. It is clear that he is washing his hands of the forgotten clause in the Oslo Accords, that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are "one territorial unit." However, his consistent policy raises suspicion that there is more at play here than bullying tactics toward the PA. It is clear that someone is laying the ground for a new order to replace the accepted idea of establishing one state divided into two parts, "Eastern Palestine" in the West Bank and "Western Palestine" in the Gaza Strip.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/626750.html