Analysis: Drawing Israel's borders

[Violet_Crumble]

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza - and the wider disengagement plan of which it is part - represents a major shift in the political landscape of the Middle East of a kind that is seen only every decade or so.

It remains to be seen whether it also represents an opportunity to clear the way for a final two-state agreement or is an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take matters into his own hands and draw Israel's final borders unilaterally.

Given the way that facts on the ground in the Middle East tend to determine the politics, the betting has to be that, without a major push by the United States and major concessions by each side, Mr Sharon's circling of the wagons will be the shape of things to come for the next decade.

Permanent borders?

At the end of the disengagement process, Mr Sharon will have got out of Gaza, often regarded as an optional extra even by settlers who think of the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and Israel's by right either by gift from God or by right of conquest in war.

He will have evacuated four small settlements in the northern West Bank but will have consolidated existing major settlement blocs (Ariel, Maale Adumim and others), which the Bush administration now accepts will not be given up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4141358.stm

[tucoramirez2005]

1. This is not a major shift

It is just the beginning.

The Palestinians are expecting much more.

[bemildred]

2. I keep wanting to call it the "derangement process",

but I know that's wrong.

More seriously, I see no reason to think that Jabba will suddenly start to govern by consensus, regardless of what anybody else does.

I must agree also that this is not a major shift, although it is important. The consequences seem rather unpredictable, given the general state of inequilibrium in the Middle East.