Summary
General and minister of agriculture in Begin’s government, to whom Said says Begin left the post-Camp David settlements project; quoted from Ma’ariv, January 26, 1979, on settlements, roads and military infrastructure in the West Bank.
Details
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Said identifies Sharon as General Arik Sharon, minister of agriculture and the country’s most outspoken superhawk, whose record includes several murderous raids on Palestinian civil settlements; right after the Camp David conference Begin started to press for more settlements, a project he left in Sharon’s capable hands (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.228 / printed p.207).
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In an interview in Ma’ariv on January 26, 1979, Sharon put the road-and-settlement plan this way: “Not only [should there be] settlements: there should be roads which will ensure the territorial continuity between the towns and settlements. And not only roads; a wide infrastructure of army camps and military training belts” (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.231 / printed p.210).
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Said’s gloss on the plan Sharon describes: thus continuity for Zionism, discontinuity for Palestinians (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.231 / printed p.210).
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As a young ambitious officer, Ariel Sharon led the special Israeli commando force Unit 101, for which the al-Azazmeh Bedouin — driven out again between 1950 and 1954 after succeeding in returning to the Negev — became the favourite target (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.228-229).
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In Pappe, Chapters 11-12: Sharon’s provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif in September 2000 compounded Arafat’s humiliation and triggered the Second Intifada (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.280). The 2003 Road Map happily adopted the consensual Israeli position embodied in Sharon’s policies (prime minister 2001 and again 2003 until his illness and departure in 2006); turning the Gaza withdrawal of August 2005 into a media bonanza fooled the West that he was a man of good intentions, while the army still controlled Gaza from outside (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.283). His spokesperson Dov Weissglas is Chapter 12’s first epigraph on freezing the peace process (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.286), and in the 2006 elections Sharon’s answer to the ‘demographic problem’ was the Gaza pullout (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.287-288). Earlier, on occupied Huj’s land Sharon later built his 5000-dunam ranch (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.179-181).
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In Makdisi, Sharon’s stated policy objective, reaffirmed by Ehud Olmert, is the separation of Jews from non-Jews against the “Demographic problem”: “The Jews have one small country, Israel, and must do everything so that this state remains a Jewish state in the future as well” (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.48). His adviser Arnon Sofer expected separation to drive Palestinian emigration — “voluntary transfer” (PDF p.48).
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In Makdisi, part 2: Sharon’s September 2000 stroll across Haram al-Sharif, accompanied by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers, sparked the Second Intifada (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.137). His later unilateral programme — the wall as permanent border and Gaza “disengagement” — came with a Bush-administration agreement ensuring permanent Israeli control of large West Bank settlement blocs and all of Jerusalem, and “the total refusal of allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Israel” (Sharon, 2004, PDF p.139); twice as many settlers moved to the West Bank in 2005 as were pulled out of Gaza (PDF p.140).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Menachem Begin, Gush Emunim, Camp David Accords, Israel