In Response to John Bolton and the Three-State Option

On Wednesday, January 7th, 2009, the writer John Bolton published an article in the al-Quds newspaper entitled “The Three State Solution.” In that article, he suggests a political solution to the Palestinian problem, which would be to integrate the Gaza Strip into Egypt and the West Bank into Jordan, in the belief that this will bring peace to the region.

Bolton’s article was written against the background of an ugly and bloody war taking place in Gaza. To stop this war, he proposes a political plan of liquidation as a solution to end the Palestinian problem once and for all. His proposal is capped by a preordained victory by the Israeli army over the Palestinian resistance, and he assumes that the political consequence of that war would be this dangerous plan.

The proposed plan is both old and new, and has begun to pick up momentum in Israeli politics under different names, such as the “no-partner” theory or the “unilateral separation” theory. This is all in the context of an attempt to abort Palestinian national rights, and to show the Palestinians as a people unqualified for independence and undeserving of a state of their own.

I had expected the writer of the article, Mr. Bolton, who was a candidate to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, to touch on the subject of the massacres and bloodbaths that the occupation forces in Gaza committed against the civilian inhabitants. Or that he would reveal the military, security and moral level to which the state of Israel had fallen in its destruction of the tiny Gaza Strip, which is under siege and bursting with inhabitants, as rockets and bombs fall on the heads of humanity, and war crimes are committed in plain sight of everyone.

I had expected him to ask for a reckoning of this state, which in an organized fashion, brought so much death and destruction to the children of our Palestinian people, and destroyed their political, national and human rights.

Bolton’s proposal is harsher and more severe than the war. It is an echo of the Israeli strategies put in place to separate Gaza from the West Bank and integrate them into Egypt and Jordan, ending and erasing the Palestinian problem.

This plan was revealed in 1989 under the title “Israel’s Options for Peace,” prepared by a group of Israeli strategists and researchers at Tel Aviv University. Sharon showed his intentions for this plan when he decided to unilaterally withdraw the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli planning to cut their ties with Gaza is a step in an all-encompassing strategy which began during the occupation in 1967. Since then, Israel has maintained the separation between the West Bank and Gaza through different political and security means, such as leaving Jordanian laws in effect in the West Bank while leaving Egyptian laws in effect in Gaza, and substituting some of those laws with military statutes.

The Palestinians know that the Israeli aggression has far-reaching goals, which include blocking the path to setting up a sovereign, independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the entire world came together and supported bringing this state to reality.

The aggression is also aimed at forcing the Palestinians to accept an Israeli solution of liquidating the Palestinian problem and to accept the application of the Three-State Solution.

The Palestinian people know full well that the war on Gaza is not just a war on Hamas, but it is a war on the Palestinian people in entirety, and on their identity, national unity, national geography and existence.

Perhaps the Three-State Solution proposed by the writer, a political personality who worked in the Clinton and Bush administrations and as the American representative in the United Nations, doesn’t come from a vacuum, but comes from the framework of reaping the benefits of the Israeli military war against Gaza under the banner of changing the security reality in the Strip and reinforcing the separation between Gaza and the West Bank, considering it a separate entity while purposely ignoring that it is under occupation.

The Palestinian people have repelled and defeated these types of plans with their resolve and intifada. In the Oslo agreement, Israel was forced to put this plan aside in the face of President Arafat’s insistence that the Oslo agreement include a phrase that confirms that the West Bank and Gaza are one geographic unit, and he insisted that the Israeli army withdraw from Gaza and Jericho at the same time.

The writer produced this plan from the Israeli agenda, in order to circulate it anew, under the assumption that the bloody war in Gaza would open new political room for maneuver whereby it could be applied in reality.

Israel is attempting to deal with the Gaza Strip under the authority of Hamas in what it considers a condition that allows it to tame it in its weakness, according to what Ephraim Halevy said: Hamas is beaten but not defeated. This is in preparation of signing an agreement based on new arrangements in a Gaza Strip completely separated from the West Bank, and creating facts on the ground intended to tie Gaza with Egypt.

The danger of the Three-State Solution is on the horizon, and the solution of keeping a separate administrative and political authority in the Gaza Strip is an Israeli solution to prevent the return of Palestinian refugees, who form the majority of its inhabitants, and to prevent what the Israelis call the danger of the demographic time bomb.

At the Israeli Herzliya Conference in 2007, one of the strategic topics discussed was the separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank with the intention of increasing the rift in the fabric of Palestinian society and deepening the crisis among the Palestinian political powers, which would lead to annihilation of the Palestinian dream of building a state and nation.

The Egyptian president, in his latest speech, clarified that Egypt will not fall into the trap of integrating Gaza into Egypt. In this he expressed the danger of what the future holds politically, in light of the Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip. He especially noted that raising the economic blockade and opening the Rafah crossing point without ending the occupation of the Strip would lead to them to fall into this snare.

The writer gambles on his assumption that an Israeli victory in Gaza would throw the West Bank into the embrace of Jordan after Israel annexed the Palestinian land it required, along with the settlements and the separation wall, and completed the judaization of the rest of Jerusalem.

The writer didn’t speak of Israeli responsibility of for not adhering to political signed agreements between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, and for changing reality on the ground in order to destroy the Two-State solution.

The writer didn’t speak of the legal responsibility that Israel bears for not adhering to the decisions of International Law and completely ignoring lawful United Nations resolutions and its acting in the region as a country above the law.

Finally, the Three-State solution is an option the Israelis are trying to apply but they have failed, because Palestinian nationalism and the plan for an independent state have become the strategic choice for the entire world, and Israel isn’t the only player on the field, despite the imbalance of power.