Sharon and 242

In the International Herald Tribune, Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in response to Ariel Sharon's recent op-ed in the New York Times and his reinterpretation of Resolution 242:

With an audacity that is breathtaking, Sharon offers an entirely new formulation of the keystone of all Middle East peace initiatives since the 1967 war - the UN Security Council's Resolution 242 of 1967. In the face of the resolution's explicit affirmation of "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war," Sharon proposes that 242 intended to grant Israel rights to the West Bank and Gaza that are equal to the Palestinians' rights formally recognized by the United Nations in 1947.

Resolution 242 affirms Israel's right to "secure and recognized boundaries." Sharon's unspoken assumption is that it was 242's intention to allow Israel to construe "secure borders" as applying not to minor adjustments to a pre-existing border but as giving Israel license to claim large parts of the West Bank and Gaza, if not all of them, on security grounds. Ergo, Sharon concludes, the West Bank and Gaza are not territory occupied by Israel's military but territory whose ownership - in principle, all of it - is "in dispute." Sharon is thus informing the international community that Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza is on a par with that of the Palestinians.

The international community had better take heed, for the implications of this idea are as mind-boggling as they are predictable. Given Israel's control of all of the territories, and given its overwhelming military superiority over the Palestinians, there should be little doubt about the outcome of this contest of Israeli and Palestinian "rights."

Yes, there should be little doubt: Sharon's priority has always been the crippling of Palestinian negotiating power in order to extend Israeli control over the West Bank. His stance on 242 is entirely consistent with this and undergirds his ultimate goal of purging the Palestinians from "Israel Proper". If no one steps in to stop him and the rest of Likud, Arafat's vague threat/prediction of a "disastrous explosion that will impact stability of the whole world" may come to fruition.