ISRAELIS CONSIDER WALL OF SEPARATION

Author(s): Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff Date: May 5, 2002 Page: A1 Section: National/Foreign JAMALA

CHECKPOINT, Israel - An unusual coalition of military leaders, security chiefs, intellectuals, and peace activists is rallying around a proposal that Israel wall itself off from the Palestinians.

In a country polarized by 19 months of bloodshed, the support, in the form of polls, petitions, and newspaper columns, is coming from across the political and social spectrum. The proposal is being called unilateral separation of the warring groups. In its simplest form, the plan aims to evacuate 40 to 50 isolated, hard-to-defend settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, put up a fence or other barrier between Israel and the Palestinians, and redeploy the soldiers who now defend the isolated settlements to better protect major population centers.

The idea was developed by the government of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak as a fallback plan in case the Camp David peace negotiations failed in July 2000. The plan did not take hold when the talks collapsed and Barak's government fell. Now, though, it is creating an uproar among politicians from Ramallah to Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

Here in the fields between Jenin in the West Bank and Afula in northern Israel, the plan is taking effect: Steel posts and bars, painted orange and green, run for miles along the cease-fire line of Israel's 1948 war of independence.

Elsewhere along the line, government-funded electric fences have sprung up, and some checkpoints are being remodeled to look like border crossings. Now the barrier north of Jenin is low, more than strong enough to stop any vehicle except possibly a tank, but neither tall enough nor rigged to stop individuals from crossing from the Palestinian towns of the northern West Bank to Israel.

"I prefer a fence," said Yossi Malul, a volunteer from the nearby Kibbutz Ein Harod, who was guarding workers erecting the barrier. "It will take a long time to be good neighbors."

Palestinian officials adamantly oppose unilateral separation, which they label a racist scheme to perpetuate Israeli occupation of land that should be part of an eventual Palestinian state. They say Israel should withdraw from all the Jordanian territory it conquered in 1967 and let it become a Palestinian state.

Ariel Sharon also opposes it; mention of the idea at a recent Cabinet meeting reportedly evoked a shouting, table-pounding Sharon vow that not one settlement would be evacuated while he is prime minister.

Nonetheless, the barriers and fences Sharon is erecting for what he calls buffer zones in the areas most troubled by terrorism would fit into some more comprehensive scheme of separation.

Proponents say that Palestinian fears to the contrary, unilateral separation is not meant to impose a political settlement or borders on Palestinians, but to improve the security of Israelis, and that negotiations on borders can begin whenever Palestinians desire.

"The leadership of Israel says there is no one to talk to on the Palestinian side. I won't argue with that," said Nati Sharoni, a retired major general and a leader of the Council for Peace and Security, an influential association of 1,200 of security experts from the military, intelligence agencies, and the Foreign Ministry.

So, council members believe, "We should make a unilateral move to do what is best for Israel," Sharoni said.

He said Israeli evacuation of 40 or 50 settlements, or about 20,000 settlers, should be enough for the Palestinians to conclude that they can get a good political settlement through negotiation because it would represent a dramatic departure from Sharon's insistence that not one settlement be abandoned.

But whether the Palestinians respond positively or not, abandoning the isolated Jewish colonies will increase security for everyone in Israel proper and the remaining settlements, supporters of separation say.

Last week, the council launched a drive to gather one million signatures on a petition favoring unilateral separation. Leaders of the drive, of whom Sharoni is one, say there has been an unexpected outpouring of volunteers and donations.

If the coalition's petition continues to gain momentum, it is likely to spur a response from both the Israeli and the Palestinian political establishments, long before the goal of one million signatures is approached.

There are only about 2 million registered voters in Israel, so even a half-million signatures would make the drive a major political movement. Sharoni, the author A. B. Yehoshua, amd other backers of the drive believe this also would bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, out of fear that unilateral separation might succeed and that the defense line might harden into borders.

Leaders of the petition drive are avoiding drawing maps, which they say would create squabbles among what they say preliminary polling shows is a big majority - around 70 percent of the electorate - that favors the basic idea. The exact placement of the line is not critical, they say, because this is not a border, but a defense line until a border is negotiated.

Nevertheless, the proposal is specific, entailing the following:

Complete evacuation of all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, while retaining control over the border between Egypt and Gaza until a final settlement is reached.

Evacuation of 30 to 40 settlements in the West Bank, while retaining two corridors of Israeli control to link the city of Ariel in the northern West Bank and the Etzion bloc of settlements in the southern West Bank, with Israel proper.

Withdrawal from much of East Jerusalem, and retention of three large new Jewish neighborhoods built around the city on land annexed after the Six-Day War.

Retention of the Jordan River valley pending a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Establishment of physical barriers patrolled by the military and the police to keep Palestinians from entering Israeli-controlled territory except through formal crossing points.

Notwithstanding the initial favorable reaction, the proposal faces determined political opposition, from the Palestinians and their supporters internationally, from supporters of the Jewish settlement movement, and from the Arab population of Israel.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the proposal, taken together with recent Israeli military actions, show Israel "is reorganizing the occupation. . . . The Israeli government is turning the West Bank cities into big prisons. The next step is incarcerating the residents with walls and buffer zones."

Advocates of the proposal do not all agree on how it would be applied in practice. For example, some say the extremely militant Jewish settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, who clash constantly with Palestinians and with Israeli authorities, should be evacuated. Others would retain them, still others do not know how the most militant settlers should be handled.

Jerusalem, too, will pose special problems, supporters acknowledge, and determining what portions of the city Israel will withdraw from "will have to be resolved on an inch-by-inch, yard-by-yard basis," Sharoni said.

Nevetheless, the proposal is benefiting from the broad consensus that now exists among Israelis in favor of separating from the Palestinians - a consensus that extends from intellectuals of the left like Yehoshua, one of the country's premier novelists, to solid supporters of Sharon's governing Likud Party like Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the defense planning committee in the Israeli Knesset.

Unilateral separation "might help with our security but it might be disastrous if it is handled like the withdrawal from Lebanon," Steinitz said. "We cannot risk having Palestinians in the center of the country developing missiles and weaponry as Hezbollah is doing in southern Lebanon."

On the other hand, he said, "I'm not completely against" the new proposal, because "in the end, we should separate."

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company