By James Carroll
Israel's biggest danger: a disappearing border

By 0, 5/7/2002

THE MYSTERY, as Ariel Sharon meets President Bush in Washington today, is why supporters of Israel do not regard Sharon more skeptically. In the past, Sharon has done more to shame the Jewish state than any other leader, and his current term in office is an unparalleled disaster - obviously so for Palestinians, but even more so for Israelis. Why not hold Sharon to the most basic test of governance: Does he improve the safety of his own citizens, or does he undercut it? Ask the question with his long career in mind.

In the early '70s, Sharon was a leading force behind the ''creation of facts,'' the salting of the West Bank and Gaza with Jewish settlements. That unchecked movement is the ground of the present conflict.

The ''facts'' of Israeli settlements on the disputed land were originally seen by a small minority of Jews as a righteous claim to biblical territory, while most Israelis saw the settlements, especially those distant from Jerusalem, as cards to be traded away in a final negotiation. Land for peace. But with the encouragement of Sharon and others, the claim of the fringe minority strengthened over the years, and the ''facts'' hardened.

The settlements are populated now by more than 200,000 people, and Sharon declared only last week that he will not preside over the removal of even one of them.

What began mainly as a ploy aimed toward resolution has become, under Sharon, the greatest obstacle to resolution. What began as a fringe movement in Israel has shifted, under Sharon, to the political center.

To Palestinians, meanwhile, the settlements, especially those constructed after Oslo, are proof that Israel cannot be trusted. Situated strategically on tops of hills, and lavish in comparison to nearby Palestinian communities, the settlements are stark manifestations of inequality, and sources therefore of Palestinian rage. The settlement access roads are further ''facts'' that undercut Palestinian territorial claims. These complaints are well known.

What is less often remarked upon is the single most drastic consequence for the state of Israel resulting from the Sharon-led settlement movement. If there has been one word to define the hope of Israel's Jews, that word is ''security.'' The fundamental responsibility of the government of Israel has been to guarantee security to its citizens. And the first rule of modern statecraft is that such security begins with clearly defined national borders.

It was at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, ending a decades-long religious war in the heart of Europe, that the principle of absolutely defined political boundaries was enshrined as the main structure of peace. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 reinstitutionalized this impulse, and so did the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. No peace without clear borders.

In a pattern of breathtaking self-destruction, Israeli governments, again and again, have deliberately blurred the eastern border of the state, effectively dissolving it. That, at bottom, is what Sharon and his settlements have made of Israel - a nation with no clearly defined border. The result? Radical insecurity no matter what Palestinians do.

Even peoples that are friendly, like, say, the United States and Canada, depend on clearly demarcated borders. The maintenance and protection of those borders are the first duty of government. Doubly so if the neighbor is a potential enemy.

Yet no Israeli government can maintain or protect the border between the West Bank and Israel because it simply does not exist. There are, to be sure, military checkpoints along the vestigial ''green line,'' the borders of 1967, but the real line between the territories now and ''Israel'' is necessarily porous and ambiguous exactly because so many Jewish enclaves are located amid so many Palestinian towns and camps. That many Jewish settlers have valued that ambiguity because it has enabled them to claim more and more Palestinian land only makes their plight ironic.

The Jewish enclaves, surrounded by a hostile populace, are entirely vulnerable to terrorist assaults. Equally, the Israeli Defense Force is incapable of ''securing'' such ill-defined territory, which partly explains why, in its frustration, the IDF struck out so inhumanely in recent weeks.

The Israeli incursions into the West Bank have been irrational and counterproductive exactly because the presence there of Israeli settlements is irrational and counterproductive.

When Israeli military leaders complain that settlements are indefensible, as they did again only last week, they are really decrying the lack of a border to defend. And, at bottom, a simple border is what Israeli advocates of the problematic ''separation'' long for. The border-blurring settlements have been bad for the Palestinians, but - obliterating Jewish security - they have been worse for Israel.

And who is the architect of this teetering house of cards? Ariel Sharon, Israel's self-proclaimed defender. Yet if he were Israel's sworn enemy, how could he have done the Jewish state more damage?

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 5/7/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company