Observers and political commentators have asserted that the forthcoming Israeli election would bring a totally different political landscape: a Moroccan-born leader for the Labour Party, a new political party, the Kadima, the former Labour leader Shimon Peres defecting to join the Kadima party, and general apathy on the part of Israeli-Arab voters.
This may be a new landscape for the Israelis, but for the Palestinians it promises to be more of the same: Continued dispossession, collective punishment, the continued denial of Palestinian fundamental rights and the bad faith inherent in proclaiming commitment to peace while working to block its realisation.
That this sorry state of affairs will continue is clear from the positions of the respective leaders of the major parties contesting the election.
The new Labour leader, Amir Peretz, is campaigning on a platform of social welfare and economic prosperity, relegating peace and negotiations with the Palestinians to secondary preoccupations. In any case, historically the Labour record on colonies is worse that that of the Likud.
Benjamin Netanyahu characteristically is bringing the Likud party closer to its origins in Fascist ideology and advocating a military solution to subjugate the Palestinians once and for all.
The leading candidate, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has confirmed his commitment to the Sharon vision of brute force and the imposition of unilateral solutions. This is in total defiance of the international community's consensus to end the occupation and establish an independent and viable Palestinian state.
In his March 10 interview with the Israeli media, Olmert presented his plan to unilaterally set the Israeli borders in such a way as to incorporate the large Jewish colonies of Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, the Old City and adjacent neighbourhoods in occupied Arab Jerusalem.
Olmert plan
Under the Olmert plan, prepared in collaboration with Sharon's principal adviser, Dov Weissglas, who claims to have consulted with the Americans, Israel would also keep military control over the Jordan Valley. "Our security borders," Olmert said, "will be along the Jordan. There are strategic considerations for this that we cannot relinquish".
When asked if he intended to build between Occupied Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim despite US objections, Olmert said: "Of course. After all, it is unthinkable that we will talk about Ma'aleh Adumim as part of the State of Israel and leave it like an island." (Haaretz, March 10)
The plan preserves the Jewish character of the Israeli state by keeping the Palestinians of the West Bank out, expropriating more of their land, while preventing them from having a viable and sovereign state and making them subject to Israeli siege on a short notice.
It is therefore disingenuous on the part of Olmert and the Bush administration to demand that the new Palestinian government commit itself to the roadmap for peace.
The roadmap required that Israel "immediately dismantle settlement [colony] outposts erected since March 2001? [and] freeze all settlement [colony] activity (including natural growth of settlements."
The Sharon government has never accepted the roadmap. The Bush administration further undermined the roadmap by agreeing to support Israeli construction of new colonies.
Sharon's adviser Dov Weissglas described the real intent of the disengagement plan as "the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem". This whole package of the roadmap "has been removed from our agenda indefinitely". (Haaretz, October 8, 2004)
The building of colonies and consolidation of existing ones has never stopped. A report by the Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem, published in December 2005, proves that the Israeli wall of separation, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in July 2004, is intended for expansion of colonies on the "Israeli" side of the Wall.
When in frustration the Palestinian people elected Hamas earlier this year, the Bush administration and the Israeli government responded with a secret plan to destabilise the democratically elected Palestinian government. (NYT, February 14).
In addition, the Olmert government, anxious to show continuity of the Sharon legacy of brute force, ordered an assault on the Jericho prison and humiliatingly seized some Palestinian prisoners.
Later it laid siege to Gaza to punish the Palestinians and force them, as Dov Weissglas advised, to "go on a diet". This is not the behaviour of a government anxious for a negotiated peace settlement.
Judging by the platforms of the leading contenders in the Israeli election and by the myopic support the Bush administration has given to breaches of the roadmap, a just and lasting peace seems as elusive as ever.
Professor Adel Safty is Unesco Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. He is author-editor of 14 books including From Camp David to the Gulf, and Leadership and Democracy.
