Convergence — What Would Ariel Sharon Have Done?

Last week, Haaretz published an article reporting an Israeli government team had been “secretly” working on the “convergence” plan for months, and that the team had been appointed by Ariel Sharon:

High-ranking officials from several government ministries have been covertly planning the legal framework of the convergence plan for several months, according to government sources in Jerusalem.

The members of the interministerial team were appointed by the former prime minister Ariel Sharon about six months ago.

Soccer Dad forwarded the article to me, with a suggestion that it indicated the “convergence” plan was what Sharon himself had been planning to do.

Perhaps — except the planning wasn’t a secret.  And the article didn’t describe Sharon’s views.  And we have pretty good evidence of what his views actually were.

The best evidence of Sharon’s views is in a long article published in the January 23-30, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, about two weeks after Sharon’s massive January 4 stroke, written by Ari Shavit, the liberal columnist for Haaretz.

The article was an extraordinary portrait of Sharon, based on six years of private conversations with him.  Shavit began his conversations in 1999 (when Sharon was an old, out-of-power general, whose political career seemed finished) and spent the day of the stroke at Sharon’s ranch, talking to his sons, in preparation for his next private conversation that had just been scheduled for January 14.  The article is as full a description of Sharon’s views as we have.

Near the end of the article, Shavit described the “secret” planning process that was going on:

Members of his inner circle have told me the details of the planning process.  In the National Security Council, aides were working on four alternatives: [1] evacuating isolated settlements in the West Bank; [2] evacuating an entire settlement region, perhaps one near Nablus, where some of the most extreme zealots live; [3] withdrawing from eighty-eight percent of the West Bank; and, finally, [4] withdrawing from ninety-two percent of the West Bank.  While this staff worked in secret, some in Sharon’s circle were considering the possibility of withdrawing to the border described by the security wall in return for American recognition of this lie as Israel’ permanent border.  Others told me they also believed that by the end of the decade Israel would withdraw nearly to the fence line, making the Jordan Valley a security zone but not necessarily under Israeli sovereignty.

Note that there are three groups in that paragraph:  (1) “members of the inner circle” who disclosed the details of the planning process in the National Security Council (which consisted of work on four alternatives); (2) “some in Sharon’s circle” who were dreaming of a retreat to the security barrier as a “permanent” border recognized by America; and (3) “others” who believed in a withdrawal “nearly” to the fence line “by the end of the decade,” with retention of the Jordan Valley as a security zone. 

The first of the four alternatives under actual study at the time of Sharon’s stroke was “evacuating isolated settlements.”  The second was a variation of the first.  The third and fourth appear to represent, respectively, Phase II (provisional state) and Phase III (final status) of the Road Map.

What was Sharon’s ultimate view?  Shavit addressed that question in the next paragraph of his article:

. . . Even in internal discussions, knowledgeable sources told me recently, [Sharon] refused to say where the border would be.  He had reconciled himself to the establishment of a Palestinian state, but he demanded that it be disarmed and that it not control Israel’s water sources.  He insisted, too, on a continued connection to Hebron and on control of the city of Jerusalem.  Sharon believed, they said, that he could exploit the momentum of the disengagement process in order to compel the Palestinians to engage in a gradual diplomatic process that did not end with a “final” agreement.  According to Sharon’s closest associates, the discussion of a withdrawal to the security wall displeased him.  He truly opposed it.  His operative plan was quite different:  to negotiate an interim agreement with the Palestinians which called on the Israelis to evacuate approximately twenty isolated settlements.   

Shavit doesn’t disclose the identity of the “closest associates” who told him about Sharon’s “operative plan,” but it is worth remembering that he spent the day of the stroke with Sharon’s sons. 

The “operative plan” sounds a lot like the Road Map.  Approximately “twenty isolated settlements” seems a reference to Phase I, which requires Israel to dismantle “settlement outposts” erected since March 2001.  Sharon had already dismantled 25 long-standing settlements (not just post-3/01 “outposts”) in Gaza and Samaria. Dismantling 20 additional outposts was all anyone could reasonably require in Phase I, until the Palestinians met their own Phase I obligation to dismantle their terrorist infrastructure.

The “interim agreement” sounds a lot like Phase II of the Road Map, which provided for the option of agreement on a Palestinian state with “provisional borders” and “attributes” of sovereignty, as a way station to final status negotiations in Phase III.

The best evidence we have of Sharon’s views, from a respected Israeli journalist with extraordinary access to Sharon and his closest associates, thus suggests he planned to insist on the Road Map — with its Phase I requirement of dismantling Palestinian terrorism prior to any large-scale Israeli withdrawal — as the exclusive way forward, exactly as set forth in the April 14, 2004 exchange of letters with George W. Bush that was the crux of the Gaza disengagement deal. 

Last week’s Haaretz article concluded by reporting that Olmert’s cabinet is split at this time over whether to proceed with “unilateralism” or “negotiations:” 

The cabinet is split over the question of negotiations.  [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni and Justice Minister Haim Ramon prefer unilateralism, but Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Shimon Peres, minister of the development of the Negev and Galilee, want negotiations.

Based on what we know, neither of these courses of action reflects what Ariel Sharon was planning to do.  Peretz and Peres want to skip Phase I and II and go right to Phase III, as if we were back at Oslo.  Livni and Ramon want to forego the Road Map altogether and simply give the Palestinians what they might have gotten in Phase III.

It is hard to imagine which option Sharon would have opposed more.  A month after his stroke, the Palestinians turned their government over to terrorists committed to destroying Israel.  It is about as likely that Sharon would have responded by “negotiating,” or by handing them the West Bank, as it is that he would have appointed Amir Peretz as his Defense Minister.