Black Box Recorder

Commentary on Sharon and the "Bantustan"model

Ha'aretz journalist Akiva Eldar continues looking at Sharon's "vision" of Israel/Palestine.

More indications that Sharon favors an apartheid South African-style "solution" to the conflict:

[Massimo D'Alema, the] former premier from the Italian left said that three or four years ago he had a long conversation with Sharon, who was in Rome for a brief visit. According to D'Alema, Sharon explained at length that the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict.
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Supplementary evidence backing D'Alema's story can be found in an expensively produced brochure prepared for Tourism Minister Benny Elon, who is promoting a two-state solution - Israel and Jordan. Under the title "The Road to War: a tiny protectorate, overpopulated, carved up and demilitarized," the Moledet Party leader presents "the map of the Palestinian state, according to Sharon's proposal." Sharon's map is surprisingly similar to the plan for protectorates in South Africa in the early 1960s. Even the number of cantons is the same - 10 in the West Bank (and one more in Gaza).

Sharon also argued that the "road map" strays from Bush's ill-defined and hazy "vision" of an independent Palestine:

Presumably, the CIA has got its hands on a copy of the instructions sent to Israel's foreign legations on how to explain Israeli policy regarding "The Middle East after Saddam Hussein." After all, the document received only low-level classification.
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"Israel accepts the central principles presented in President Bush's speech of June 24, 2002, and regards them as the basis for the continuation of the political process. Israel welcomes any `road map' that matches the above-mentioned presidential vision and which will lead to its implementation on the basis of a new and different Palestinian leadership and implementation of the reforms there"
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A strange argument broke out between the two [Powell and Sharon], however, over their interpretations of Bush's "vision." Sharon argued the road map is not a precise translation of the "vision," which is the only peace plan the prime minister has accepted.

How did this happen? The Israeli government is arguing that Bush was fooled by the honey words of the scheming Tony Blair:

As published here three weeks ago, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has already told the members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that British Prime Minister Tony Blair hypocritically seduced Bush into adopting the Quartet road map. Rivlin did not invent the idea of Bush falling into a plot laid by Blair. Rivlin picked it up at the highest levels of Israel's government, where he also picked up that his primary mission in New York was to kill the map, softly or not.

The article includes details of a plan by a non-governmental group comprising Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian lawmakers, former generals, and intellectuals (the Copenhagen group).