Sharon's wall, though it certainly is not a contribution to mutual trust, was conceived as a clear move against the one-state solution. It is an acknowledgement that Zionism has lost the demographic race. Demography and the dream of Greater Eretz-Israel simply could not be reconciled. The wall is a defiant, resolute and bold manifestation that Israel would not allow this fact to usher in a one-state solution. But it is also an acknowledgement by the Israeli Right that it has lost the battle for Eretz-Israel. But unlike the case of Gaza, a small and compact area with not too many 'ideological' settlers, where Sharon plans a total withdrawal, if he ever advances a disengagement plan from the West Bank this will surely be a far more modest affair. There, he might try to remove only a small number of settlements in a way that would leave the Palestinians essentially confined to scattered autonomous enclaves surrounded by settlements and encircled by a dense network of bypass roads.
There is, of course, not the slightest chance that the Palestinians would acquiesce to such a plan. A Palestinian international campaign for a one-state solution backed by a wide popular insurgence cannot be discarded if indeed the Palestinians come to the conclusion that a viable state is not in the offing for them. That the Palestinian insurgence might even expand into the Arab population of Israel as well is not, in such conditions, a far-fetched possibility. Nor is the potential response of the extremists in Israel difficult to imagine. Transfer schemes of all kinds against the Palestinian population and the Arab community in Israel could certainly be violently advanced and a resurgence of Jewish terrorism against Arab targets cannot be dismissed. What started in the 1930s as a civil war between Jews and Arabs in mandatory Palestine and had become since 1988 a struggle for separate statehood, would thus revert to its original condition of a ruthless civil war.
Such a scenario can be averted either through an immediate resumption of negotiations on the basis of a two-state solution along the 1967 borders, or through a unilateral disengagement where Israel would pull out from the bulk of the West Bank and allow a contiguous, viable Palestinian space to exist. Ideally, if the latter option is taken, Israel should leave the door open at the same time for future negotiations for a contractual settlement with the Palestinians. Alas, neither of these options enjoyed a realistic chance in Sharon's right-of-centre coalition, especially as long as Arafat was in control of the Palestinian Authority. There seemed to be no political conditions to produce such bold moves.
(...)
Each and every one of the options, including that of the imposed settlement, that are theoretically open to the parties would inevitably unleash internal earthquakes of unprecedented dimensions within both societies, the Palestinian and the Israeli. If the parties fail to return to the two-state solution, a civil war between Jews and Arabs within the one 'South African' state is inevitable. In either of the remaining options, profound cleavages would also open, and civil strife would certainly be unleashed, this time, however, within each of the separate societies. But this, at least, would be a sacrifice in the service of a moral cause: a life of independence and dignity for each nation in its own state. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the possibility of peace without agony was missed years ago. From now on nobody can spare the parties their Calvary. Both Palestinians and Israelis rightly earned it with their political short-sightedness and sometimes sheer human stupidity.
Em "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy" de Shlomo Ben-Ami , págs 303-4, Oxford University Press, 2006.
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