"The second half of 48" : the sharon-ya'alon plan

Abstract

Official declarations and many reports in the Israeli media indicate that the Israeli military and political leadership are aiming, eventually, at a total destruction of the Palestinian authority, and, with it, the process of Oslo, which is now dominantly considered by them a 'historical mistake'. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that after 30 years of occupation, the two options competing in the Israeli power system are precisely the same as those set by the generation of 1948: Apartheid (the Alon- Oslo plan), or transfer - mass evacuation of the Palestinian residents, as happened in 1948 (the Sharon plan). Those pushing for the destruction of the Oslo infra-structure may still believe that under the appropriate conditions of regional escalation, the transfer plan would become feasible. In modern times, wars aren't openly started over land and water. In order to attack, you first need to prove that the enemy isn't willing to live in peace and is threatening our mere existence. Barak managed to do that. Now conditions are ripe for executing Sharon's plan, or as Ya'alon put it in November 2000, for "the second half of 1948". Before we reach that dark line, there is one option which was never tried before: Get out of the occupied territories immediately.