Coexistence and the status quo
Op-ed: If this intifada drags on or escalates to the use of firearms, it will eliminate the status quo, but not coexistence in the West Bank. Just like the Jewish settlements, coexistence has become a part of life in the territories.
While the knife-wielders are still running amok, the government has decided to increase the quota of Arab workers from the West Bank. An act of trust in a sea of skepticism and suspicion.
A few days earlier, in a defining speech, Abbas emphatically stated that he has no intention of dismantling the Palestinian Authority, which he considers an important achievement of his people. This peace camp was thus stripped of one of its weapons – the threat that Abbas will return the keys and put on Israel the onerous responsibility of managing the lives of millions of people.
Not everyone shares the concerns and the fears of taking back complete control over the West Bank. In any case, Abbas proclaimed that he would not dismantle the Palestinian Authority in order to end the “occupation,” as the Left had threatened, and thereby injected life into the status quo, the bête noir of the peace camp. Even the opportunity to eliminate the status quo through negotiations was given a fatal beating when Abbas toppled the pillar of all withdrawal plans, the "settlement blocs," by declaring that every Jew would have to leave – from the blocs as well, as they did from the Gaza Strip.
Now, anyone who deluded himself to think that “the peace” would require the displacement of “only” 100,000 people (at a cost of $150 billion, 10 times the price of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip), will have to recalculate based on displacing more than 400,000 people. The cost reached would break the Israel's back.
Abbas still needs the Palestinian Authority as scaffolding until the construction of the state of Palestine is completed by the United Nations and world powers rather than as a product of an agreement with Israel. However, the world is busy with its own affairs, and will not make itself available to impose a "solution" for Israel unitl the conflict is put back onto the headlines in the form of an intifada – controlled, measured and popular. Like Jabotinsky, Ramallah also believes that “silence is filth.”
The status quo and coexistence are pricks in their eyes, and they therefore called for a boycott. But the Arab crowds continue to flock to the Malha shopping mall and Rami Levy supermarket, and tens of thousands make their living inside the Green Line and in the settlements. Israeli Arabs are continuing to integrate into the professional domains of the Jews - from medicine to hi-tech - and in Jerusalem, the phenomenon is permeating to the Arabs of '67, and it’s a short distance from there to the West Bank. Against this, the knives were drawn, and the Israeli government - which fosters coexistence in spite of everything – is acting wisely.
Will the status quo survive the new intifada? If it drags on or deteriorates to the use of firearms, there is no chance. At the end of such an intifada we will find ourselves in a new situation, which can be described thusly: More than 400,000 settlers will no longer agree to be subject to the military government and its laws, which were designed for the occupied population that has already freed itself from them. They will also refuse to live in a situation of a construction freeze, while the Arabs are in a building frenzy, with the help of the Israeli government, among others. The Palestinian Authority will be dismantled, and in any case no longer ruled by Fatah and the PLO.
In the interim, it’s possible that the military government, which was not cancelled by the Oslo accords, will return, and residents will be offered a generous autonomy under the management of local authorities. This autonomy will have to undergo a cleaning the disinfection of an education system filled with anti-Jewish teachers and teaching materials, its Treasury will be purged of corruption and theft, and finally, drainage systems will be built along with sewage systems, roads and crossings, the lack of which has stifled the Jewish settlements.
This intifada may eliminate the status quo, but it won't stop coexistence. Just like Jewish settlements, it is already part of life here.
