Land For Peace?

In Passover interview, Sharon accepts Israel’s “parting” from some historical Jewish locations on West Bank as “painful concessions” for peace

I'm not really sure what to make of this little one line comment from DEBKA. Assuming the comment is true, it can be viewed as either a breakthrough for the peace negotiations or as a breakdown of Israeli sensibilities.

The question of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank has been one of the most contentious sticking points in the peace process. The animosity felt by both sides ran so deep that the Israelis wouldn't trust the Palestinians to protect Jewish sites and the Palestinians didn't trust the Israelis to not use the settlements as staging bases for a future war. The mutual distrust became an insurmountable obstacle in the process.

The settlements became a mini-proxy for the peace process. The Israelis want to live there and the Palestinians want to remove them by any means necessary. Violence and negotiations have been alternately used to attempt to throw the settlers back into Israel, a miniature version of the Palestinian goal to throw the Israelis back into the sea.

It is for this reason that I wonder if there is a breakdown in Sharon's common sense. But why could this be a positive sign?

With the war in Iraq, tensions throughout the Middle East are obviously running fairly high. Israel has been increasing the pressure on the militant Palestinians for a couple of months now and they may be sensing that they're getting close to crossing the line that would throw the conflict into open warfare. That sort of escalation of the conflict would bring other nations, notably Syria into a wider conflict that Israel doesn't want to fight.

Sharon has recognized this. He also recognizes that most effective concessions he could make, with little strategic consequence to Israel, would be to give up the symbolically important settlements. He would be risking the destruction of some important Jewish heritage sites, but if he continues down the current path of escalating tensions he risks their destruction anyway plus the wider-scale disruptions brought by an out and out war.

I don't believe that "land for peace" will ultimately be the answer to the problems Israel. Each concession will only bring new demands, just as in the past. But this does have the potential to be a great symbolic gesture as well as a means of gaining political cover for the withdrawal from strategically indefensible positions. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here.