Legitimizing Palestinian Bantustans

T he Occupation has a “new” scheme to ensure Palestinian rights continue to be negated and violated: the “Convergence Plan.” Offering the media as much excitement as the “Disengagement Plan,” it aims to legitimize the annexation of all territories and resources west of the apartheid wall, including Jerusalem. Palestinians are to be left under siege in Bantustans, sealed in from the east and dissected by settler highways. Meanwhile, the refugees are supposed to vanish from political discourse. 

The propaganda is hinged on two key themes: the relocation of 68 to 74 settlements and the convergence of Israeli forces and settlers to some 10 percent of the West Bank. The reality, however, shows that the plan will lead to a 20 percent increase of settlement capacity and the systematic imprisonment of Palestinians on their own land. “New” plans for Jerusalem are based on the ethnic cleansing of the city, isolating even more Palestinians from their capital, institutions, and historical and religious centers by building the apartheid wall around them. 

Under the plan, the Bantustans will allow more Palestinian administrative responsibility over the Jordan Valley. At the same time it ensures that Palestinians will have no access to the River Jordan, borders, and water and agricultural resources along the river. 

In the western West Bank, the wall is integral to the plan. Plans to move the wall to ghettoize a dozen more Palestinian West Bank villages in the Bantustans are under way. So are discussions over the annexation of Na’ale and Nili settlements to grab additional Palestinian land and further dissect the West Bank. These adjustments ensure the wall’s path is more effective in grabbing as much land with as few Palestinians as possible. The international community dwells on these “modifications” of the wall’s path, instead of denouncing the fact that Zionism encloses an entire people behind cement blocks and razor wire. 

A fundamental ramification of this plan is the Judaization of Jerusalem and the loss of Palestinian metropolitan areas which produce 90 percent of national GDP and are the pillars on which to build a modern national economy. However, Palestinians will be shut out from Jerusalem, which currently generates 40 percent of all Palestinian economic activity and hosts the most important and ancient Palestinian institutions. The Occupation plans to use the apartheid wall to isolate even more of the 230,000 Palestinians living in Jerusalem from their capital. The few Palestinians within the center of the city will be cut off from the remnants of their shops, factories, clients, and markets. The tourism industry, constituting a large part of the area’s economic activity, is to be taken over by new settler constructions and industries in the new settlement bloc. 

Some 15,000 Palestinian homes have been declared illegal and threatened with demolition under the Occupation’s racist permit system. Those still resisting within the city face ongoing and systematic revocations of “residency rights.” Since 1967, over 60,000 Palestinians have been expelled from their capital. 

In addition to the destruction of the capital, the districts of Salfit and Qalqiliya will be completely dissected by walls and settlements, with urban areas unable to sustain significant economic activity. Remaining Palestinian cities in the north and south of the West Bank will be barred from expanding in the metropolitan core of the West Bank. 

Meanwhile, water resources and farming lands that provide livelihoods to 17 percent of the population, and are central to food sovereignty, will be stolen from the Jenin district all the way to the south of Hebron. The apartheid wall will directly affect almost 200 villages, which will lose access to part or all of their lands. In the northwestern route, 50 wells have been isolated or destroyed, while 162 wells along the River Jordan remain unusable. 

This is the price Palestinians pay for the Occupation to “reshape” its crimes. Behind the “relocation” of settlers from evacuated settlements to others that are expanding, a net growth of settlement capacity parallels the settler boom during the Oslo years. Only 8.6 percent (36,322 settlers) of the total settler population in the West Bank will be relocated while the Occupation plans to build new industrial zones and housing units for at least 79,646 settlers in the colonies upon which it will “converge.” The strategy secures an initial net increase of over 20 percent in settlement capacity. 

There is little new in the colonial aspirations of the plan. In 1969 Yigal Allon proposed a scheme to ensure the “borders” of the Occupation would reach Jordan while Palestinian residential areas would be cut out of the calculations of Zionist demography. The plan was never implemented, but was further developed by the Occupation in the “negotiations” at Camp David and Taba in 2000. The Palestinian people and the Arab World have already rejected these plans, as they are incompatible with Palestinian rights and international legitimacy.