The Israeli inner cabinet has approved the plan for the 6.1% redeployment from the West Bank, which should complete the third withdrawal in the second phase of redeployments.

The total area involved will be 335 sq kilometers, with 5.1% being transferred from areas A, and 1% from areas B.

At the end of this phase, only 42.9% of the West Bank will have been transferred to the Palestinian side.

None of the returned territories include the (implicitly) promised Abu Dis areas. Most of the territories to be handed over falls south of Hebron, is sparsely populated, and does not provide any territorial contiguity in the fragmented areas of the West Bank. In addition to exhibiting a patronizing attitude of unilateral diktat, this type of withdrawal also betrays Israeli long-term territorial designs.

In the context of the Israeli (informal) final status map that delineates the borders as envisaged by Israel, the difficulties encountered by all redeployment phases and steps become more comprehensible.

It is obvious that Israel is working backwards from its permanent status territorial plan in order to ensure the compliance of all interim phase withdrawals with such a map.

Needless to say, the Palestinian side had already rejected the Israeli proposal on borders, as it clearly violates the terms of reference of the peace process and international law (mainly UN Res. 242 and the Fourth Geneva Convention). Total withdrawal from all territories occupied during the June 5th war of 1967 and the return to the June 4 boundaries has been the consistent Palestinian position.

The Israeli plan, however, seeks to annex around 45% of the West Bank including settlement clusters and their surrounding “security” areas, another “security” strip running through the Jordan valley and the eastern boundaries of the West Bank, as well as the whole area of Jerusalem and its environs.

Such a proposal is not only an outrage. Effectively, it lays to rest any chances of peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world, and creates conditions of serious volatility and instability.

The Israeli leadership should be unequivocally relieved of any misguided notion that it could find a Palestinian partner for such a preposterous proposal.

Land confiscation and annexation by any other name is still land theft. It is not the quantity or extent of any theft that makes it illegal, immoral, and entirely unacceptable.

Nor is there such a thing as an unjust or an illegal peace. The alternative to a just peace is conflict or war.

MIFTAH urgently calls upon the Israeli government to reexamine and drastically modify its attitude and land proposals before they succeed in confiscating the chances of peace altogether.