The geopolitics of ‘Enclavisation’and the demise of a two-stateSolution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

Abstract

This paper argues that Israel's military strategy since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in September 2000, has been one not merely of ‘security’ or ‘counter-terror’ but part of a longer-term strategy of spatial demolition and strangulation. This strategy seems predicated on two aims: unilateral separation from the Palestinian population, and its concomitant territorial dismemberment. Withdrawal from a totally controlled and isolated Gaza, in effect the latter's enclavisation, is part of this strategy. Such an enclave will in effect be functionally and spatially sundered from another chain of Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank. From an Israeli perspective, driven by its own distinctive territorial imperative, such separation will ensure Israeli control of and sovereignty over the best land and water resources, and control of all borders and border areas. It is further argued that the policy of unilateral separation and strangulation, the destruction and planned enclavisation of Gaza, and covert and overt settlement expansion in the West Bank—its dismemberment through exclavization, has in effect shattered the spatial basis of a two-state solution.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of Association of American Geographers held in Denver, 5 – 9 April 2005. I thank Bill Templer for feedback and editorial assistance at the early stages of drafting this paper. Many thanks also are extended to Colin Flint for his comments and suggestions. Responsibility for the content of this work, however, is mine alone.

Notes

1 Under the terms of the 1979 treaty, Article II (1c) Egypt can deploy only lightly armed police in Zone C. This zone is ‘bounded by line B (green line) on the west and the International Boundary and the Gulf of Aqaba on the east’. MidEast Web (1979).

2 Article 4 of the 1994 Jordan – Israel Agreement states that the parties agree to refrain from ‘allowing the entry, stationing and operating on their territory, or through it, of military forces, personnel or material of a third party, in circumstances which may adversely prejudice the security of the other party’. MidEast Web (1994).

3 The same report (Human Rights Watch, 2004) indicates that during these two-day incursions (12 – 14 May) into Block O and neighbouring Qishta, the Israeli army killed 15 Palestinians, including one 15-year-old. Six others were identified as combatants. The pretext for this incursion, according to the report, was to recover the remains of Israeli soldiers who were killed after Islamic Jihad members destroyed an armoured personnel carrier belonging to the Israeli army.

4 Speculation continues that Arafat was poisoned and the victim of a ‘stealth assassination’, as reflected in an interview with his personal physician for 25 years, Ashraf Al Kurdi, published on 25 April 2005 in the Teheran Times. Al Kurdi is convinced that Arafat was a victim of poisoning and rushed to burial in concrete to avoid any autopsy. See interview with T Schuh (2005).

5 Uri Avnery (2005) noted that President Bush called in Brussels for the establishment of a ‘democratic state with territorial continuity’ in the West Bank, and then added: ‘A state on scattered territories will not work’. Avnery contended that President Bush was pointing a finger at Sharon's enclavisation settlement strategy in the West Bank and that he was apparently beginning to see it as counter-productive. Avnery added that these statements by Bush in Brussels were made to reduce US differences and potential friction with the European Union, which clearly opposes the annexation of West Bank territory by Israel.