The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 15           April 17, 2006  
 
 
New Israeli premier: ‘We’ll set Israel’s final borders’
 
BY PAUL PEDERSON  
“In the coming period we will move to set the final borders of the State of Israel. A Jewish state with a Jewish majority,” said Ehud Olmert, the newly elected Israeli prime minister, in his victory speech following the national elections in Israel March 28. Kadima, the newly formed party that Olmert leads, won 29 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament—the largest share of any of the contending parties.

Olmert served as deputy prime minister under Ariel Sharon, who is in a coma following a severe stroke January 4. Last November, Sharon led a split in the right-wing Likud Party, which he had helped found. He then set up Kadima.

The split was precipitated by the unilateral move by the Sharon administration to shut down the Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and its pledge to take further steps along these lines in the West Bank, including completion of a separation wall that physically divides the West Bank from Israel. This course is based on recognition by the Israeli rulers that the Zionist dream of a “Greater Israel” has collapsed, largely because of the dwindling immigration of Jews to the state. Today more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.

“The existence of a Jewish majority in the State of Israel cannot be maintained with the continued control over the Palestinian population in Judea, Samaria [West Bank] and Gaza,” Olmert said in January. “We must create a clear boundary as soon as possible, one which will reflect the demographic reality on the ground.”

Tel Aviv is pressing to define its borders on its terms. It has continued construction of the “security fence” in the West Bank. This wall, Olmert said in a March 28 opinion column in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, will soon become the new border.

“We will determine the line of the security fence, and we will make sure that no Jewish settlements will be left on the other side of the fence,” Olmert wrote. “Drawing the final borders is our obligation as leaders and as a society.”

At least 8 percent of what had been Palestinian territory on the West Bank lies on the Israeli side of the new border. Many of the largest Israeli settlements there are being annexed to Israel.

The Israeli government is implementing this course without an agreement with the Palestinian National Authority, the government in the Palestinian territories, which is now run by Hamas—a group that has carried out many armed attacks on Israeli targets and has had many of its leaders assassinated by Israeli security forces.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home