パレスチナ紛争を検証する －現地調査に基づく分析と展望－

Abstract

The Middle East peace process has stalled.With the resumed exchange of violence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has dramatically intensified, making the Road Map, a new pease plan agreed to in June 2003, stumble at its first phase. The author visited Israel, Palestine and the neighboring countries of Syria and Jordan in September 2003.The purpose of the jourey was to look into the state of affairs of the ongoing conflict and antagonism, and to grope for an exit out of the quagmire and a way of building a sustainable peace and stability in the region. The gist of the author's findings and conclusions is as follows: (1)The current leaders of the Israeli governmentand the Palestinian Authority seem to have neither strong enough political will nor competence to stop the vicious circle of violence and revenge.In order to attain a workable cease-fire, which is a prerequisite for resuming peace talks and making them succeed, an outside intervention in the form of the deployment of a peacekeeping force is necessary.The U.S. government should persuade Israel to accept it. (2)It is wrong to attribute armed attacks by the Palestinians against the Israelis solely to religiously motivated fanaticism. The cause of violence is much more complicated and multi-faceted. Under the occupation regime the Palestinians are exposed to abuse of human rights and unbearable humiliation including killings of the innocent by the Israeli security force. Many of them have been deprived of working places and are living hopeless lives in utter poverty. For some the life is rendered even more difficult by forced demolition of their houses and confiscation of their farmland. The freedom of movement even within Palestine is severely restricted, and they refer to the situation as living in an animal cage. Being faced with all these sufferings and agonies it is not inconceivable that some Palestinians have been driven to such extreme and desperate acts as suicide bombings. Unless Israel gives up the occupation policy, the conflict will not be resolved. (3)Two things have emerged which are likely to compel Israel to adopt a more conciliatory attitude vis-a-vis the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab countries. One is the serious economic crisis Israel has been facing over the past therr years. It is Largely a backlash effect of the deterioration of security since the beginning of the second intifada. The economic slump is likely to continue unless violence is stopped. The other is a change in the demographic structure.The high birth rate of the Palestinians is going to make their population exceed that of the Israelis in less than ten years. Then the Israelis, having turned into a minority, will find it hard to treat the Palestinian majority as subordinates and to stick to the occupation policy. The identity of Israel as the Jewish state will also be challenged. (4)Aiming to avoid painful territorial concessions and to preserve the identity of the Jewish state, Israel may relinquish a settlement of the conflict by negotiation and resort to unilateral measures. In this scenario Israel would set up the border along the route of the separation barrier which has already been partly constructed and is planned to be completed in a couple of years. If the things actually proceed along this line, large tracts of land in the West Bank will be annexed to Israel proper. The rest of the occupied areas will be ceded to the Palestinians for creating their own state. Israel will treat the new state as a foreign country. Ecoomic and financial assistance provided by Israel under the occupation regime will be terminated. The international community should be well prepared for this contingency.