Excerpt from Jeff Halper, "Not only Territory but Also Viability needed for Palestine," Middle East Times, August 14, 2007

Halper asks, "What details make the difference between a just and lasting peace and apartheid?" He outlines the following steps Israel will have to take in order to guarantee that a Palestinian state is ‘viable’:

"Israel may, indeed, relinquish 95 percent of the West Bank, but still remain in complete control over a Palestinian Bantustan with no viable economy. If it insists on controlling the borders, denying the Palestinians free movement of goods and people, the Palestinian state is not viable. If the 5 percent the Palestinians must cede includes a corridor across the West Bank, or if Israel insists on keeping the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement with its ‘E-1’ corridor to Jerusalem, thus destroying the territorial continuity of a Palestinians state, it is not viable. If it includes Israeli control of all the water resources, it is not viable. If Jerusalem is not fully integrated into the Palestinian state politically, geographically, and economically – and I would bet that the core of East Jerusalem falls outside the 95 percent – then there is no viable Palestinian state. According to the World Bank, Jerusalem accounts for up to 40 percent of the Palestinian economy because of tourism, their largest potential industry."

In closing, Halper once more comes very close to labeling Israel an apartheid regime, and implies that the continuation of current Israeli policies will amount to apartheid:

"Until that matrix of control is broken, and a real Palestinian state is allowed to emerge – if that is still possible given the Israeli "facts on the ground" – we will have to carefully monitor each proposal to ascertain if it will truly end the conflict, or will merely substitute for the occupation a sophisticated regime of apartheid. Israel’s ongoing settlement construction and its commitment to retaining strategic parts of the West Bank and "greater" Jerusalem justify suspicion of Israel’s intentions."

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