Geoffery Aronson is Director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. His article was excerpted from the 4 August 1999 Information Brief of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.

Israel’s new prime minister, Ehud Barak, is faced with implementing agreements reached by his predecessors with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the United states. The territorial centerpiece of these agreements—the Taba Agreement (Oslo II) initiated on 28 September 1995 by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Wye River Memorandum (Wye) signed on 23 October 1998 by then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu—is the requirement that Israel redeploy its military forces from parts of the West Bank. Full implementation of Wye would extend complete Palestinian control over 18.2 percent of the disputed territory (Area A) before long-delayed "final status" talk. Wye included a revised timetable for the phased implementation of the first and second "further redeployments" (FRD) of Israeli military forces outlined in Oslo II, and divided Oslo II’s second redeployment into three phases. The first of three FRDs was to begin in October, 1996. Israel was to complete all three redeployments, according to Oslo II, by October, 1997. Wye makes no mention of a date for the third redeployment called for in Oslo II.

Barak’s Reservations: Notwithstanding Barak’s sympathy with the view of his political mentor Rabin, he has always viewed the Oslo process with more scepticism than most of his Labor Party colleagues. As Rabin’s minister of interior, Barak abstained in the Knesset’s Oslo II vote held before Rabin’s assassination in October, 1995, and has remained opposed on a strategic and conceptual level to FRDs mandated by Oslo II and Wye. His primary concerns relate to Oslo II’s security provisions, which he finds too lax, and to its timetable, which he argues should be extended. Barak believes that the FRDs, if fully implemented, whould place too much territory in Palestinian hands before final status talks commence. Moreover, like his predecessors, Barak opposes placing any territorial constraints on the settlements, at least at this stage. These are reasons enough for him to seek a revision of Israel’s commitment to transfer territory to the Palestinian Authority (PA) according to the timetables he inherited. Barak recently set an October 1 target date for Wye’s second FRD, and is seeking the PA’s agreement to include the third FRD as part of the final status talks.

Security of Israeli Settlements: Implementation of Wye’s second-stage FRD requires Israel to transfer five percent of the West Bank—approximately 300 square kilometers—from Area C (full Israeli control) to Area B (partial Israeli control). The Israel Defense Force (IDF) is less concerned about this transfer than are the settlers, who will lose all rights to land no longer classified as Area C. In this sense, the second FRD—the first that Barak must undertake—is far more painful for settlers than any previous transfe of land to the PA. This is one reason why Netanyahu never seriously considered implementing it, and why informed Palestinians never expected him to.

Proximity to areas under full Palestinian control does not necessarily consign settlements to isolation from Israel or envelopment by the PA, no is it the best guage of the impact of redeployment upon settlements. With few exceptions, settlements in affected areas will be connected by by-pass roads, either existing or planned, to main transport routes to Israel. Twelve new by-pass roads are in various stages of planning and construction, although work on the $70 million program was impeded by the Clinton administration’s refusal to supply the $1.2 billion aid package, promised as part of Wye, after Netanyahu failed to implement Wye in late 1998. Following Barak’s July 1999 visit to Washington, however, Clinto urged Congress to approve the appropriation. In addition, new Israeli military bases are being established throughout the West Bank, according to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot, "particularly next to isolated settlements. The intention is not to leave isolated settlements in the heart of Palestinian areas without an army base nearby."

Some settlements, however, will undoubtedly suffer from the added security-related burdens imposed by implementation of Wye. Sanur, for example, is already almost empty and is not likely to survive as a civilian settlement. Other settlements will find the relative ability to attract new residents imparied if constraints are imposed on their expansion. Nevertheless, the experience of some settlements in Gaza, whose populations continue to increase despite a far more precarious security situation, may be instructive.

Barak’s Dilemma: Barak has a tactical problem that only increases his reservations about Oslo II and Wye. He must find enough territory to satisfy both the PA and the settlers without (1) intruding upon lands claimed by settlements; (2) isolating settlements from transport and communication routes to Israel and other settlements; or (3) compromising Israel’s territorial defense requirements outlined in the Allon Plan and the IDR’s "security interests" map. A close examination of the lands in the Ramallah region, where many expect the next redeployment to occur, reveals far less thant 300 square kilometers of Area C suitable for transfer. Including the Nablus and Jenin regions would add bits and pieces of suitable territory and increase the territorial contiguity of land under PA control, but settlers and their allies in the Barak cabinet would oppose many of these transfers.

The Hebron region is the only area of the West Bank where it is possible to satisfy Oslo II and Wye Commitments without compromising the three objectives outlined above. According to Barak’s security-oriented calculus, however, the amount of land available in this region is far less than envisioned by Netanyahu. Unlike his predecessor, Barak is opposed to any diminution of Israeli control in the area southeast of Bethlehem, long deemed vital to Israeli security. Netanyahu’s decision to cede territory in this region—the so-called "nature reserves" comprising three percent of the West Bank—enabled negotiators to claim an eventual Israeli redeployment from 13 percent of the West Bank, a figure which became the litmus test of Israel’s sincerity. It was expected that this area would be transferred to the PA as part of the third Wye redeployment, which Banak wants to implement only as part of a final status timetable. Barak’s apparent removal of this area from consideration calls into serous question his ability to fulfill the territorial cmmitments of his predecessors during the interim period.