What Delayed Implementation of the Oslo Agreement?
Bypass roads, for Jews only, are being constructed throughout the West Bank to separate the settlers’ travel routes from Palestinian towns and villages. The intended result of these several Israeli actions is to segregate the West Bank Palestinians still living in a fraction of their original country into Bantustans even more stringently than the Blacks were segregated in South Africa under that country’s apartheid policy. The idea of autonomy for the territories conquered by Israel was written into the Camp David agreement, but there was little U.S. pressure to implement it. The Israelis considered the Camp David clauses on autonomy to be too favorable to the Palestinian aspirations for a separate state to want to see autonomy put into effect. It was not until the Israeli authorities finally realized that the costs of their occupation of the Gaza Strip far outweighed its benefits that the call for “Gaza First” was raised in the Hebrew press and autonomy for Gaza was reconsidered. Howe
