BEIRUT: Recently at a conference in Herzliya, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that if the Palestinians did not soon take significant steps to cub 'violence' , he would begin a unilateral 'separation plan' to disengage entirely from negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

The ultimatum represented the summation of the Israeli government's skillful media strategy throughout the year 2003. Sharon is testing the waters, daring to say out loud what he has been working toward throughout his time in office: the consolidation of Israel's illegal seizure of 58 per cent of the land in West Bank and Gaza Strip - and a total subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Sharon's success in edging closer to this goal is profoundly worrying. On the ground, Israeli troops have been steadily putting his plan into action, imposing military occupation whose every act is calculated to degrade, humiliate and imprison the Palestinian population. Closures have been imposed accompanied by brutal and indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians that has cost thousands of lives.

Yet the Palestinians find themselves in a situation unique in modern politics: They are an occupied people held responsible for the security of their occupiers. The Palestinians' legal right to oppose Israeli hegemony has been turned against them by Sharon's presentation of the conflict as one between equally matched military forces, and by the almost unconditional support he receives from many powers, in particular the United States.

The muted response from the international community to Sharon's announcement will have only emboldened the prime minister. Throughout last year, Sharon's strategy was to play for time, knowing that with a presidential election beckoning in the United States, the most pro-Israeli US president ever would do nothing that might jeopardize the support of his Jewish and right-wing Christian constituencies. Last October, Sharon had the audacity to launch an air strike against Syria for the first time in 30 years, in a bid to cast Israel as an operational ally of the US in its mission to reshape the region.

With the eyes of the world focussed on Iraq, Sharon saw an opportunity to discard the half-hearted initiative of the 'roadmap'. - yet has continued to present Israel as a victim, while buying time for his draconian strategy on the ground. The result has been a reoccupation policy of settlement of the entire West Bank and 60 per cent of the Gaza Strip, and a ferocious policy of settlement expansion. Since Oslo, the size and population of Israeli settlements has increased by 200 per cent with only feeble protestations from abroad.

In 2002-2003, 56 new settlements were erected and, of the eight Sharon claimed to have dismantled, five were covertly rebuilt. Not only Israeli soldiers but the settlers too have subjected the Palestinians to frequent attacks, seeking to drive them out of their homes and to seize their land and property. Every effort is made to destroy the Palestinians livelihood and civil liberties. Curfews remain in place in many areas imposed with the continual threat of violence. The number of Israeli check-point in the West Bank has reached 757, according to the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

To reinforce the settlements and complete the seizure of land, Sharon's construction of the separation wall in the West Bank continued. If completed, the wall stretch for at least 1000 kilometres, achieving Sharon's strategic aim of destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state. The West Bank will be reduced to clusters of ghettos and prisons with access, security and resources remaining under Israeli control and the Palestinian population locked away out of sight from the world's eyes.

Again, any international response to the wall's construction has been paralyzed by Sharon's media strategy. World leaders have expressed fears that the wall and the new borders it defines will soon become a fait accompli, but no action has yet been taken to stop it. The international effort has been distracted by the Geneva initiative, a plan that though dismissed by both Israelis and Palestinians is taking up time and attention while Sharon presses ahead with his own agenda.

For all his success, however, Sharon has reached a strategic impasse. Throughout he has applied the same bulldozer approach that he previously did as a soldier. However, his background has blinded him to political realities that military might alone cannot change.