Where Are The
Leaders
By Am Johal
14 October, 2004
Countercurrents.org
On
Wednesday, September 14th, Occupation forces began in earnest the process
of building a new settlement on Izbat Salman and Izbat Jalud lands,
near Qalqiliya district in the West Bank. Earlier in August, the Occupation
forces began moving in bulldozers to clear the way for settlement expansion
including the uprooting of 5,000 olive trees during the construction
of the Separation Wall. The new settlement, named Nof Hasharon, annexed
350 dunams of Izbat Salman and Izbat Jalud lands.
The residents of
these villages located in the southern part of the district are not
only unable to cross the Green Line to work but are isolated from Qalqiliya
City and also their farm lands which have become their sole source of
income.
Jeff Halper of the
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions has defined the structure
of the Israeli Occupation as "The Matrix of Control" - the
various systems of coercion and uses of state and military power to
render the Palestinian population docile. The Palestinians and the international
community have largely had little capacity to respond to the construction
of the Separation Wall, the annexation of property, movement restrictions
and various forms of collective punishment being meted out by Occupation
forces. If anything, it has divided the leadership in to deciding which
methods to utilize in ending the Occupation. Militancy as the chosen
tactic of the few has proven to be counter productive - the 'terror
cycle' has proven to be self perpetuating.
Not only does this
signal the end of the Roadmap to Peace, but simply confirms what many
in the Jewish and Palestinian sides have been saying for months. Through
policies of settlement expansion and land confiscation, as well as the
use of the Separation Wall to separate Palestinians from their lands
and restricting their movement both towards the Green Line since the
outbreak of the Intifada and in to the West Bank, Israel is placing
burdensome movement restrictions on the Palestinian population in the
name of economic security exacting a heavy economic price.
The atmosphere isn't
right for peace - in fact it was doomed from the beginning. A new governing
coalition in the short term with an amended set of Geneva Accords could
provide some progress in the mid term leading to some measure of stability
by 2010. At that point the US, the European Union or Britain could lead
a new round of negotiations. Since high level diplomacy has failed,
track two negotiations with the aid of human rights NGO's should begin
in order to help establish the atmosphere for peace.
In the end it failed for a number of reasons. From the outset, it failed
to define the "Occupation," thus allowing Israel the room
to implement new facts on the ground in the context of a weakened Palestinian
state.
The US was heavily
biased towards Sharon's vision of peace which involved expansion of
settlements despite public pronouncements by White House officials countering
those claims. Throughout the process, Israel had full access to the
White House while the Palestinians were not at the table in any serious
way. To date, Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan for Gaza has done
more harm than good thus far.
Busy with its own
wars, the US has fully supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral
approach and further isolated Yasser Arafat. There is still nothing
to suggest that a different political climate would have yielded different
results.
There was no immediacy placed on the implementation of international
law and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Territories -
the Roadmap to Peace was a case study in Israeli and American disdain
for international institutions. This exacerbated the frustration many
had, and in fact formalized the structure of the Occupation into the
reality it is today - even more complicated, more entrenched and leaving
more casualties in its midst.
In East Jerusalem,
the story is much the same. According to human rights organization B'tselem,
"The Jerusalem Municipality expropriates land, prevents preparation
of a town planning scheme for Palestinian neighbourhoods, and refuses
to grant building permits, causing a severe housing shortage, forcing
residents to build without a permit, after which the Ministry of Interior
and Municipality demolish the houses, so the residents move into homes
outside the city, and then the Ministry of Interior revokes their residency
and banishes them from the city forever." The plan for a Greater
Jerusalem with expanded borders is moving ahead with land expropriations,
house demolitions and other discriminatory planning practises.
29 highways and
bypass roads to service settlements, funded entirely by the United States,
have been constructed during the Oslo Peace Process, carving the West
Bank into dozens of small, disconnected and impoverished enclaves from
the Palestinian perspective. In Jerusalem where the Palestinians constitute
30% of the population, they only have access to 7% of the urban land
for residential and community purposes. Even the faint notion of equal
rights is a distant possibility. Israeli policies are also exacting
a high economic cost to Palestinians, leaving them in a weakened position
to negotiate.
The present approach
weakens the Palestinian economy and buys time to establish a stronger
Israeli presence in the West Bank undermining a substantive discussion
for an independent Palestinian state. This Israeli unilateralism could
very well lead to a larger ethnic transfer than what is already occurring
if it is taken to its more extreme limits.
This begs a more
profound question - where are the leaders in Israel and Palestine that
will take the region to peace? Who will have the vision, the moral clout,
the pragmatic leadership, the support of their people, the distast for
conflict and the "Iron Will" to implement it?
Where are they?