The
Road To Pieces
By Dan Lieberman
28 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Failure
to understand the driving forces in the Middle East violence will lead
to disaster. Henry Siegman, in an article, titled: "The Great Middle
East Peace Process Scam", London Review of Books, August 16,2007,
describes how Israel, which has the power to enable the creation of
a viable Palestinian state, has consistently prevented its occurrence
and used ‘stalled’ peace processes to increase its expansion.
Add to Siegman’s revelations the not well publicized facts that,
since 1948, all Israeli governments have promoted polices of gaining
more territory, subduing antagonists and suppressing Palestinian aspirations.
Before the start of the 1956 Sinai war, Israeli Prime Minister David
Ben Gurion solicited French and British approval for Israel to incorporate
all of the Sinai, the straits of Tiran and Lebanon to the Litani river
into little Israel’s territory. It’s no coincidence that
Arab/Israel wars enabled Israel to fulfill all of these objectives.
However, earlier United States administrations and later Hezbollah tactics
forced the nullification of the conquests.
With a policy of expansion,
will any Israeli leader want to be perceived by history as interrupting
Israel’s self-chosen destiny? Leaders might pay lip service to
an independent Palestinian state but will they allow a viable Palestinian
state they fear will harbor militants or grow sufficiently strong to
challenge Israel’s expansion plans? The past history and present
declarations of Israel’s leaders indicate that, despite the olive
branch rhetoric, the only peace that Israeli leaders will embrace is
one that trades desolate Israeli territory for legal incorporation of
the West Bank settlements into Israel, legalizes all Israel’s
gains and opens a dialogue for the transfer of Israeli Palestinians
into either a non-viable Palestinian state or a home in Jordan. They
impolitely talk around the fate of the Palestinian refugees.
Doubts that Israel will allow
a viable Palestinian state guide the behavior of many Palestinian leaders.
They perceive grave injustices have been committed against them and
don’t expect those, who, in their perspective, have committed
and continue to commit the injustices, will subscribe to admitting the
crimes and compensate the victims. Israel might offer some compromises
in the present, but these compromises can be compromised in the future;
Israel could attack Palestinian life, which will provoke Palestinians
to retaliate. Israel’s propaganda machine will then accuse the
Palestinians of perfidy and find excuses to disregard agreements. These
Palestinian leaders suspect that Israel will eventually want all of
the West Bank and its aquifers. They consider they have no choice but
to battle until events force Israel into inviolable compromises.
So, where does this recalcitrance
from both antagonists leave the international community in its pursuit
of a peaceful settlement of an endless conflict? It reinforces the necessity
for the ‘makers’ and ‘shakers’ to approach the
dispute in a logical manner; determine the real causes of the conflict,
what is and who are perpetuating the conflict, and what are the consequences
of a non-solution?
The Palestinians have had
their lands appropriated from them, have been turned into a substantial
refugee population and are suffering deprivations. The West Bank remains
occupied despite several UN resolutions contradicting the occupation.
Israelis are not having their lands appropriated or their lives severely
disrupted by Palestinians. Israelis are living comfortably on land that
belonged to their adversaries. Aren’t the injustices against the
Palestinians the real cause of the conflict and don’t these injustices
demand a just solution? The erratic terrorist actions against Israel,
including relatively ineffective rocket shelling of Israeli border towns,
seem to be the result of punishing actions against the Palestinians
and are minimal in intensity when compared to the almost daily killings
and mayhem committed against the Palestinian community. Two of almost
daily reports, which point to a slow genocide of the Palestinian people,
demonstrate who is perpetrating the violence that the world carelessly
ignores.
HAARETZ, August 15, 2007,
IDF kills 6 in Gaza, including at least 4 militants
At least six Palestinians,
including three Hamas militants and the 70-year-old mother of one of
them, were killed and at least 20 were hurt in an IDF operation in the
Khan Yunis area of central Gaza yesterday, Palestinian sources said.
HAARETZ, 19:02 25/08/2007,
IDF kills Israeli boy in West Bank raid,
An 11-year-old Israeli boy from Rahat who was visiting his mother's
family near Tul Karm was killed Friday during a Border Police arrest
raid. A wanted Islamic Jihad militant was killed in the same arrest
raid in Kafr Saida, northeast of Tul Karm, and a second was seriously
wounded.
Fantasies, fictions and irrelevant
propositions peppered with emotional concepts of Jews returning to their
homeland, Israel born from the Holocaust, and Israel the Jewish nation
have deterred rational thinking on the conflict. A worldwide army of
Israel supporters circulate reports that counter charges against Israel
and provide a verbal smokescreen for Israel’s aggressive actions.
Public relations for the Israeli state is a worldwide industry, generating
repetitive slogans such as: “special relationship, “only
democracy in the Middle East,” and “America’s best
and true friend.”
Let’s examine the record:
Israeli archaeologists at
Tel Aviv university, as well as other archaeologists and historians,
have refuted biblical stories of the kingdoms of David and Solomon.
The scarcity of pottery shards and artifacts from the tenth century
before the Common Era demonstrate the area was sparsely inhabited during
the periods of the supposed monarchies. No chronicles from the tenth
century mention the Israel monarchs. No history confirms the David or
Solomon Biblical narrative.
Although enormous evidence
of Canaanite, Crusader, Greek, Roman and Arab cities and monuments in
the Levant have been uncovered, verifiable evidence of extensive Biblical
Israel constructions, administration and monuments in the Middle East,
even in Jerusalem, are lacking. History does not describe a Biblical
Israel civilization of art, literature (other than the Bible), engineering,
agriculture, military, commerce, construction, transportation or architecture.
History reports a Middle Eastern area that contained a significant number
of Hebrews, mixed with other ethnicities, but not with a population
greater than other Jewish concentrations throughout the Greek and Roman
empires.
The City of David, built
on a hill outside of the city walls is a small settlement area, and
its relation to the mythical David, except for some possible tenth century
artifacts, is unclear There might have been a great Temple, as noted
by historian Flavius Josephus, but no stone of that Temple has been
uncovered in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif. The
Western Wall, often mistakenly called the ‘wailing wall,’
which is a contrived 19th century term and not used in Israel today,
is considered to be a bearing wall for Herod’s platform and not
a wall of the Temple. According to historian Karen Armstrong, Jews did
not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamluks in the 15th century allowed
them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and
pray daily at the Wall. At that time she estimates that there may have
been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. These historical
pronouncements create doubts of the Western Wall being the most revered
monument in Jewish life and instead shift it to the category of revered
by default – there is no other in Jerusalem – and ignores
many others disbursed throughout the Jewish world. Although historians
have attributed David’s Tower and Solomon’s Pools to Greek
and Roman times, the designations lead persons to believe these constructions
are related to the Biblical Israeli monarchs.
Archaeology and history deny
the proposition that people today, who are indirectly related to people
who wandered a land three thousand years ago, are owed the land. How
can unproven religious myths replace legal rights; who actually owns
the land, who inhabited the land for past generations, who succored
the land during modern history? These persons were Palestinians and
certainly not refugees from the Holocaust.
Does the creation of Israel
have any direct relation with the Holocaust? After all, the thrust to
create a state occurred decades before the WWII Holocaust. In 1951,
the number of Israelis who could be directly identified with the Holocaust
was estimated at about 240,000, less than 20% of the Israel population
and a small portion of world Jewry at that time. It has not been publicized
that many of these persons used Israel as a temporary station and eventually
left for the United States and other countries. After 1950, Israel’s
population growth came primarily from North African, Ethiopian, Yemen,
Middle Eastern and Russian (Jews and non-Jews) immigration.
In an article, The Course
of History, which appeared on several Internet sites, the writer described
the difficulties of characterizing Israel as a Jewish nation.
Avraham Burg, former Knesset
speaker and former head of the Jewish Agency has been quoted as saying,
“to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to
its end.” The term ‘Jewish nation’ has never been
adequately defined and there is nothing exceptional in Israel that identifies
a specific Jewish morality, culture or Judaic atmosphere. There are
some, but relatively few foods, architectural styles, songs, dances
and landscapes in Israel that are not related to the Arab Mediterranean
Twenty percent of Israel’s population are Arabs and a portion
of the citizenry, such as the Ethiopian Falasha and Russian immigrants,
have dubious relation to world Jewry. Many of the Mizrahim immigrants
to Israel, who constitute a great part of Israel’s population,
can be considered Arab – having previously spoken Arab, adopted
Arab customs and culture and lived for generations in Arab nations.
Many Israelis, although technically still considered Israelis and recorded
in the population statistics, have citizenship and residency in other
countries. Although exact figures are not available, Israel’s
Absorption Ministry estimated in 2006 that about 600,000 Israelis had
left the country to live abroad. Since many Israelis carry dual citizenship
and return to Israel only for brief interludes, that total can probably
be doubled. It has also been shown that Israelis of Arab nationality,
who trace their heritage back more two generations, might be comparable
in numbers to Israelis of Jewish nationality who also trace their heritage
back two generations.
The troubling fiction that
has characterized the Israeli/Palestinian struggle has also characterized
all of the negotiations. And that will probably not change – expect
calculated ambiguity. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘ present
proposals and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s responses to
them have been unofficially reported by correspondent Shimon Schiffer
in the August 16 issue of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and
by Akiva Eldar in the August 22 Haaretz journal.
Mahmoud Abbas wants Israel
to return to the 1967 borders. This will allow a Palestinian state to
be established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Olmert proposes an Israeli
withdrawal from what he defines as “more than 90 percent of the
West Bank,” but maintains the settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty.
Israel will give the Palestinians territory in the Negev, adjacent to
the Gaza Strip.
Mahmoud Abbas wants Israel
to recognize the right of the refugees to return to their homes, in
accord with the resolution of the Security Council. Implementation of
the right of return will be by agreement between the sides.
Olmert offers the Palestinian
refugees a return only to the territory of the Palestinian state which
will be established in the future, and not within the borders of the
State of Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas wants a safe
passage, entirely under Palestinian control, between the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip.
Olmert has the West Bank
joined to the Gaza Strip by bridges or tunnels. The ground will remain
in Israeli sovereignty.
Mahmoud Abbas wants East
Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. The Temple Mount/Al-Haram
al-Sharif. will be under full Palestinian control.
Olmert concedes neighborhoods
on the edge of East Jerusalem to Palestinian sovereignty. He recommends
joint control of the Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif. with international
participation.
Can the aggrieved Palestinians
ask for less? Don’t justice and reason support their negotiated
positions? Will the prosperous Israelis, who are satisfied with the
status quo and have the power to acquire more, be willing to concede
anything? If the Israel military can kill Palestinians with impunity
and without protest, why would their government take any negotiations
seriously? Negotiations will continue endlessly until the world’s
peoples recognize the cataclysm that awaits them and take action.
We have already witnessed
severe destruction in several Middle East wars and the consequences
to the Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese and other Middle East peoples.
The violence has reinforced world terrorism. Now, we have the destruction
of Iraq, a nation that was no proven threat to the United States, but
was considered to be Israel’s most serious antagonist. U.S. government
neoconservatives, many of whom have shown excessive loyalty to Israel,
were instrumental in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In effect,
the U.S. fought, and is still fighting, Israel’s battle.
Extrapolating from these
atrocities, what is a predictable scenario in the near future? We have,
as one outcome of the Iraq occupation, the accusations that Iran and
Syria, two other serious antagonists to Israel, are threats to world
peace – similar to Hussein’s Iraq – and both of them,
without any firm evidence for confirmation and much evidence to the
contrary, are accused of busily assisting Iraqi insurgents. Iran, the
latest number one antagonist, is viewed as the next nation to be liberated
and decimated. With that done, what will be the fate of those allied
with Hezbollah and Hamas? Annihilation? Will the battles end then? There
will still be Syria, Sudan and other nations viewed as too antagonist
to Israel. Millions killed, horrific terrorism, economic catastrophes,
tens of millions of refugees and possible uncontrollable worldwide epidemics.
And for each death, new grievances, new converts to battle and new antagonists
to one another. Present day Iraq has highlighted that story. If the
battle does not end soon, it will be a battle for eternity.
In a November 2003 European
Union poll, 59 percent of Europeans selected Israel as the greatest
threat to world peace, in the top position, ahead of Iran and North
Korea. So, what’s the problem? Can’t the United Nations
force Israel to recognize the rights of the Palestinians and satisfy
Mahmoud Abbas’ negotiation proposals? Apparently not, because
there is another problem: the forces which manipulate the information
concerning the situation, guide the discussions of the situation, control
the decisions to ameliorate the situation and have the military muscle
to counter any attack on their roles in the situation are the forces
which prevent a logical approach or a just solution to the conflict.
A logical approach and just solution to a deadly conflict don’t
favor the policies of Israel and the United States. Their road to peace
leads to a world shattered into pieces.
Dan Lieberman
has been active in alternative politics for many years. He is the editor
of Alternative
Insight , a monthly web based newsletter. Dan has many
published articles on the Middle East conflicts.
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