[Peace-discuss] Israel's Confrontation with It's Neighbors

[David Green]

Friends,

The article below corresponds to the link above it. If
you do link, you will also see photos of Israeli
"withdrawal" from checkpoints in 2000, inaccurately
referred to by Michael Shapiro last night. Israel's
invasive and sadistic control over Palestinian life
has continually intensified since the Oslo Agreement
of 1993, without exception, suicide bombing or not,
negotiations or not, Palestinian collaboration or not.
There is a voluminous record of this kept by all of
the mainstream human rights organizations, including
B'Tselem, the Israeli-Palestinian one.

While this example is perhaps a minor point in
relation to many of the claims made by Shapiro and
Fred Jaher regarding Israel's alleged victimization by
Hamas and Hizbollah (I particularly enjoyed Jaher's
equation of democracy with the willingness to be
punished and starved), it is illustrative of the
carelessness (to give the benefit of the doubt) with
which "supporters of Israel" make their case (I put
that in quotes because the leaders of Israel and their
American apparatchicks no more care about average and
increasingly immiserated Israeli Jews than do the
leaders of this country care about average white
people).

Behind this is a denial of the objective realities of
Israeli expansionism and Palestinian dispossession;
Jaher is quite open that not only is he unwilling to
face the brutal facts, but also the moral implications
of Israeli policies. He attempts to turn amorality
(really, immorality) into a virtue!!, as if that can
lead to a just settlment between vastly militarily
unequal nations. This mind-boggling perversity should
be recognized for what it is--a small death of the
human spirit.

It is this self-willed lack of compassion that is the
basis for occupation, racism, violence, and ultimately
genocide. It is no better for being dressed up in the
academic robes of "national interests." Last night, it
perversely led to ethnic cleansing being dismissed as
a problem of "semantics" (Shapiro) or a "moralistic"
diversion from pragmatic politics (Jaher). This is a
shameful use of language to minimize responsibility.
We most definitely need a language of humanity and
compassion in order to address these issues
effectively and pragmatically.

I suspect that if the ethnic cleansing of Jews were
involved, semantics would not be a problem, and
morality would be invoked as a basis for action. And
of course, ethnic cleansing in Darfur is being
challenged in the ultimate moral terms of "never
again" by cynical Jewish leaders (partly to divert
attention from Palestine). Right.

For there to be genuine peace, there has to be moral
recognition of the other and one's responsibility for
suffering. To deny this is to perpetuate "the language
of force," by which the strong dictate to the weak.
This is the status quo in the Middle East--although
given Hizbollah's victory and the insurgency in Iraq,
this may be changing.

This "debate" was a good example of the "high-minded"
liberal justification for Israeli atrocities. It's
really as much of a problem than the more blatant
views of extremists like Avigdor Lieberman, noticeably
unmentioned last evening. I think that it is safe to
say that neither Shapiro nor Jaher has any more
compassion for the Palestinian plight than the most
fanatical Israeli settler, or in the case of
Lieberman, Russian immigrant. If they did, they simply
would not rationalize Israeli aggression as they do.

In practical terms, there is really no difference,
either here or in Israel. Jaher says he opposed our
invasion of Iraq, but he buys into the imperial
project for oil, and supports the destruction of
Lebanon, which is part of the same agenda. You can't
have it both ways, and you can bet that he lifted not
a finger to oppose our invasion. To do so, he would
have had to commune with all of the "anti-Semites" out
on North Prospect who he believes would just as soon
be carting off Israeli Jews to the ovens.

Please excuse the discomfort that was behind my choice
not to attend this event. For reasons both personal
and political, I think I made the right one. I do
appreciate the efforts of Dr. Nasser and some members
of the audience to set the record straight. I think
that the stark moral contrast between passion and lack
of compassion will be apparent to many viewers and, as
always, to the detriment of what we in our town like
to call "Jewish culture and society."

DG

____________________________

http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=86

Twenty kilometers west of Jerusalem lies the No Man's
land, which is a 50-km2 area that separated Israel
from the West Bank before the 1967 war. On the borders
of this area there used to be three Palestinian
villages: Imwas, Beit Nuba, and Yalu. According to the
Bible, Imwas (Emaeus in the Bible) is the site of the
second appearance of Jesus after the resurrection and
3 km west of it lies the famous monastery of
Al-Latrun. The area used to be a buffer zone
separating the Israeli and Arab forces in the
aftermath of the 1948 war. Immediately following the
1967 war, Israeli forces completely destroyed the
villages and evicted the residents. Few of the
villagers managed to return later and settle in the
areas close to where their houses used to be. 

Successive Israeli governments had considered the
Latrun area as an area of strategic importance that
needed to be firmly in their control. Therefore,
demolishing the villages and depopulating them was not
enough. A military outpost was erected in 1969 on the
ruins of the village of Beit Nuba and in 1974 it was
transformed into a settlement called Mevo Horon (see
photo). Moreover, in 1976, and on the relics of Yalu
and Imwas, a recreational area called Canada Park was
established by the Jewish National Fund. Over 20 km2
were reserved for Canada Park for planting trees while
the Palestinian farmers who returned to their
destroyed villages were denied the right to work their
land. 

With the advent of the Oslo agreements, Israel erected
checkpoints all over the West Bank and Gaza to control
the movement of Palestinians into Israel, see map. 
One such checkpoint was erected east of Canada Park on
the main highway linking Jerusalem to Al-Ramlah.
However, on the 15th of January 2000, the Israeli
authorities moved it 3.5 km east (see photo). This
move sparked strong protest from the Palestinians
because of the implications it entails. First, the new
checkpoint bares the Palestinian farmers from reaching
some of their lands. The old checkpoint also was an
obstacle but the new one makes the prohibited area
larger (see map). Secondly, and more importantly, the
relocation of the checkpoint can be interpreted as an
attempt at annexing the western part of the area to
Israel. As mentioned earlier, Israel considers the
Latrun area strategic and moving the checkpoint
eastwards is like declaring that the border between it
and the West Bank is further east than it actually is.
As a consequence, Israel contemplates the annexation
of Canada Park and Mevo Horon in the final status
negotiations. It is worth mentioning here that Burger
King, the famous fast-food chain, has refused to
permit its Israeli fanchisee to open a restaurant in
the Latrun area. 

On the 14th of February 2000, another attempt at
redrawing the boundary between Israel and the West
Bank was spotted by our field surveyors who were on an
assignment south of Hebron. They were confronted by a
new checkpoint close to the settlement of Susiya (see
photo). As they headed 2 km further south, they found
a dismantled checkpoint (see photo). Hence the first
checkpoint they had encountered was in fact a
relocation of the dismantled one (see map). This
relocation again amounts to an Israeli endeavor to
redefine the boundary in the south to incorporate
parts of the West Bank into Israel. In fact, not long
ago, scores of families living in the southern
outskirts of the West Bank were forcibly evicted by
the Israeli authorities (click here for more). 


These unilateral acts contradict the agreements signed
with the Palestinians as well as the UN resolutions
242 and 338 upon which the whole peace process is
based. Theoretically, and according to the Oslo
agreements, the boundaries of the envisaged
Palestinian State is one of the items to be determined
in the final status negotiations. Furthermore, in
these agreements both parties pledge not to 'initiate
or take any step that will change the status of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of
the permanent status negotiations' (The
Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip, September 28, 1995). However
Israel continues to create facts on the ground and to
prejudice the outcome of the final status negotiations
to its liking. 




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