| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:39 pm Post subject: The Israeli Palestinian Conflict and the spread of Empire an |
| http://desip.igc.org/1-27-05talk.html
The Israeli Palestinian Conflict and the spread of Empire and Desolation
A talk presented at the Friends Peace Center
San Jose, Costa Rica,
January 27, 2005
by Ronald Bleier[i]
Good evening. My name is Ronald Bleier. I’d like to begin with a few words about my background. I was born during the Second World War, in November 1942, on a tiny island called Lopud off the Croatian coastline near Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, while my parents were escaping from the Nazis. Fifteen months later, my brother was born in February 1944 on yet another of these islands called Vis, as my parents continued their escape. In due course, we made it safely to a refugee camp in Italy from where were fortunate to find passage along with about 1,000 mostly Jewish refugees who were granted temporary asylum in the United States by President Roosevelt during the war. About a year after the war, our entire group was granted permanent residency leading to citizenship by an act of Congress during the Truman presidency. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York where I attended yeshiva elementary and high school and where I was indoctrinated in Zionism, an ideology that I didn’t question for many years. After graduating from Brooklyn College, I spent two years with the Peace Corps in Iran.
It was only in the aftermath of the 1967 war when it became clear to me that the Israelis did not intend to withdraw from the territories they captured, and were bent on an indefinite military occupation, that my views slowly changed. In the fullness of time I was to meet with a series of disillusionments that culminated in my present anti-Zionist views. The horrific Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 made me understand some of the depths of the savagery and the ruthlessness of Israeli policy. The first Palestinian uprising in December 1987 sparked tremendous interest and activism on the Palestinian issue and roughly coincided with the publication of several revisionist histories by such writers as Simcha Flapan, Benny Morris, Tom Segev, Avi Schlaim and others which opened my eyes to the myths surrounding the birth of Israel. It was then that I learned that Israel was born out of the expulsion of the Palestinian people, and that cruelty and oppression was required in order to retain control of a second class population. Around that time, I realized that I needed to determine for myself the meaning of Zionism. I deduced that it meant the ideology that a Jewish state should replace the former Palestine. From this I concluded that Zionism is manifestly racist in theory and in practice since it treats only Jews as first class citizens.
In my yeshivas we were taught ethical, universal Judaism. We learned about the Torah, the Law of Moses and the Talmudic tradition. I was imbued by my rabbis with the notion of Judaism as a religion embodying justice and human rights. Only much later did I begin to recognize the reality of Israel as a state like other states, engaging in the very worst atrocities of which it was capable in order to further its political goals. And later still I began to recognize the special, terrible way Israel was different from other states since it acted with the full diplomatic, economic and military support of the United States.
My next great disillusionment was to find that I was alone among my family and friends in taking an objective and critical view of Israeli policy. I can still recall the moment in the early 80s when I broached my new views of Israel with my father, a dedicated Zionist. We were in a restaurant and his first reaction was to laugh at my ignorance and naiveté. He couldn’t believe that his son would take the side of the Arabs – that’s how he saw it. His second reaction was to ask me to lower my voice lest others overhear my outlandish views. My father and I very quickly had to agree to disagree on the issue.
I underwent another disillusionment with regard to the role of the media. I had already been something of a critic of the press, not to mention TV news, but it was a completely new world to learn of the power of the “friends of Israel” lobby to obscure the reality of the crimes of Israel. As it happened, my first publications appeared in the now unfortunately defunct magazine, Lies of Our Times. The rumor going around when the magazine died was that its forthright stand on the Israeli Arab issue doomed its funding in the post Oslo period. On the power of the Israeli lobby to ruin careers, to stifle dissent and to procure political support and scores of billions of dollars in military and economic aid for Israel, I read Paul Findley, Moshe Menuhin, Donald Neff, Jeffrey Blankfort, Alfred Lilienthal and others who pointed to the dramatic and rigid control by Zionists and their supporters over the media and over Congress and the administration on Middle East Policy.
The Widening Gyre
Until the advent of the current Bush administration and the terrible events of 9/11, it may have been possible even for those sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, to view events in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, as confined to that area of the world, with relatively minimal effects on daily life elsewhere. Needless to say there was more than an element of denial in such a view as we had to put to one side the corruption of our national discourse and the censorship of information coming out of the Middle East, not to mention the raiding of the U.S. Treasury of $3-6 billion a year or more to satisfy Israeli demands.
But today, in the wake of 9/11 and the reinstallation of George W. Bush for a second term as president, once again, many believe through fraudulent means, we are confronted with an energized and radical neo conservative movement with nowhere to go but onward and down. I think my father said it best a few months before he died a year and a half ago, “they don’t do anything good.” He was absolutely right. They are bent on an ideological destruction of the mission of government which is supposed to be by, for, and of the people.
One way to get some perspective on what is happening to the Palestinians and their prospects is to examine in some detail Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Disengagement plan which was published in the Israeli papers April 16, 2004.[ii] The disengagement plan appeared at the height of the corruption scandal that engulfed Sharon and his sons and served to deflect domestic criticism as well as growing international opposition to Israel’s construction of the Wall on Palestinian territory. Sharon’s plan provided President George W. Bush with sufficient cover to reverse long-standing U.S. policy relating to the Palestinians. In particular, Bush brushed aside the critical principle, often reiterated at the U.N., of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory conquered by force. In his dramatic joint press conference in Washington with Sharon on April 14, 2004, President Bush, bowing, as he put it, to “new realities on the ground,” declared that Israel could permanently keep major settlements in the West Bank. Bush also rejected the Palestinian right of return to Israeli territory and froze the Palestinian leadership out of negotiations. At the same time, Bush effectively gave carte blanche to the continued Israeli construction of the Wall albeit with the meaningless reservation that it was to be regarded as a temporary structure. In June 2004, both houses of Congress, by lop sided majorities, followed up with resolutions unreservedly endorsing President Bush’s giveaway to Sharon.
The disengagement plan provided Sharon with cover on the military front. A succession of ruthlessly brutal intensive major Israeli Defense Forces operations followed the March 2004 assassination of wheelchair bound Hamas political leader Sheik Yassin in Gaza and continued the next month with the murder of his successor, Dr. Abd al- Rantisi. This was only the beginning for Gaza residents as operations followed from May 2004 through October. Typical of the brutality, in a two-week period during Operation Rainbow in southern Gaza in May, at least 60 Palestinians were killed, almost 300 Palestinian homes demolished, and close to 4,000 people made homeless. Throughout these operations, large amounts of Palestinian farmland and property including olive groves were confiscated and bulldozed.
One reason that Sharon has continued to get a free ride on the strength of his disengagement plan, despite his long history as a tireless and powerful opponent of Palestinian national rights, is that many cannot believe that he would be so reckless as to propose the unilateral removal of Jewish settlements in Gaza without the intention of following through. But such a view of Sharon fails to take into consideration his willingness to take unprecedented risks, as well as his shrewd calculation of both the domestic and international political landscape. In Israel, there is no opposition to speak of. In the United States, Bush and his radical, pro Israeli neocon team is firmly in place for a second term and wholly supportive of Sharon’s goals and vicious tactics. Moreover, as a veteran of more than 50 years on the Middle East scene, Sharon understands that pretexts can always be found to break, postpone and put off indefinitely agreements and treaties with the Arabs.
Thus far only a few lonely voices in Israel have pointed to the counterintuitive nature of the disengagement plan and have openly questioned Sharon’s intention to remove the Gaza settlements. Israeli author and academic Tanya Reinhart has gone further than anyone else, providing invaluable documentation demonstrating the lack of any practical steps Israel is taking that would indicate a serious intent to remove the settlers. Despite the absence of such evidence, the media and the international community largely continue to take Sharon’s disengagement plan seriously. Meanwhile Israel continues to pour resources into the settlements, suggesting that so far from evicting Jewish settlers from Gaza, the plan is to maintain them over the long term. In that case, it’s not the Israeli settlers who will be leaving, but rather a million Palestinians who will be forced from Gaza.
As part of her expose, Tanya Reinhart also reveals that compensation to settlers willing to leave Gaza is to be postponed indefinitely. She explains that if the Israeli government were seriously interested in removing settlements, they would begin to compensate those willing to leave in order to isolate the remaining hardcore. Many believed that the compensation plan was approved by the Knesset in November. However, upon closer examination we find that the required 2nd and 3rd readings of the bill “will take place only after the government decides on actual evacuation, in March 2005 or later. Till then no one will be compensated.” [iii] Meanwhile, the Israeli press reported that in December, 11 more families moved into a Gaza settlement. [iv]
Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst who has been following Middle East issues for three decades, in a recent article, summarized some of the bitter reality Palestinians confront under the current regime. The picture she paints is important because it is evidence that Sharon is in the midst of a campaign to make civil life impossible for the Palestinian community. The current dimension of the situation, she writes, goes back to the April 2002 siege of the West Bank when
Israeli forces rampaged through the territory, destroying the entire infrastructure of Palestinian civil society: Israeli soldiers laid waste Palestinian civil ministries for education and health and agriculture; smeared feces throughout the Ministry of Culture; destroyed computers and hard disks and, with them, the entire written record of Palestinian society; ransacked Palestinian businesses and banks; bulldozed whole housing blocks; destroyed land registry maps and census records, as if to erase all trace of Palestinian existence. …
Gaza is largely in ruins, a Middle Eastern Dresden, thanks to repeated Israeli air and bulldozer assaults. Nearly two thousand homes have been demolished in Gaza since the [September 2000] intifada began, leaving many more thousands of innocent civilians homeless, and Israeli helicopter gunship attacks and assassination operations have wrought still more destruction.
Israel's separation wall has destroyed prime Palestinian agricultural land, bulldozed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive trees, destroyed or more often appropriated for Israeli use most Palestinian water wells, destroyed Palestinian markets [and] homes. Israeli closure policies have prevented most Palestinians from working inside Israel since the beginning of the peace process a dozen years ago. Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank impede movement and halt commerce. …Yet the West wonders why the Palestinian economy is not thriving.
Israel has reduced every Palestinian security headquarters throughout the West Bank and in Gaza to rubble. These structures, which served…as security headquarters [and also] as the center of municipal governance, with mayor's offices, jails, and health clinics [are] now mere heaps of concrete.[v]
Arafat’s sudden illness and death in November [2004] briefly put a halt to some of Israel’s most high profile deadly and destructive military operations. Yet, only a month later in mid December, using the pretext of rockets fired by the military wing of Hamas, Israel resumed its pitiless assaults in a two-day operation that killed 11 Palestinians in Khan Yunus in Gaza.[vi] Confiscations of Palestinian land also resumed. In early January, Dr. James Zogby appeared on BBC TV news, pointing out that in the previous two weeks, Israel had appropriated 3,000-4,000 acres of Palestinian land. [vii]
Arafat’s death and the election of Mahmoud Abbas as new president of the Palestinian Authority spurred hopes that we might be entering a new period of reconciliation and movement toward a meaningful peace process. However, even the mildly positive atmospherics did not last beyond a week or two after the election as Sharon used a predictable “terror” incident as a pretext to “temporarily” end such discussions as had been envisioned. Nor is this a surprise since Sharon is dead set against giving up anything to the Palestinians in negotiations since he holds all the political and military cards. Sharon’s immediate plan is to destroy any and all remnants of Palestinian resistance. He is embarked on a campaign to make civil life more and more impossible for the Palestinian community as he pursues the logic of Zionism, which foresees a land of Israel for Jews only. Such a plan would involve ethnic cleansing on a massive scale – the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people similar in scope to the events of 1948 when upwards of 750,000 Palestinians were expelled.
Turning now to US foreign policy and the origins of the Iraq war we see evidence of Israeli influence on US actions –what one writer called “The Fatal Embrace.” First I’d like to tackle the question of whether the Iraq war was fought for oil. I have always believed that the issue of US control over Iraqi oil was subsidiary to ideological goals. Now that we see oil prices near $50 with no apparent prospect of returning below $30, some are beginning to realize that if regime change in Iraq was about oil, it hasn’t succeeded. Had the Administration’s purpose been about providing US drivers with a steady and cheap supply of Middle East oil, the last thing they would have done was go to war against Iraq. Rather, I argue, war against Iraq was driven by a coterie of neoconservatives who have a long record of supporting a Likudnik agenda of destabilizing and fragmenting all of Israel’s potential enemies.[viii] Those like Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Eliot Abrams and others in senior government positions are interested in extending U.S. military power abroad not in the interests of democracy as they claim, but in order to sow chaos, confusion, and violent conflict.
They aim to maintain and grow the military budget and starve domestic social spending. In order to maintain an aggressive posture and ensure maximum freedom of action they are determined to subvert the international order that has been the foundation of the stability that has allowed the US and many other nations to grow and prosper over the last century. They eschew conflict resolution and diplomacy because that would threaten to bring peace, which is their anathema. Their modus operandi is to create desolation and call it democracy.
We are confronted in the age of George W. Bush with the enormous success of the neocon program. Many of the neocons were former Democrats in the 70s who were opposed to the liberal agenda of demilitarization, social spending and criticism of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. From relatively modest beginnings we find today that they have achieved their goal of regime change in Iraq against the best advice of major elements of the Republican Party including George H.W. Bush, the father of the president. They have pursued the Iraq war against the greatest outpouring of protest in the US and the rest of the world since the Vietnam War, and against common sense and the best interests of the security of the United States. So the question becomes how did they pull it off? One part of the answer that concerns us tonight is the assistance provided by the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States. The ability of the Israeli lobby to smooth the way for war was highlighted by the furor over Virginia Congressman Jim Moran's response in early March 2003 to a constituent question during a town hall meeting.[ix] He said: that "if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they should."
Congressman Moran was correct and extraordinarily courageous in pointing to the leadership of the major Jewish organizations, suggesting that they could have blocked the war. As a 13-year veteran member of the House, Jim Moran has been around long enough to understand how political power on Middle East issues operates in Congress. War against Iraq has so isolated the United States and made so little sense that were it not perceived as good for Israel, in all likelihood it would not have gained sufficient traction in the media or in Congress.
It’s probably not possible to reconcile opposing sides on the question of whether Tel Aviv or Washington drives US Mideast policy, but one element of this issue may be worth emphasizing. I would stress the difference between Prime Minister Sharon’s brutal and ruthless pragmatism as he drives forward toward his goal of a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinians and the Arab nation. From a Zionist perspective, it is a zero sum game with winners and losers. On the other hand, the Washington neocons, are bent on war for the sake of war, with tragedy, and death the only winners. Fallujah today is an excellent example of the desolation that the public relations people call democracy. Another example of the new dark age are the ruins of the Museum in Baghdad, the destroyed Baghdad Library, the ravaged Iraqi universities and archeological sites, the murder of scores of the cream of the Iraqi academic, professional and diplomatic classes, not to mention the deaths of a 100,000 and counting ordinary Iraqis.
The Dimensions of the present problem
There is no point in attempting to soften our description of the nature of the current crisis that we face with the reinstallation of George W. Bush for another four years. With the results of the election in place, the most radical of the neocons are entrenched and empowered to forward their extremist agenda. No doubt there are many like me in tonight’s audience who first read George Orwell’s 1984, awakened but at the same time confident that we would never live to see a US administration that could embody such evil. Lo and behold, we are now confronted with an administration bent on the continual creation of enemies and fighting endless war.
The current devastation and horror that Bush has made of Iraq while not exactly a PR bonanza, is not necessarily perceived by them as a total defeat. For example, if Iraq should wind up fragmented into its three main groups, that would play into neocon and Israeli hands since a potential area counterforce will have been eliminated. Moreover the anarchic climate in Iraq, a perfect breeding ground for terrorism suits their purpose by fomenting real, imagined and created enemies against whom the US leadership can rally and unify the populace, stifle dissent, and push through the most extreme of their radical domestic and international agenda.
The next target on the Bush-Cheney neocon agenda is Iran, now Israel’s strongest enemy. On January 20th, the same day that George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term, Vice President Cheney with astonishing chutzpah, gave Israel the green light to attack Iran. In a radio interview, he said that Iran is “right at the top of the list” of the world’s trouble spots and given that “Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.” The naked irresponsibility and recklessness of such a statement is staggering. For added measure we learn from articles in current issues of the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh that plans have already been made for attacking Iran and reconnaissance for such an attack has already begun including on the ground infiltration of commando forces. (As an aside it may be interesting to speculate that US government leaks to Hersh were intended as a trial balloon in order to measure domestic US reaction as well as to spread confusion in Iran.)
One measure of the contretemps we are in is that there is no one in sight with the stature or courage to challenge Cheney’s characterization of Iran’s posture which is essentially defensive. If there was one thing that the Bush-Cheney wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have taught Iran and North Korea and the rest of the world it is that weak countries including those without a nuclear deterrent are vulnerable to threats from the US and/or Israel. Iran would be “crazy,” as one analyst elegantly put it,[x] if it did not seek a nuclear deterrent against threatening superpowers. Meanwhile, in Western circles, Israel’s nuclear monopoly is ignored while Iran’s nuclear potential is characterized as a threat to peace. [xi] Israel and the US neocon Likudniks are determined to maintain the nuclear status quo in the Middle East because an Iranian nuclear capability might serve as a brake to Israeli and US aggression.
One question raised by US-Israeli threats is whether an attack against Iran would lead to a wider Middle East war. But it is difficult to see who would be or could be waging war against the two superpowers. The military balance in the Middle East is not comparable to that of Europe for example of the 20th and earlier centuries where the various states worked to achieve balance through alliances and détentes. Especially now with Iraq effectively out of the picture, there is no foreseeable combination of Middle Eastern powers that could stand up to an Israel backed by the US. Moreover the latest version of Iran’s Shebab 3 medium range missile, rumored to be able to reach Israel, carries no nuclear warhead and so its deterrent capability is strategically limited. Moreover, Iranian missile strikes against Israel, while doing relatively little damage would serve as pretexts for Israel’s disproportionate retaliations, exactly as we see today in the Occupied Territories. Some analysts have pointed out that Israel’s potential air attacks against Iran may originate in US controlled airbases in Iraq. Thus Israel’s continued nuclear monopoly means that Iran is virtually defenseless against Israeli aggression. [xii]
Would an Israeli/US attack on Iran lead to a wider war? One radical faction, led by veteran neoconservative Michael Ledeen who heads the Coalition for Democracy in Iran seems bent on regime change in Saudi Arabia, but it is hard to see how such a change would benefit the US. A destabilized Saudi Arabia would put much of the world oil supply at risk and have nightmare ramifications for the international economy. The Bush-Cheney administration which has longstanding business and personal relations with the Saudi leadership seems to be resisting the concept of regime change there since such plans seem to pass the line of recklessness into pure stupidity. But since the administration seems determined to attack Iran (and Syria for some of the same reasons) we may be in a situation where events are in the saddle and pressures may build to the point where a shaky Saudi monarchy is toppled.
But here we are approaching the horizon of foreseeable events. Suffice it to say for now that the world faces a challenge similar to 1939 with the US and Israel bent on regime change, destabilization, tension, chaos, and endless war.
On the other hand, it may be useful to pull back and remind ourselves that the US is mired in a quagmire in Iraq and that neither the US or Israel have the forces to invade or occupy Iran. Perhaps just as important, on the economic front the US has become a debtor nation big time, no better than a banana republic. Even worse, the Bush Cheney regime shows every evident intention to apply foot to the pedal and drive the US further into bankruptcy by spending endlessly on the Iraq war, and on their military toys, spy satellites and Star Wars programs. Similarly on the domestic front they appear to be determined to continue destroying the economy, with more tax cuts for the wealthy and the huge costs involved in “strengthening” social security. Is it possible that such policies can be sustained another four years? Who knows?
One interesting historical footnote takes us back to the 1956 Suez war when France, England and Israel combined to attack Egypt and Gaza. At the time President Eisenhower – the only US president until Jimmy Carter to stand up to Israel -- was enraged and was able to reverse the tripartite attack by applying pressure on England which at the time was deeply in the US debt for World War Two costs. Is it possible that economically based constraints can save us from the most extreme military daydreams of the current gang in Washington? But even in that least worst case scenario, there will be much desolation, despair and suffering for hundreds of millions of people everywhere.
Solutions
How do we speak of solutions confronted as we are with the magnitude of the current challenges to peace and democracy? My own instincts are to begin by looking the devil – that is to say, reality – in the eye. Our job is first to describe and understand the situation we face as best and as clearly as we are able. That is exactly our purpose this evening. Our next step is to find ways to struggle for our visions and our dreams and our futures. One way to do this is to build community and that is the essential second element of our purpose tonight. From small local beginnings we can try to work to forge the unity and the leadership that we require to survive and prevail. There are certainly no easy answers and no single answer. There is only a difficult and puzzling and impossible process and we need to find ways to plug into that process and to make it happen. And for that task we are armed only with the hope that day will follow night and that we can toil our way toward a better future than the one we seem headed towards now.
The End
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[i] Ronald Bleier is a freelance writer based in NYC. He edits DESIP, an environmental and security website.
[ii] Uri Avnery, December 18, 2004. “The Mountain and the Mouse. Tanya Reinhart, “Sharon’s disengagement” from Gaza,” March 30, 2004 and “What kind of state deserves to exist, Yediot Aharonot, April 20, 2004.
[iii] Tanya Reinhart, “Sharon’s Gaza Pullout: Not Gonna Happen!” November 2004. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3331.shtml
[iv] Ha’aretz, December 17, 2004. Nadav Shraga, “11 new families settle in Gaza’s Nissanit.”
[v] Kathleen Christison, January 3, 2005, “Patronizing the Palestinians: The Trouble with Optimism” http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01032005.html
[vi] Al Jazeera, December 19, 2004, “Israeli helicopters strike Gaza towns.”
[vii] BBC TV news, January 10, 2005.
[viii] Here and in some of the analysis below I am indebted to Stephen J. Sniegoski, “The Future of the Global War on Terrorism,” Current Concerns , September 3-5, 2004.
[ix] Others like Philip Zelikow, the Executive director of the 9/11 Commission, outgoing Senator Ernest “Fritz’ Hollings, Patrick Buchanan, Justin Raimondo and others have expressed similar views but Moran’s case seemed to attract more media attention in part because, as a result of his remarks he was seen as vulnerable.
[x] Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld, International Herald Tribune, August 21, 2004. Cited in Khalid Amayreh, “Israel to U.S.: Now for Iran,” August 29, 2004.
[xi] Sniegoski, op.cit.
[xii] Based on 2004 analysis by Andrew Cordesman. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:55 pm Post subject: The Men From JINSA and CSP |
| Michael Ledeen and others mentioned above are associated with JINSA and PNAC as PNAC would like to take on Russia and China sooner rather than later (see more about PNAC at the top of www.informationclearinghouse.info and at www.whatreallyhappened.com ):
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by JASON VEST
[from the September 2, 2002 issue]
Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.
For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts.
Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who have taken to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP, along with venerable repositories of hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors, conservative foundations and public relations entities underwritten by far-right American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP). It's a milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend: "Whenever you see someone identified in print or on TV as being with the Center for Security Policy or JINSA championing a position on the grounds of ideology or principle--which they are unquestionably doing with conviction--you are, nonetheless, not informed that they're also providing a sort of cover for other ideologues who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the Likudnik and Pax Americana lines," says a veteran intelligence officer. He notes that while the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid to Israel that will end by 2007, government policy is to increase military aid by half the amount of civilian aid that's cut each year--which is not only a boon to both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to realizing the far right's vision for missile defense and the Middle East.
Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA's board of advisers included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen--Oliver North's Iran/contra liaison with the Israelis.
According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the American public about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East." In practice, this translates into its members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been good indicators of what the Pentagon's civilian leadership is thinking.
JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone): According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely "to protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real financial supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster." And if there's a way to advance other aspects of the far-right agenda by intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA doesn't hesitate there, either. A recent report contends that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must be tapped because "the Arab oil-producing states" are countries "with interests inimical to ours," but Israel "stand[s] with us when we need [Israel]," and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR will "limit [the Arabs'] ability to do damage to either of us."
The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including many from the advisory board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing Palestinian violence as a "perversion of military ethics" and holding that "America's role as facilitator in this process should never yield to America's responsibility as a friend to Israel," as "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield."
However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations of the letter's signatories--which are almost always left off the organization's website and communiqués--ought to require that the phrase be amended to say "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield, especially when there's business to be done and bucks to be made." Almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their associations, including with the private mercenary firm Military Professional Resources International, weapons broker and military consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main clients include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees several ongoing joint projects with Israel.
The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented in JINSA's ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm. Leon Edney, Adm. David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired, have served Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or board members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in its attack helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel since 1999, as well as flight simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems and Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time or another, General May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjan and retired Adm. Carlisle Trost have labored in LockMart's vineyards. Trost has also sat on the board of General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206 million contract to supply planes to Israel to be used for "special electronics missions."
By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired Adm. David Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits on the boards of Northrop Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense giant Alliant Techsystems, which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does a brisk business in rubber bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, chaired by Perle.
About the only major defense contractor without a presence on JINSA's advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with Israeli Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to Israel and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters, a ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look at JINSA's kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the Center for Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory council are Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice president for government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private practice, has counted Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and CSP," says a veteran Pentagon analyst, "may as well be one and the same."
Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current JINSA advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board's chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers--including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch--have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.
While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Frank Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty.
Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)
Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to see why: Not only are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP's board of advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston. Ball Aerospace & Technologies--a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites--is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt rotor") caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.
CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes for insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.
The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli rightward economic shift, with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and enterprises--moves that would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond economics, the paper essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy. "Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state," it reads. "Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense"--something that has the added benefit of being "helpful in the effort to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."
Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the notions propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly zealous their advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA to keep former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson from accepting an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two might say about Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the incident, but likely out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former chief of the CIA's Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq (opposed to invading) and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon). In late June, after United Press International reported on a US Muslim civil liberties group's lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American Muslim Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, "went berserk," launching a stream of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the item.
It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and participants, that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at the moment. Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP continues to be reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks (including Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of Israel's settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support for it. Indeed, his personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low. "Gaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious contributor to policy," says a senior Pentagon political official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would counter the influence of CSP. According to those who have communicated with Rove on the matter, his quiet efforts are in response to complaints from many conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney, or feel he's too hard on President Bush. "A lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years," one influential conservative says. "Yet we now know he's pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systems. He considered Cuba a 'classic asymmetric threat' but not Al Qaeda. And since 9/11, he's been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel."
Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It's here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996 reopening of a tunnel under the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy deaths due to rioting. Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York investment banker Lawrence Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative activist William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and Gaffney serve as "senior advisers" in the service of identifying "external" and "internal" post-9/11 threats to America. (The "internal" threats, as articulated by AVOT, include former President Jimmy Carter, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney's backers is Poju Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified international empire that includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which once employed Perle--and benefactor of the recently established Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate reportage or commentary uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.
While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing concerns about various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging from fear of overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks seem to be ruling the roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights chief Mary Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take over the Defense Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice to the Pentagon section of Ledeen's "total war" chorus. Colin Powell's State Department continues to take a beating from outside and inside--including Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and far-right Zionist who's married to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute--recently the subject of a critical investigation by London Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker--Wurmser played a key role in crafting the "Arafat must go" policy that many career specialists see as a problematic sop to Ariel Sharon.)
As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon "town hall" meeting on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose comments are resonating most with him--and not just on missile defense and overseas adventures: After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian issues, he repeatedly referred to the "so-called occupied territories" and casually characterized the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on Palestinian land as "mak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the so-called occupied area," with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has "won" all its wars with various Arab entities--essentially an echo of JINSA's stated position that "there is no Israeli occupation." Ominously, Rumsfeld's riff gave a ranking Administration official something of a chill: "I realized at that point," he said, "that on settlements--where there are cleavages on the right--Wolfowitz may be to the left of Rumsfeld."
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The above 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article (from 'The Nation' by Jason Vest) is the one that Fisk refers to in the following article about JINSA that intially appeared in the London Independent (and is where I first learned about JINSA- Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs ):
Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil
By Robert Fisk - 10 September 2002
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011
Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parcelled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq – which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington – but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The Syrian Accountability Act, which accuses Damascus of supporting "terrorism", will come into force as President Bush is speaking and will follow only days after the State Department branded the Lebanese Hizbollah as the "A-team of terrorism", more dangerous even than Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks – indeed, they were among the first to condemn them – but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil.
Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East – which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world – fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney – the arch-hawk in the US administration – and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.
Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" against "terror" – with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as "the so-called occupied territories" – and arranged the anti-Saudi "kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize more power for themselves in advance of the depart-ure of the dying King Fahd.
Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute – who referred to the outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of "terrorism" – joins the US Defence Department as an Iran-Iraq "expert".
According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.
President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle East at the United Nations on Thursday.
Nor will he give the slightest indication that the region is, in the words of its own kings and dictators, a powder keg of resentment and anger. The tectonic plates of the Arab world are now grinding with increasing violence. Into this political earthquake zone, Mr Bush now seems intent on leading his country, with his loyal British ally.
Most of today's Arab nations were fashioned out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War – and Palestinians still blame Britain today for supporting the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Both European nations stationed tens of thousands of troops across the region, suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon – itself created by the French at the request of its Christian Maronite community. The whole colonial framework led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives before both the British and French retreated from the Middle East.
Now President Bush seems set on following the colonial powers into the region for another military and political adventure – ostensibly to spread "democracy" among those nations it most despises (Iraq, Palestine and Iran) but in fact more likely to increase American control of an increasingly anti-Western Arab world.
The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability and widespread violence. The Israelis – and their allies in the US administration – are hell bent on the whole shebang.
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http://www.robert-fisk.com
Bush's Poodle (Tony Blair) Echoes Bush's Neocon Line against Iran
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/09/bush-s-poodle-tony-blair-echoes-bush-s-neocon-line-on-iran.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:56 am Post subject: Patronizing the Palestinians |
| http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01032005.html
Patronizing the Palestinians
The Trouble with Optimism
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
January 3, 2005
We need to be very clear on one vital point about Palestinian-Israeli relations, particularly in this time of promised movement toward peace: there will be no real Palestinian state anytime in the foreseeable future, and this will not be the Palestinians' fault. Despite all the Cheshire-cat optimism in the media and among politicians around the world since Yasir Arafat's death, despite the sanctimonious hopes that Palestinian "terrorism" will end now that Arafat is gone, despite the patronizing visions of Palestinian "reform," despite the demise of the Palestinian bogeyman who supposedly stood as the only obstacle to peace, we must not lose sight of the fact that there will be no Palestinian independence, and therefore no peace and no justice, anytime soon, for the simple reason that Israel does not want it.
In a recent scathing commentary, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery bluntly characterized the current talk of a "window of opportunity" in the conflict as "repulsive" and "ridiculous" because, simply put, "there is no window and no opportunity, not as long as Sharon is in power." This critical reality has been lost in the outpouring of obscene glee over Arafat's death and the likely election of a supposed "moderate" to succeed him. Ding dong, the wicked wizard is dead, the world's politicians and eager commentators are singing. But, sadly, the future promises no magical kingdom where peace and happiness reign -- not, at any rate, for Palestinians.
Every so often the media and the world political community lose all sense of proportion, and the optimism -- better to call it mindless wishful thinking -- lately coming out of the visits of various luminaries to Palestine and out of media reporting and commentary is enough to make any honest optimist cringe in embarrassment. Commentators and politicians and so-called experts have been experiencing mild paroxysms of anticipation about the prospects for peace since Arafat's death. Tony Blair went to Palestine and Israel in December to try his hand at restarting the peace process, and the British press was awash in hopeful analyses portraying Blair's visit as a kind of Second Coming (though not of the Christian fundamentalist variety). The Guardian's European correspondent Ian Black ran an article just preceding the visit claiming with absurd elation that seldom since Britain ended its mandate and left Palestine almost 60 years ago have "hopes been so high that the former mandatory power can do something useful to help to bring Arabs and Jews closer to peace."
BBC News carried an interesting item on Blair's trip that shines a little of the cold light of reality on the enthusiasm of Black and his political and media colleagues: reporting on the visit, then impending, a reporter in the northern West Bank town of Jenin asked Zachariya Zubeidi, who heads the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades in Jenin and essentially runs this besieged, isolated town, if he thought anything would come of the Blair trip. "Who is Tony Blair?" was Zubeidi's response.
Quickly covering what must have been a certain consternation -- or perhaps a desire to guffaw -- at this devastating evidence of Blair's unimportance in the scheme of things, the British reporter explained who Blair was, to which Zubeidi responded that high-level visits such as this have little effect on the situation on the ground. "On the ground" is where real life is, where Palestinians daily cope with Israeli oppression, where people like Tony Blair and George Bush never venture. It is only ignorant politicians like this and those in the media who stay in the U.S. and in Europe, none of whom ever see "on the ground," who can find any reason for optimism.
Not surprisingly, Blair never saw "on the ground" when he passed briefly through Palestine on his way to meet with Arafat's successor and the leading Palestinian presidential candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, and nod his head curtly at Arafat's memorial; he never saw the separation wall, never visited with Palestinians whose existence has been altered irrevocably by its meandering path through their lives. Zachariya Zubeidi did not go into detail when he said visits like Blair's do no good, but he might have mentioned that, despite all the hopeful talk by people pontificating from outside the occupied territories, the killing of Palestinians continues, the checkpoints remain, the wall continues to be built, Palestinian homes are still being demolished while new Jewish homes in Israeli settlements are still being constructed, the Palestinians are still being smothered, and Zubeidi himself continues to live underground, dodging Israeli assassins. Blair and his ilk have managed to miss this.
Defining "Moderation"
The nearly universal Western obsession with terrorism, with Arafat's supposed perfidy, with Palestinian corruption and other failures, has shifted the world's focus away from where it should lie, on Israel's occupation as the root cause and the original grievance of the current conflict. This myopia has rendered intelligent people incapable of deep or logical thought. So few anymore can understand where or why the conflict originated, so few can fathom how it might be resolved, so few "get it." Take the overweening desire for a "moderate" at the helm of the Palestinians. But a moderate, by almost unanimous definition, is simply anyone who will condemn all opposition to the occupation, in any form. No nuances. No allowance for a legitimate struggle to gain freedom or fight oppression through armed action, no recognition that Israel's domination is anything but benign and sacrosanct.
Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl displayed this rigid, unnuanced point of view when, recently showing some rare skepticism about the future possibilities, he worried that Abbas's "moderation" may not truly reflect general Palestinian attitudes. The very popular jailed Palestinian fighter, Marwan Barghouti, Diehl said, had delivered a "poison pill" in backing out of the presidential contest by conditioning his withdrawal on a list of 18 demands on Abbas and the Palestinian leadership. These demands included such stipulations as that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories before peace negotiations begin, that there be no partial or interim agreements, and that the principle of armed resistance be maintained. Diehl, exhibiting no recognition that the occupation remains the basis of the conflict or any understanding of the conflict's history, called this Barghouti list a "militant agenda." One is led inevitably to some comparisons. Was it not the essence of the American Revolution to demand that British occupiers withdraw from the colonies, to reject partial and provisional agreements and insist that only a final peace agreement would do, and to hold high the right to fight against the occupying British army? Does Diehl consider this "agenda" unacceptably militant?
Diehl worried that Barghouti was expressing the secret desires of most Palestinians and that, if Abbas begins negotiations with Israel, this deep-seated "militancy" will sprout and upset the talks. But what Diehl clearly does not understand is that, although Abbas has gone quite some distance to show his "moderate" credentials by calling for an end to armed resistance at the moment and prohibiting anti-Israeli incitement on Palestinian airwaves, he has not and cannot, if he wishes to maintain his credibility as a potential leader, reject any of Barghouti's demands.
During the election campaign, he must maintain the demand that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories; this is the heart of the issue, whatever border adjustments might be negotiated at a later stage. He must also refuse to allow the Palestinians to be diddled, as they have been for the last decade-plus, with a further succession of inconclusive partial and provisional agreements (the heart of Oslo was a series of interim agreements that permitted endless Israeli delay, and the heart of the Roadmap is establishment of a so-called provisional Palestinian state that by definition would be meaningless and that any leader would be a fool to accept). Finally, no self-respecting leader could possibly renounce his nation's right ever to resume armed struggle in the face of continued oppression by a foreign army. Unfortunately, the fact that Diehl does not understand these rudiments of national self-determination and national dignity is not at all surprising in the current atmosphere.
Today's optimism is merely a diversion for those who refuse to think and observe. Palestinians are still dying, still being made homeless, still losing land and livelihoods to Israel's inexorable expansionism. Forcing reforms in the Palestinian political system, however necessary some reform may be, will not bring peace, will not end the Israeli violence. Palestinian farmers in the small West Bank town of Jayyous, which lost three-quarters of its agricultural land and all of its fresh water wells to Israel when the separation wall was built through the village a year ago, recently told a correspondent that peace would be wonderful but reform and elections are meaningless to them when they no longer have a livelihood and cannot even provide their families with water.
The obstacle to peace has always been Israel's occupation, not Arafat or any other Palestinian leader; the source of violence is not Palestinian "terrorism," but Israel's occupation and everything that goes with it: the land confiscations, the settler depredations, the house demolitions, the wall, the destruction of property, the checkpoints, the Israeli-only roads, the ethnic cleansing. It is Israel that is not a partner for peace, Israel's violence that impedes peace.
Today's optimism is a diversion from these continuing realities. Optimism allows us, allows politicians and commentators, to ignore the real situation on the ground; it allows us all to ignore Israel's explicitly stated intention never to relinquish its domination of the West Bank (most recently elucidated by Sharon's senior political adviser Dov Weisglass, who crowed openly about having put the Palestinian issue in "formaldehyde" and, with full U.S. knowledge and support, frozen the peace process so that "you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalemindefinitely"); it allows us all to ignore the gross land hunger and racism inherent in Israel's occupation policies.
The patronizing attitude being shown by nearly everyone is breathtaking. Blair went to Israel pushing a broad peace conference to be convened in London in March and, when Israel said "Sounds great but we aren't going to attend," he changed his tune and claimed that, well, Israel's presence would have "politicized" a conference that is really intended to get the Palestinians to end violence and embrace institutional reform, in order to "ensure there are proper partners for peace on either side. Viability [that is, of a Palestinian state] cannot just be about territory. It also has to be about proper democratic institutions, about proper security [that is, for Israel] and proper use of the economy."
It's About the Occupation
One is tempted again to ask the obvious of these obtuse Brits (and of the equally obtuse Americans): what's wrong with politicizing a peace conference -- or, it must also be asked, with demanding that both the warring parties attend? And one wants to ask Blair what happens when the Palestinians do end violence, but the Israelis continue to perpetrate violence in multiple forms day after day? And what happens when the Palestinians get a democratically elected president running a "proper" democratic government, but Israel continues to perpetrate violence in multiple forms day after day? And what happens when the Palestinians show themselves to be true partners for peace, but Israel continues to reject peace day after day -- when Israel continues to deny the Palestinians territorial contiguity and economic viability and security and adequate space and water and dignity, when those democratic Palestinian institutions have nothing to rule over but an impoverished, imprisoned people squeezed into native reservations surrounded by Israeli walls, Israeli settlements, Israeli roads?
What happens when the Palestinians do everything demanded of them, but the occupation, no matter whether it might be called a "two-state solution," continues?
Tony Blair might, just might, be excused for not knowing, for not even thinking about, the answers to those questions, but one expects much better of the supposed Middle East experts who are spouting the same line. Ambassador Edward Walker, once a U.S. ambassador to Israel and to Egypt and an assistant secretary of state and now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, took the same patronizing approach to the Palestinians in a commentary written both for an Institute newsletter and for, of all the inappropriate places, an Arab newspaper. Expressing the hope that Bush will find that he must deal with the Palestinian issue in order to achieve success elsewhere in the Middle East, Walker treated the Palestinians as though they are a joint pet project of Bush and Sharon: if the U.S. and Israel play it smart, he said, "we" will be able to "lend credibility" to a new Palestinian leadership so that it can institute reform and begin "measured movement" on the Roadmap. Mahmoud Abbas lacks credibility with the Palestinians now, but he will gain stature if he can be seen to deliver a deal with Israel on the Gaza disengagement. He could then, Walker pronounced with amazing condescension, "become the partner that Arafat never was and never could be."
Quite apart from the distasteful notion that the U.S. and Israel just naturally must work together, hands on hearts, to coach the Palestinians into modernity, Walker forgets that Arafat, whatever his several shortcomings, would have been an eager partner for peace if Sharon and his predecessors had wanted it at any point. He conveniently ignores the reality that it is Israel that has made no "measured movement" toward advancing the Roadmap, and that the Gaza disengagement, assuming it comes off at all, is specifically designed to obviate the need for any Israeli concessions in the West Bank. Whatever credibility Abbas might gain from a deal with Israel is entirely Israel's to deliver, but Abbas will grow old waiting for any kind of deal from Sharon that would give the Palestinians justice and genuine statehood. Walker of all people should know better.
Those who demand so much of the Palestinians fail or refuse to recognize the Palestinian situation on the ground. Almost three years ago, during the April 2002 siege of the West Bank, Israeli forces rampaged through the territory, destroying the entire infrastructure of Palestinian civil society: Israeli soldiers laid waste Palestinian civil ministries for education and health and agriculture; smeared feces throughout the Ministry of Culture; destroyed computers and hard disks and, with them, the entire written record of Palestinian society; ransacked Palestinian businesses and banks; bulldozed whole housing blocks; destroyed land registry maps and census records, as if to erase all trace of Palestinian existence. Yet Western commentators and Western politicians like Bush and Blair wonder why the Palestinians may not be running their government at the peak of efficiency.
Gaza is largely in ruins, a Middle Eastern Dresden, thanks to repeated Israeli air and bulldozer assaults. Nearly two thousand homes have been demolished in Gaza since the intifada began, leaving many more thousands of innocent civilians homeless, and Israeli helicopter gunship attacks and assassination operations have wrought still more destruction. Israel controls Gaza's southern border with Egypt and its Mediterranean coastline and fences off the other two sides of the Gaza Strip with razor wire and electronic cages, a system of domination that will continue even if Israel "disengages" from Gaza and removes the 8,000 Israeli settlers who now control one-third of the tiny territory. Gaza is where, within the space of two months in 2003, Israel killed American peace activist Rachel Corrie, British peace activist Tom Hurndall, and British journalist James Miller -- killing off the witnesses, so that George Bush and Tony Blair and commentators like Jackson Diehl do not have to know what goes on in this prison. And because they choose to know nothing, they can glibly demand that the Palestinians install "proper" institutions and make "proper" reforms and run a "proper" economy.
Israel's separation wall has destroyed prime Palestinian agricultural land, bulldozed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive trees, destroyed or more often appropriated for Israeli use most Palestinian water wells, destroyed Palestinian markets and halted commerce, destroyed Palestinian homes. Israeli closure policies have prevented most Palestinians from working inside Israel since the beginning of the peace process a dozen years ago. Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank impede movement and halt commerce. Movement of people and goods into and out of both the West Bank and Gaza is totally at the mercy of Israel. Yet the West wonders why the Palestinian economy is not thriving.
Israel has reduced every Palestinian security headquarters throughout the West Bank and in Gaza to rubble. These structures, which served not only as security headquarters but as the center of municipal governance, with mayor's offices, jails, and health clinics, were large compounds serving multiple purposes, the locus of what Tony Blair would call "proper" infrastructure -- now mere heaps of concrete. Arafat's own headquarters in Ramallah, the Muqata, was a multi-structure compound covering one or two city blocks, in which Israel imprisoned Arafat for three years and where during the assault of 2002 Israel's military left only one building undamaged. Yet Blair and the rest of the West wonder why the Palestinians do not have proper control over their security apparatus -- and why many have no particular incentive to prevent violence in any case, nonviolence being a rather unilateral Palestinian enterprise at this point.
Can the Blairs and Bushes and Walkers and the media commentators who preach to the Palestinians possibly not be aware of what is going on on the ground in Palestine?
It bears repeating that under Bush's and Sharon's present plans there is no Palestinian state on the horizon; we need to be very clear on that. There are only Bantustans or a few areas that might look suspiciously like reservations, someday perhaps even containing a casino or two for the occupier's use. We need to be clear that there will be no real state because Israel will not end the occupation. (It is worth noting that the left in Israel is no more willing than the right wing to permit the establishment of a genuinely sovereign, contiguous, viable Palestinian state. The Labor Party ruled Israel for the first ten years of occupation and settlement growth; Labor ruled Israel through most of the Oslo "peace process," overseeing a doubling of Israeli settlers and a massive Israeli encroachment in the very territories supposed to be turned over to the Palestinians; and the party is about to join forces, yet again, with the Likud in a rightwing government whose stated purpose is to marinate Palestinian statehood in political formaldehyde. With friends like Labor, the Palestinians don't need the Likud as enemies.)
No matter what George Bush may say about wanting two states living peaceably side by side, there will be no such arrangement; he does not want it. No matter what Ariel Sharon promises (wink, wink) about working for two states, there will not be two real states; he in particular does not want it. No matter how much Tony Blair desperately attempts to get some of the peace action, there will be no Palestinian state; he can do nothing. No matter how much well-meaning peace activists may talk about hoping for two states, they will not achieve this; they are not willing to push hard enough. Despite all this talk -- all this optimism -- there will be no action toward genuine Palestinian independence because, purely and simply, Israel does not want it, the United States does not want what Israel does not want, and Britain is a powerless bystander.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:31 pm Post subject: The First Year: Slow Ethnic Cleansing – Tanya Reinhart |
| The First Year: Slow Ethnic Cleansing – Tanya Reinhart
(orig. Hebrew: http://www.hagada.org.il/hagada/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3172 )
The Policy of Injuries
In order to understand the full extent of the Israeli crimes that are being committed in the process of suppressing the Palestinian uprising it is necessary to examine also the injuries, and not only the rising number of fatalities. Let us examine first what happened in the first weeks of the present uprising, since this is also the way things were subsequently, to varying degrees.[i]
On Friday, November 3rd, CNN reported a 'relative calm' in the territories. By afternoon that day there were 276 people injured[ii], and by the final count "Up to 452 Palestinians were hurt on Friday across the territories, according to the Red Crescent".[iii] On Saturday, November 4th, as the the media covers in great length of Barak's "plea to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to return to the negotiating table and stop the Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed for the sake of peace",[iv] "another 153 were treated for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli troops",[v] including "5 school children from Sa'ir (near Hebron) who are in extremely critical condition".[vi]
More than 7000 Palestinians are reported injured so far. Several Palestinian medical sources report that an alarming number of them are injured in the head or legs (knees), with carefully aimed shots, and, increasingly, live ammunition.[vii] Many will not recover, or will be disabled for life.
This pattern of injuries cannot be accidental. Dan Ephron, Boston Globe correspondent in Jerusalem reported on the findings of the Physicians for Human Rights delegation: "American doctors who examined Israel's use of force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have concluded that Israeli soldiers appeared to be deliberately targeting the heads and legs of Palestinian protestors, even in non-life-threatening situations."[viii] Medical School doctors in the delegation explained that law enforcement officials worldwide are trained to aim at the chest in dangerous situations (since it is the largest target), and the fact that Palestinians were hit in the head and legs suggests that there was no life-threatening situation, soldiers had ample time, and were deliberately trying to harm unarmed people.
In fact, the Israelis are not even trying to conceal their shooting strategies. Interviews like the following can be easily found in the Israeli media:
Nahshon battalion ready for urban warfare
By Arieh O'Sullivan
JERUSALEM (October 27) - "I shot two people... in their knees. It's supposed to break their bones and neutralize them but not kill them," says Sgt. Raz, a sharpshooter from the Nahshon battalion.
"How did I feel? ...Well actually, I felt pretty satisfied with myself," the 20-year-old soldier confides. "I felt I could do what I was trained to do, and it gave me a lot of self-confidence to think that if we get into a real war situation I'd be able to defend my comrades and myself."[ix]
A common practice is shooting a rubber coated metal bullet straight in the eye - a little game of well trained soldiers, which requires maximum precision. Reports on eye injuries keep coming daily. "On October 11, El Mizan Diagnostic Hospital in Hebron reported treating 11 Palestinians for eye injuries, including 3 children. El Nasir Ophthalmic Hospital in Gaza has treated 16 people for eye injuries, including 13 children. Nine of them lost one of their eyes".[x] "From 29 September to 25 October 2000, Jerusalem's St. John Eye Hospital has treated 50 patients for eye-injuries".[xi]
Stray bullets do not hit so many people precisely in the eye head, or knee. The Israeli army prepared carefully for the present events: "Established just over a year ago specifically to deal with unrest in the West Bank...The IDF has trained four battalions for
low-intensity conflict, and Nahshon is the one specializing in urban warfare. Its troops train in mock Palestinian villages constructed in two IDF bases."[xii]
Specially trained Israeli units, then, aim, shoot and hit the target in a calculated manner: Cripple, but keep the statistics of dead low. This is reported openly (and quite proudly) in the Israeli media. The same Jerusalem Post article explains that "the overall IDF strategy is to deprive the Palestinians of the massive number of casualties the army maintains Palestinians want in order to win world support and consolidate their fight for independence.’We are very much trying not to kill them...' says Lt.-Col. Yoram Loredo, commander and founder of the Nahshon battalion."[xiii]
The reason is clear enough: Massive numbers of dead Palestinians every day cannot go unnoticed even by the most cooperative Western media and governments. Barak was explicit about this. "The prime minister said that, were there not 140 Palestinian casualties at this point, but rather 400 or 1,000, this... would perhaps damage Israel a great deal."[xiv] With a stable average of five casualties a day, they believe that Israel can continue 'undamaged' for many more months. In a world so used to horrors, many feel that 180 dead in a month is sad and upsetting, but it is not yet an atrocity that the world should unite to stop. The 'injured' are hardly reported; they 'do not count' in the dry statistics of tragedy.
Injuring Palestinians was and remains a consistent Israeli policy (by May 2001 two hundred eye injuries were treated in the St. John Eye Hospital alone).[xv] There are countless reports on the hopeless condition of many of the injured, and there are also detailed reports about medical needs that cannot be fulfilled. “For Gaza's population of 1 million, of whom 3,000 have been seriously injured in the intifadah, there are only two professionally trained rehabilitation specialists. Hundreds go without proper rehabilitation, not only because of inadequate facilities, but also because Israeli blockades around Gaza and the West Bank often cut off patients from health care.” [xvi]
By December 2001 25,000 injured Palestinians were reported, many of them blind and disabled. Their fate is a slow death, far from the camera’s eye. Some of them will die because there are no hospitals to treat them, others will die because they cannot survive in their community that is afflicted with hunger and destruction of infrastructure.
Israel’s systematic policy of injuring Palestinians cannot be explained as self-defence or as a spontaneous response to terrorism. It is an act of ethnic cleansing – a process in which one ethnic group is removed from territories that another is interested in ruling. In a place that attracts as much international attention as Israel/Palestine, ethnic cleansing cannot be carried out by a sudden act of mass slaughter or mass expulsion from the territory. Therefore there is a consistent process, the goal of which is slowly and gradually to compel people to die or to escape.
Destruction of Palestinian Society
Between October 2000 and December 2001, besides countless details about daily violence and cruelty, a clear picture emerged of a systematic effort to break Palestinian society and to destroy its infrastructures. A precise and painful summary of this tendency could be found in the words of Taher Masri, a Jordan politician of Palestinian origin, in an interview with Newsweek in December 2001. Masri explained that Israel is working on three levels. On the first level Israel’s goal is “is to destroy the economic infrastructure of the Palestinian territories, which are largely agricultural and, formerly, touristic. During Israeli incursions into Bethlehem earlier this year, for instance, troops systematically trashed newly built tourist hotels.” As part of this strategy they also uprooted olive and citrus trees in large agricultural areas. On the second level the goal is “to destroy the Palestinian Authority’s systems, the police and the security agencies. Just as Sharon is demanding that Arafat strike at Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, Israel itself has destroyed 80% of the police stations in recent months … Sharon sets up serious restrictions on the ability of the Palestinian Authority to dispatch police reinforcements from one area to another.” On the third level "Sharon is eliminating-liquidating-the Palestinian leadership. He is hitting the third rank now, but he will move up to the first. Without leadership, without your economic lifeblood, without security tools for the PA, the people will be ready to leave the country." [xvii]
Over the course of four decades of occupation an absolute dependence on Israel has been imposed on the Palestinian economy. The Oslo accords deepened this dependency and gave it a quasi-legal status, on the model of the “Bantustans” in South Africa. The economic agreement between Israel and the Palestinians eloquently sets out “regulated passage of workers” between the two sides, “without compromising the right of either side from time to time to define the extent of the entry of workers into its territory and the conditions of their entry.” To put it in more flexible terms, the meaning of the text is that this absolute control enjoyed by Israel allowed Israel to impose a complete economic boycott on the Territories since the beginning of the uprising: to prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel, and to deny them commercial opportunities.
The economic situation of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, which deteriorated seriously during the Oslo years,[xviii] reached the level of disaster during the months of the new uprising. The siege that Israel imposed jailed the Palestinians in their towns and caused them a serious loss in employment and income. According to the findings of Miftah (The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy),[xix] in December 2001, the rate of unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip reached 57%. This statistic includes not only those who lost their work-places in Israel, but also those who could not go to work because of closure and checkpoints, and those whose places of work were destroyed or closed.[xx]
Agriculture – which as Masri mentioned is a main source of income – sustained and continues to sustain serious damage. The economic siege that Israel imposed on the Territories does not allow any exports. As in the labour market, here too the Territories are dependent on Israel in everything related to the sale of products, whether they sell them to Israel itself or whether they market them abroad (according to the Oslo Accords the Palestinians are not authorized to send exports abroad directly; only through Israeli companies). A document that the IDF prepared at the beginning of the uprising indicates, among other economic measures that would be taken against the Palestinian Authority,
If violence had not erupted, the Palestinian Authority would have constituted Israel's main source of agricultural products during the next year. Given the current situation, not only will that produce not be sold to Israel, but even the normal quantities will not be exported to Israel which will import this produce from other countries, in order to meet demand.[xxi]
But now it is not a matter of export but mere survival. Israel does not spare the land any more than it spares the people. Miftah reports that in December 2001 the number of olive trees that were uprooted from Palestinian lands reached 112,900, and 3,669,000 square metres of agricultural lands were destroyed. In addition to all this, in many places farmers cannot get out to work their fields because of the military siege that Israel has imposed.
53% of the Palestinians live below the poverty line, that is, less than two dollars a day. The proud and sophisticated Palestinian society has been pushed into indigence. Below is one of many reports published in the British newspaper The Guardian:
Before the intifada began last September, the number of Palestinians lining up for food sacks from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was relatively small, restricted to a few cases of hardship. Now a substantial majority queue for aid … an UNRWA official in Jerusalem, said that food sacks were being distributed to about 217,000 families throughout the West Bank and Gaza. But shortage of funds, despite an international appeal, means such deliveries are restricted to three-month intervals … The food parcels are modest: comprising flour, lentils, sugar, cooking oil, dried milk, rice and 150 shekels (about £25). But with many Palestinians unable to cross the blockade and travel to work, the handouts are a form of subsistence.
At Jalazun, north of Ramallah on the West Bank, the arrival of the UN vehicles also brings noisy confusion. With flour clouding the air, the sweating aid workers pass sack after sack from the back of lorries to the men, women and children waiting below.
It is a scene that the Palestinian Authority should welcome as a useful piece of propaganda. But press coverage of the convoys is discouraged because the recipients often feel humiliated: their attitude is that food aid is something for poor African countries, not for Palestinians. … Among the women lining up was mother of six Nuriddin Kharoub, 46, who admitted feeling humiliated. "I am embarrassed. It is like begging," she says. "Who wants to be like a beggar?"[xxii]
Israel blocked the passage of supplies to the occupied territories, thereby accelerating the Palestinians’ economic collapse.
At the beginning of November 2000 the Independent reported that: “More than 900 truckloads for Palestinian territories, are stuck at the Israeli ports of Haifa and Ashdod. So are 1,000 new and used cars. At the same time, Israel is delaying the monthly transfer of about $30m in tax revenue paid by Palestinian workers or importers. … The Israelis do not deny wielding the economic weapon. "We are not trying to starve them out," said a government spokesman, "but we are using any means to convince the Palestinians to stop the violence. There is a struggle going on, Palestinians versus Israelis, and Israel is entitled to
take every measure to defend itself."[xxiii]
This stance was confirmed in the IDF report that was quoted above, wrapped in language appropriate for Israel’s struggle against terrorism, which – it should be recalled – had not yet begun when the report was drafted:
Furthermore, huge quantities of goods intended for the Palestinian Authority remain undelivered in the Israeli port of Ashdod. This is a result of the Palestinian demand that its security personnel be allowed through the Karni Passage into Israel, to take delivery of the goods, without undergoing any form of security check. Israel cannot allow such hazardous entry into its border, which would increase the risk of terror attacks on Israeli civilians, especially
when it is known that Palestinian officials are involved in arms smuggling. Therefore the goods remain where they are.[xxiv]
This policy too has become worse with time. In December 2001 Amira Hass reported that “It's difficult to grasp all the information that comes from these besieged places. The lack of medical supplies, such as oxygen tanks, is a daily, desperate routine in the hospitals. Cooking gas and fuel and even drinking water routinely run out. Suppliers have difficulties bringing in fresh food.”[xxv]
(Translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall)
[i] This section is excerpted from my article “Don’t say you didn’t know”, Yediot Ahronot, 14 November 2000 [English version: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/DontSayYouDidntKnow.html – trans].
[ii] LAW Report, 3 Nov. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref1
[iii] Haaretz, 5 Nov. 2000
[iv] AP, 5 Nov. 2000
[v] Haaretz, 5 Nov. 2000
[vi] Addameer – Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, Report, 4 Nov. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref1
[vii] Dr. Jumana Odeh, Director, Palestinian Happy Child Center, 24 Oct. 2000 report http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref3 ; LAW, 2 Nov. 2000 report http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref4
[viii] Dan Ephron, Boston Globe, 4 Nov. 2000
[ix] Arieh O’Sullivan, Jerusalem Post, 27 Oct. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref5
[x] LAW Report, 19 Oct. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref6
[xi] LAW Report, 2 Nov. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref6
[xii] Arieh O’Sullivan, Jerusalem Post, 27 Oct. 2000 http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/ref5
[xiii] ibid
[xiv] Jerusalem Post, 30 Oct. 2000
[xv] Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe, 3 May 2001 http://www.amputee-online.com/amputation/may01/
[xvi] ibid
[xvii] Masri, who is from one of the most wealthy and influential families in Nablus, is a senior figure in Jordanian politics. The interview with him was conducted by Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Web Exclusive, 7 Dec. 2000 http://www.palestinecampaign.org/archives.asp?xid=470
[xviii] See Sarah Roy, “Decline and Disfigurement: The Palestinian Economy After Oslo”, in the book The New Intifada
[xix] Intifada Update no. 31, human and material losses that Israel caused the Palestinians during the Intifada, from 28 September 2000 to 24 December 2001. www.miftah.org . Contradictory findings are often presented regarding Palestinian human and material losses. I use the statistics of Miftah because they are usually the most conservative ones. Miftah: “Total loss of income of Palestinian workers who worked in Israel in the past: 3.6 million dollars a day. Actual losses: the gross national product declined between September and March by 1.5 billion dollars. The decline in per capita income: 47 per cent.”
[xx] ibid
[xxi] “The Economic Price Paid by the Palestinians as a Result of the Violence in the Territories”, a background document prepared by the Operations Directorate, IDF Spokesperson and the Information and Public Relations Branch, 6 November 2000, distributed by Independent Media Review & Analysis http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=5054 .
[xxii] Ewen MacAskill: “Palestinians forced to swallow pride and accept handouts,” Guardian, 28 June 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,513581,00.html
[xxiii] Eric Silver: “Barak tries economic war to beat the Intifada: Palestinian territories facing long-term ruin,” The Independent, 7 Nov. 2000 http://www.mail-archive.com/kominform@lists.eunet.fi/msg04316.html
[xxiv] “The Economic Price Paid by the Palestinians as a Result of the Violence in the Territories”, a background document prepared by the Operations Directorate, IDF Spokesperson and the Information and Public Relations Branch, 6 November 2000, distributed by Independent Media Review & Analysis http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=5054 .
[xxv] Amira Hass, “The hidden weapons factories,” Haaretz 12 Dec. 2001 http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=105129&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Mark Marshall
Toronto
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."
George F. Kennan, 1987 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 9:56 pm Post subject: Life in Bantustan Israel..the only Democray in the Mid-East! |
| Forwarded:
Life in Bantustan Israel..the only Democray in the Mid-East!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
America is pledged to uphold the safety of this aberant and unrecognizable form of so called Democracy..Are we sure we know what were doing..when there are Gestopo-like tacticts and guards at every turn? As citizins and friends dare not speak to each other on the street??? The hidden lies, the hidden towns, the hidden peoples are all to cover the truth from the unsuspecting stranger but mostly from the Israeli's themselves..The truth is that Israel is a Nazi state, with Nazi customs, with Nazi penalties for transgressions...The generatinal lies they tell themselves are so flagrant that they themselves must be shielded from the obvious scenes of their own barbarism....From the following article, one wonders what other lies are hidden from themselves..like the truth in the Talmud, the Protocols, the Zionist Manifesto, etc.....
It must be a disquieting experience to pass lies onto unsuspecting generations...and still be able to maintain some semblence of sanity..Maybe that's the reason for this slow implosion of the Zionists dream.... It's tragic that there have to be so many innocent others who will naturally be party to the fallout! TATA
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/538909.html
Twighlight zone / The neighbors across the way
By Gideon Levy
In contrast to the private villas - tin shacks. In contrast to a `secure' road - suffocation. In contrast to international attention - total disregard. The 8,500 Palestinians of the Muasi region are the Palestinians no-one has heard of.
There is "Upper" Gush Katif, whose residents move freely about their area, accompanied by unparalleled security, and who are the focus of worldwide attention. Some of the residents live in pleasant, spacious homes, go to programs at community centers and are transported to schools and afternoon enrichment activities; all of them enjoy complete freedom of movement and most of them are well off. They are new to this area. Now they are the victims who have to be generously compensated, and treated with compassion and sensitivity.
And there is "Lower" Gush Katif, whose inhabitants are a mirror image of them. Everything the inhabitants of Upper Gush Katif have, the residents of Lower Gush Katif do not have - although they do have far more seniority on this beautiful and fertile piece of land on the shores of Gaza, between Dir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah. They are imprisoned as nobody else is in the territories, they are poverty-stricken, some work for the neighbors under conditions of shameful exploitation, and nobody takes an interest in their fate. And when it comes to being victims, they have been in the business longer. Some of them are refugees from Israel's 1948 War of Independence, all of them have been living under occupation since the 1967 Six-Day War. Only the numbers are similar: There are about 8,500 people here, which is somewhat more than the population of the neighboring settlers.
One can barely see them. A trip along the Kissufim Road that leads to the Gush Katif settlements is a journey in a land of suppression and disregard. There is no other region of settlements in which the feeling is so Israeli: a land without Arabs, in the region with the highest density of Arabs in the world. The concrete walls, the fences, the overpasses and mainly the "exposed" areas where Arab homes and fields were destroyed for security reasons, keep the Arabs out of sight, to the point where every traveler has the impression that he is driving on the roads of the Sharon, between Ramat Hasharon and Herzliya.
Khan Yunis beyond the wall? Dir al-Balah beyond the wall? Rafah beyond the fence? The Abu Khuli checkpoint beneath the overpass? Who sees them? Even the endless traffic jam in Abu Khuli is hidden from view. As opposed to the West Bank, no checkpoints are in evidence here, no unpleasant sights of people being delayed, no Arab villages along the way. Nothing. It's a straight, unbroken route from Tel Aviv to the settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip, with barely a single Arab along the way, barely a single checkpoint; one that is, of course, completely open to Jews. One nation in one country.
Only one ugly stain spoils things. What are these ramshackle houses that suddenly appear at the side of the road? How can it be that these miserable tin shacks have not yet been "exposed"? What mistake was made here, which left thousands of refugees in place? What about "security"?
This is the Muasi region, with thousands of farmers and fishermen, a third of them Palestinians refugees from 1948, a third Bedouin (some of them refugees from the Negev) and a third old-timers, surrounded and suffocated from all sides. There are Gush Katif settlements to the north, south and east. To the west is the sea - access to which is also blocked by a fence, with a few hallucinatory houses of settlers on the beach that used to be theirs - and there is one checkpoint leading to the main cities of the region: Rafah and Khan Yunis. Passing through it is like crossing an international checkpoint between two countries at war. Try bringing a sack of onions from the field in Muasi to the market in Khan Yunis, around the corner. Not to mention an expectant mother or a sick person.
In the dark sits a fisherman repairing his net. He is not allowed entry to the beach opposite his house, a distance of a few hundred meters, where there is a fence and settlers. In other places he is allowed entry, but not with a boat. The enlightened occupation allows him to enter the sea with an inner tube, and to fish only from the tube - but not on his beach. One can't exactly say that in Muasi there are signs of excitement about the anticipated evacuation of the uninvited guests who were planted in front of them and in front of their lives. Maybe they don't believe, maybe they don't want to develop expectations; mainly, they are apparently afraid to say what they think, as long as the settlers are around.
After all, there are 120 farmers who work for the settlers, for a whole NIS 5 an hour, and there are also economic ties with them that are complex and not always clear, such as the sale of cucumbers and onions that the settlers buy for pennies and sell in Tel Aviv at city prices, illegally. They are not allowed to do business with the settlers, who are the ones who set the price. Now it's NIS 11 for a sack of cucumbers.
The residents have a little freedom of movement along the sandy paths, and there are also the homes that have not been destroyed. The Israel Defense Forces have hardly "exposed" a single house here, so there's still a lot to lose. Maybe that's why this imprisoned region is quiet, and those living there make do with the crumbs thrown to them by the occupation and the settlers.
The fisherman sits, surrounded by friends, inside the divan, the meeting place of Muasi-Khan Yunis. A tin ceiling is held up by plastic walls and one brick wall. There's Muasi-Khan Yunis and there's Muasi-Rafah, and the settlements embrace both of them. Nobody here wants to be identified by name; fear dictates everything. They are afraid to walk around with us in the sandy alleyways, for fear the soldiers will see them with us, and they are afraid to travel in our car, for fear they'll get into trouble. "The soldiers know everyone in Muasi, and if they suddenly see someone with eyeglasses, we'll have problems." Where are the soldiers? There on the tower and here on the tower, in every direction; they see everything.
The fisherman has not gone out to the open sea to fish for four years, but he is repairing his net. For 65 straight days the checkpoint was closed; they couldn't leave their pen to go anywhere. In any case, they haven't been allowed to leave by car for four years. Only on foot. Merchandise, pregnant women, only on foot. All you can use here is a toy car or a scooter without a motor. On a good day they are only allowed to travel between Muasi-Khan Yunis and Muasi-Rafah, a matter of a kilometer or two in each direction. Crossing at the Tufah checkpoint, the only exit to the Gaza Strip, is allowed only on foot.
At the checkpoint you have to wait for hours, they say. The soldiers allow groups of five through, and usually no more than five groups a day; 20 to 25 lucky people, out of a population of 8,500. People under the age of 35 are not allowed to leave at all. That is one of Israel's major gestures to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen): Until he came to power, the minimum age for leaving was 50. Now, in the name of enlightenment, coexistence and easing the closure, they have lowered it. The checkpoint is not always open. One time the x-ray scanner is broken, and another time there is no dog on duty. Without a dog, there's no crossing. "It's for security," they explain in the divan.
Here is the honorable sheikh who has just entered the divan. He went to the checkpoint this morning at 5:30 to reserve a place, and now, at 2:30 P.M., he has arrived home. He tells about it with a smile. It was cold and rainy, there's no shelter to speak of at the checkpoint, there is no bathroom, but everything is for the good.
There is no high school in Muasi, and anyone who wants to study goes to Khan Yunis and rents an apartment there, alone, because there is no chance of crossing the checkpoint every day. One day it's open, another day it's not, and anyway it always closes at 4 P.M. at the latest.
Muasi is a suburb of Khan Yunis, closer than Ramat Aviv is to Tel Aviv, but to go there you need a permit. You won't find any bitterness here, except for the young man who told us about what happened last Thursday. At 5 A.M. soldiers came and ordered all the members of the Hanoun family to go outside. About 80 people were forced to leave their homes in the cold, the 19 men were forced to strip and to remain in their underpants in the freezing cold. They were stripped and dressed twice, interrogated and then released after 13 hours. One remained in detention. But it's usually quiet here.
Smoke fills the divan, from the fire they have lit to warm the air a little, and to prepare coffee. The wind beats on the plastic walls. The old-timers earn NIS 70 a day in the settlements, but there are few of them. They have a permit, which says: "Work permit for the Gaza Strip settlements and the Erez industrial zone. Must exit via the Ganei Tal crossing where entered. Is not permitted to do shift work. Is not permitted to drive any type of vehicle." A precious work permit for three months - for work that pays NIS 5 per hour.
No, there are no problems at all with the settlers, they say. Once there were problems, but there haven't been any for a long time. So coexistence is preserved here as it should be: the settlers on top and the Palestinians down below. Or, as in the very cautious wording of one of them, the mukhtar (chief) of the refugees: "The settlers within their fence, and we within our prison." He immediately adds, automatically: "We don't want to make problems. This is a quiet place. Now we're seeing the light of peace."
Is there a chance?
"Of course, there's a chance. Bush wants it that way. In the end, in the end, peace will win out."
Will you move to Ganei Tal (a Gaza Strip settlement)?
"The lands will be transferred from one government to another. There were the Turks, there were the British, there were the Egyptians, there were the Israelis. It will be transferred from one government to another. If we don't return to Ashkelon, our situation will remain as it was."
Separation?
"Under no circumstances will we separate from the Israelis. The Palestinians and the Israelis are like skin and flesh. It won't separate. There's an illness and there's a cure. Either we're the illness and you're the cure, or you're the illness and we're the cure. But separation is impossible. I have no friends among the settlers, but I have a lot of friends in Israel. I was a contractor for mosaic work, and this guy was a flooring contractor, and this one a contractor for the foundation, and we all have friends. We're all waiting for the moment when there's peace and we can go to make a living in Israel. I think that we have to give a new name to the land Israel: `a land for everyone.' Including Muasi. On Tuesday I hear there's a major summit meeting. With God's help, it will be a good summit, too."
In response to the question of whether they will celebrate the departure of the settlers, there is extreme caution: "We'll celebrate because of the peace, not because the settlers leave. We are mixed together."
We returned to their daily routine. An expectant mother who leaves in an ambulance to give birth - crossing the checkpoint in an ambulance is allowed - never knows when she will be allowed to return. Sometimes one gets stuck in Khan Yunis for two or three weeks, until the checkpoint reopens. There have been new mothers who were stuck for 40 days, and couldn't return home with their newborns. Every sack that goes from the field here to the market in Khan Yunis has to be x-rayed at the Tupah junction. The wait on line takes hours. In order to invite relatives from the city to a wedding, you have to undergo a complicated procedure: to transfer the names to the coordination and liaison offices, and to hope for the best. Forget about a simple invitation to relatives from the neighboring town for a cup of coffee.
In the room adjacent to the divan stands a refrigerator, a vestige from the days when the residents grew flowers here. They haven't grown flowers and strawberries for export for years, because what flower and what strawberry will last for a few days until the soldier lets it pass the checkpoint? "They put the onions on the conveyor belt and check them on the television screen. It's hard to transfer meat, only chicken. On the holiday we ate a sheep that was especially slaughtered in Khan Yunis, but was delayed for 40 days at the checkpoint and arrived frozen from the refrigerator."
What do they have? They have rabbits, which they raise in their yards. They are not allowed to cross the checkpoint with a watch, or with a cell phone. "A cell phone is dynamite." If your pen sets off the metal detector, you have to return home. You can't just toss it aside. Maybe it will explode? And then you return to the beginning of the line, a matter of another day or two. They say that the wife of the refugees' mukhtar is supposed to return today from Khan Yunis. Her husband has no idea where she is and until now, in the afternoon, she still hasn't arrived. Should I explain once again that Khan Yunis is their city, and that it is located just a little way from their homes?
Piles of garbage on the sandy road that leads to the sea. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) collects only the garbage of the refugees here. All the rest rots in the sand. There is no running water in the houses, only in the fields.
One can see everything from the window of every home in the settlements of Neveh Dekalim or Ganei Tal. At the end of the sandy road that goes west, among the houses, there is a fence and it is impossible to reach the waterline. Behind the concrete walls live a handful of settlers, right on the water; soldiers in a watchtower guard them. Our local guide is very nervous as he sits in our car, near the settlers' fence. Don't stop, drive fast. They shoot here. The road south to Muasi-Rafah passes just a few meters from them.
The vestiges of tourist attractions, theirs and those of the settlers, stand in ruins. The beach is beautiful and the sight is saddening. The Hof Ashalim Restaurant used to be open on Shabbat. Now there is only neglect. The road to Rafah is closed, and the road to the settlement of Rafiah Yam is open to Jews only.
Children in Muasi. There is no high school. Anyone who wants to study goes to live in Khan Yunis, because there is no chance of crossing the checkpoint every day. (Miki Kratsman)
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"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
