3.23.2004
Israeli/Palestinian Violence
It seems whenever there is a glimmer of hope for peace and justice in the Israel/Palestine, just the slightest glimmer of hope, the Israeli government ratchets up the violence.
Killing a quadriplegic old man as he left a place of prayer as well as the people pushing his wheelchair, not to mention innocent bystanders is a case in point. Assassination from US provided Apache helicopters raining rockets in a populated
area is obscene, no matter what Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is accused of.
Sharon has succeeded in igniting a third intifada, while the second one he launched by "visiting" the Temple Mount with a thousand soldiers was still smouldering on.
Thanks to the Israeli "Separation Wall" which cuts well into 1967 UN mandated Palestinian Territory Palestinian folks are living in a virtual prison, a system of bantustans that remind one of South Africa's apartheid policies.
Navigate this site by photographer Eyal Dor-Ofer and get a real world perspective on the Wall. There are a number of galleries to explore.
Look at this map and get a sense of just what the government of Isreal is taking from the beleagured Palestinian people. Words are not as effective as a graphic representation is when it comes to understanding much of the dynamic of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. A map makes clear what words can sugercoat.
Palestinian folks are having trouble getting enough food to eat.
The report found that 40 percent of Palestinians - or 1.4 million people - are now classified as food insecure, meaning they don't have access on a continuing basis to the food they need to live normal and healthy lives.
Another 1.1 million people, or 30 percent, are threatened with becoming food insecure if conditions continue, said the
report.
The West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian Territories. Any real peace would see Israel dismantle illegal settlements- that means ALL of them. Dismantling settlements in Gaza and sending the folks to the West Bank is not a solution- or legal under international law.
First, settlements have a stranglehold over Israeli politics. Particularly today, with unremitting terrorist attacks against innocents, the Israeli body politic is unable to effectively voice its growing discontent over settlements.
There is a second problem - the Israeli government's dishonesty. Just look at what Zeev Schiff, Israel's most respected security analyst, had to say about settlements this month in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz: "When it comes to the (settlement) outposts, the issue has involved the spreading of one of the state of Israel's biggest lies - not only a lie that was told to the Americans but an ongoing lie that the Israeli public is being fed."
Schiff revealed that despite Israeli government claims that some settlement outposts were being dismantled, the number of outposts grew steadily during Sharon's tenure. Moreover, the government has deliberately skewed the numbers. Schiff cites information confirming that at least 90 outposts have been set up. "The only viable conclusion," says Schiff, "is that Washington must apply pressure to Israel for its own sake."
Zionist history prescribes the power politics and genocide we see today.
Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.
That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel".
...they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.
--The Iron Wall by Vladimir Jabotinski, 1923
3/23/2004
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