When Steve Amsel of Desert Peace, a Jerusalem based Israeli peace activist (and site), filed this report, I asked: who else would know who Israel’s real enemy is? It is Israel, of couse. Jeff Halper, the founder of Israel Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), in an article entitled, The Problem With Israel, said the same thing a few years ago. Israel wants to be a Jewish and democratic state, but in doing so is unable to afford its Arab citizens equality or for that matter, life in a democracy. Unfortunately, this ethnocentric perspective is also tied up with the Greater Israel ideology, the efforts going on for the past 40 years to reconstitute the short-lived expansionist empire of old King David, focused now on the annexation of the West Bank. That ideology disenfranchises the Palestinians whether they are citizens of Israel or West Bank and Gaza residents living under military occupation, as much as it bankrupts the “right to exist (as a Jewish state)” notion, Israel’s most recent red herring that totally obviates peace.
The conclusion to be drawn is that Israel does not want peace. It wants land. Oslo was indeed destroyed by Ariel Sharon when he sparked violence by entering the Al Aqsa Mosque then reinvading the West Bank to resume its military occupation and the colonization effort he himself instituted during Oslo.
A DesertPeace Editorial
Since the occupation of the Palestinian Territories started forty years ago, Israel and its foreign allies have been saying that the biggest threat to their security is the FACT that one day Palestine will liberate itself from their prison and establish an independent state.
For those forty years Israel has made it increasingly difficult for the above to become a reality by building settlements on this stolen territory and slowly but surely pushing the Palestinians into oblivion….. while at the same time claiming that the Palestinians ‘want to drive Israelis to the sea’…..
Israel’s voice has been loud and clear, constantly being amplified by those that have been benefiting the most from the occupation, the zionists. Their strength lies in their ability to literally buy the support of the American government. AIPAC has spent millions of dollars over the years buying votes and insuring that the status quo of the occupation remains the same. ‘Spent’ might be the wrong word in this case, it’s actually an investment as this money eventually finds its way back to the coffers of AIPAC twofold.
Palestine never had this ‘support system’, even the Arab world has abandoned them at most times for fear of losing out on contracts between the West and their oil companies. The old adage of ‘money talks’ is very fitting in this case, the unfortunate thing being that the voice of Palestine has been drowned out by the voice of money.
At the Annapolis Conference Israel intends to come up with the ‘Final Solution’ to Palestine as is demonstrated in the following image, borrowed from the Palestinian Pundit’s Blog.
With attitudes and intents such as this, one can only ask, who, after all these years, is Israel’s real enemy. The answer is right there for everyone to see…. Israel’s real enemy is ISRAEL. They have ‘made their bed, now they must lie in it’, OR…. they can change the bedding! IT’S NOT TOO LATE!!
The following linked editorial from Haaretz touches on this situation. It can be read HERE…
Who wants a Jewish state
By Haaretz-Editorial
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been speaking enthusiastically about “two states, two nations” ever since her conversion from the Greater Israel ideology. She can easily convince people why Israel must have a right of return only for Jews, while an independent Palestine would grant the same right only to Palestinians.
Like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Livni has realized belatedly that this is the only way two democratic nation states could survive. This simple, rational idea could have been implemented easily had not Israel’s leaders rejected it for generations – for 40 years the border line has been obstructed by settlement building.
Now on the eve of the Annapolis conference, Israel has suddenly come up with the absurd demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state – after Israel’s own leaders have done everything in their power to sabotage it.
It is easy to speak about a Jewish state, but difficult to find the political courage required to do what it takes: Settlements scattered in the heart of the Palestinian population make it impossible to separate between Israel and Palestine along a plausible and viable border. With each passing day and each passing year, every settlement expansion, every outpost and every road built to reach it disrupt the chance to separate the two nations.
Therefore suspending construction in the settlements is not a prize for the Palestinians ahead of one agreement or another, but a life-saving medicine for Israel. It is already difficult to delineate a border between the Etzion, Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim settlement blocs as the building boundaries within them keep expanding, with a wink at Washington.
Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but they should direct this demand at the Israelis. Another conference and another negotiation, another trip and another draft agreement, another escape from addressing the core issues, as though there is anything else to talk about. The Israelis, not Palestinians, are making the vision of the Jewish state impossible. A law tying the government’s hands vis-a-vis concessions in Jerusalem passed the Knesset in a preliminary reading, as though Israel’s interest is to annex East Jerusalem with its hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
For religious fanatics on both sides, the existing solution is charmingly simple. Islamists want a Muslim state on all the area they consider sacred. Right-wing religious Israelis want a halakhic Jewish state on all the area they regard as sacred. The only problem is, both mean the same “holy ground.” So the longer partition is postponed, the nearer draws the possibility of bloody messianic chaos.
Avoiding a debate on the core issues in Annapolis is not an Israeli achievement. It is an escape from the main issues, stemming from political cowardice. Every additional round of futile talks is pushing Israel farther away from determining its borders and fate.
It is called having your cake and eating it too. This impediment, only the latest in a long list of manufactured obstacles is what will sabotage the upcoming Annapolis conference. “Right to exist” means “right to exist as a Jewish state,” which in turn represents an untenable compromise for the Palestinians, thus satisfying the condition for obstructing peace, and again, for blaming the Palestinians.
