….about Israel’s peace efforts and intentions for the Palestinians.
When I read these stories from Israeli sources the other day, Rights group: 69 cases of Palestinian olive trees destroyed, but no prosecutions, and this one, New Demolition Orders Issued Against 60 Palestinian Houses, Apartments and other Civilian Facilities in the West Bank, I was reminded of an old diary. Each case among these 69 refers to an olive orchard destroyed by Jewish settlers in the West Bank under the protection of IDF occupation forces. Both of these reports told me that as far as Israel’s occupation and attempts to colonize more and more of the West Bank is concerned, nothing has changed, and that would include Netanyahu’s latest offer to freeze settlements in the West Bank (not at all in East Jerusalem) for 10 months.
It’s just Israel’s latest illusion of peace making.
The older diary featured commentary by Lawrence of Cyberia (diane), a peace activist with deep intellectual understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It consists of a response to an earlier comment of mine (Booman Tribune) made before the presidential election in August, 2008.
The Comment:
The Israelis have been so creative about their ultimate plan to annex the West Bank that nobody is noticing. Using the “slow” mode, they have apparently succeeded in finding a politically acceptable way to engage in “transfer,” just what the early Zionists predicted. Moyse Dayan knew it would work when he advised: “just make them miserable and they will leave on their own.” Then we had Sharon who came along as the Minister of Agriculture under Labor no less, and initiated the “dunam by dunam” strategy to take it all, a bit at a time.
You really have to hand it to the Israelis for being this creative. And to be able to handle the propaganda the way they do. Of course, it takes a lot of money to keep Americans duped and I suspect that it will take a lot more and a lot more politicians in the pocket.
McCain for certain, but Obama? We will learn shortly.
Lawrence of Cyberia’s Response:
I agree that Israeli propaganda about its desire for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians has been very good, especially when you realize they have basically been openly working on the bantustan approach since 1967. If you look at the maps that Israel has proposed under its various plans for the West Bank, it’s apparent they’re the same plan – to annex Jerusalem, the borders, the water and arable land, while denying citizenship to the Palestinians by enclosing them in “sovereign” reservations – and essentially, even the same map! E.g.,
The Allon Plan of 1967;
Oslo 2 of 1995;
The Netanyahu Plan of 1998/9;
Barak’s Generous Offer of 2000;
The Sharon Plan of 2003 (scroll down to map);
The BBC “Olmert’s Borders” map of 2006;
The UN’s “facts on the ground map” of 2007….And they have at times been quite open about their insincerity in entering negotiations only to win time to create facts on the ground e.g. Yitzhak Shamir talking about his purpose in negotiating when he was PM: “I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years and meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria.” And IDF Gen Yehoshafat Harkabi’s (former head of IDF Intelligence) explanation in Maariv (2 November 1973) about Israeli negotiating strategy:
“We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement. Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable. But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them. Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise position. We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism”.
So, it’s certainly good propaganda to convince people that you are working in good faith when you clearly aren’t, but at the end of the day, where has it got them? They’ve inflicted terrible suffering on the Palestinians, but their strategic situation is worse than it has ever been. The propaganda has only really worked in the US, and it’s not even working that well over here any more. And all the propaganda in the world doesn’t change the fact that Israel will never make the Palestinians accept the terms of the Allon-type plans – no matter how long it keeps banging its head against the same wall – and until it comes to terms with the Palestinians, Israel will never know normality. I mean these crappy plans have been generously offered since 1967, but instead of settling for them, or giving up and emigrating en masse, the Palestinian population has once again reached parity with the Israeli Jewish population, and is increasingly reaching the conclusion: “OK we understand you cannot get out of the territories and allow us our independence there, so we will all live together in one state”. And that’s really not what Israel was counting on.
As for Obama … personally, I expect little but would like to be surprised. I think Palestine will not become independent because an American President finally sees the light, but because the U.S. – which has been Israel’s enabler in evading a negotiated settlement – is rapidly losing its ability to prevent unwelcome outcomes in the Middle East. There are too many other influential players in the world who suffer from absence of a mid-East settlement, and whose domestic politics are not log-jammed by the need to pander to lobbyists. It would be nice if the U.S. President would get on board and help bring the I/P conflict to a soft landing – because that would be a US interest too – but even if we can’t help, we are losing our ability to stand in the way.
The era of the “world’s only superpower” turned out to very short. Less of a new American century, more of an American decade. The strategy of putting all your money on the U.S. ability to pull one’s ass out of the fire gets less attractive by the day (see, eg Georgia).
This is it short and sweet. It is called “reality.” It is still applicable today, Obama’s Cairo speech notwithstanding.