Yet another Catch-22, the Israeli government today imposed one more obstacle to Middle East peace, apparently in preparation for George Mitchell’s next trip to Israel. To reporters, Netanyahu vowed that Israel will never leave the West Bank because of the necessity to prevent weapons smuggling used by militants to resist Israel’s military occupation and colonialism of Palestinian lands. Therefore, the way to prevent this from happening is to continue the occupation that has caused weapons smuggling in the first place.
God help anyone who appreciates this logic. The proposal pretty much assures the Apartheid configuration of bantustans Israel has in mind for a Palestinian state.
Israel’s prime minister has said it must maintain a presence along the eastern border of a future Palestinian state to stop the smuggling of weapons. Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had to be able to prevent missile attacks from neighbouring territory, as it had experienced with Lebanon and Gaza.
“We cannot afford to have that across from the centre of our country,” he told foreign reporters in Jerusalem. (snip) “In the case of the future settlement with the Palestinians, this will require an Israeli presence on the eastern side of the prospective Palestinian state,” he added.
In the same announcement, Netanyahu then claimed he was ‘prepared for peace’ and criticized the Palestinian Authority for refusing to resume peace talks. As one critic rightly stated, by continuing the settlement building Netanyahu wants to talk about splitting a pizza while eating it. No one actually believes the current freeze, which will allow another 10,000 settlers to move onto Palestinian territories, is a freeze at all.
The ‘eastern border’ of course refers to the Jordan River which includes the Jordan Valley that Netanyahu previously claimed Israel will never give up. It pretty much condemns any Palestinian state to bantustanized territories, lacking sovereignty and continuity, which is no nation at all. Saeb Erekat, speaking for the Palestinians immediately refused to even consider such an arrangement.
But that’s just the point. It is part and parcel of the Likud party plan for Palestine: no Palestinian state. As Netanyahu stated in the 1996 Neocon document, Clean Break, ‘no land for peace. Peace for peace,’ or in its present reincarnation, the ‘economic peace’ he offered the Palestinians a year ago.