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.
nailed across the door that was closed last summer. Palestinians are left with a choice between settling for bantustans now, or undertaking an attempt to be recognized as Israeli citizens and risking an even worse outcome (smaller bantustans, outright expulsion).
And as long as the American press fears the Israel Lobby, it could happen without anyone noticing.
the Israeli govt’s plan for the West Bank.
This is the Allon Plan, put forward in 1967 by Israeli Deputy PM Yigal Allon, under which Israel would solve the “Palestinian problem” by annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin/Ramallah) bantustan and a southern (Hebron/Bethlehem) bantustan.
This is the Netanyahu Plan, put forward in 1995 by Benjamin Netanyahu, under which Israel would solve the “Palestinian problem” by annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin/Ramallah) bantustan and a southern (Hebron/Bethlehem) bantustan, plus Jericho.
This is Ehud Barak’s Generous Offer, put forward at Camp David in 2000, under which Israel would solve the “Palestinian problem” by annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin) bantustan, a central (Ramallah) bantustan, and a southern (Hebron/Bethlehem) bantustan, plus Jericho.
This is the Sharon Plan of 2003, showing the final route that Ariel Sharon intended for Israel’s Wall, which was to encircle the Palestinians from both the east and the west. This would allow Israel to solve the “Palestinian problem” by annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin/Ramallah) bantustan and a southern (Hebron/Bethlehem) bantustan.
This is a map prepared by the BBC in 2006, showing the borders that Ehud Olmert was imposing at that time on the Palestinians through the construction of the Wall and the exclusion of Palestinians from the Jordan Valley, under which Israel would solve the “Palestinian problem” by annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin/Ramallah) bantustan and a southern (Hebron) bantustan, plus Jericho.
This is a map prepared by the UN in 2007, showing the borders that Ehud Olmert was imposing at that time on the Palestinians through the construction of the Wall and the exclusion of Palestinians from the Jordan Valley, even as he was talking about negotiating a two state solution with them. Not surprisingly, it involves Israel annexing Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and confining the Palestinians to a northern (Nablus/Jenin/Ramallah) bantustan and a southern (Hebron/Bethlehem) bantustan, plus Jericho.
Different Israeli govts, but always the same plan. From the Israeli perspective, the only purpose of the peace process was to drag on inconclusively long enough for these bantustan borders to be imposed on the Palestinians.
Thanks for this post which clarifies a great deal about the peace making of the Israelis over the years.
Are you back up and writing at Lawrence of Cuberia?
I think so. I’ve been sidelined by some health issues over the last few months, and I’m hoping I’m over them now. We’ll see.
Sorry to hear about the health issues, of which I have had some myself. Get better.
May I use this comment in a diary, as a diary? You just seem to have the knack for pulling things together and making sense out of them, a talent I wish I had.
Yes of course you can use that comment.
Best wishes with yr health concerns; take care of yrself.
The visualization of the Israeli government’s consistency is quite damning.
So true, Diane, thanks. And let us please once and for all dispense with the fiction that this is the Likud plan, or that it is the Likud that has consistently done everything it could to avoid conditions that would allow for a viable Palestinian state, aka a two-state solution. No Israeli government, including that of the saintly Yitzhak Rabin has ever had any intention of ending the creeping land grab, or allowing a free, independent, viable Palestinian state to come into existence.
Absolutely. And by coincidence, Jews Sans Frontieres was making that exact same point just a few days ago:
January 13, 2010
January 12, 2010
Back in the day we used to say Likud talks about settlements (more accurately called colonies), Labour builds them.
Two points about the Labor effort to attain the two state solution, “effort” with tongue in cheek.
First, while I am unable to supply the data, I read somewhere that Rabin did stopp settlement activity for a few months for his assassination.
Second, on the January 17, 2005 Charlie Rose Show (USA of course), the now war criminal Ehud Barak stated that Israel must set its borders (eastern most, but presumably beyond the green line) and pull tens of thousands of settlers behind it. He also practically acknowledged that the “generous offer” of 2000 was a hoax, a hoax because not even his own party, a single Labor member of the Knesset, would have voted to disengage (Sharon’s term for withdrawal from) a single settlement.