the will to see it, hear it, speak it

Putting aside every other issue, Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank alone is sufficient to destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian State (i.e, a politically independent entity with autonomous control over its borders, its resources and the movement of its people.). Since 1967 and its victory in the Six Day War, Israel has developed the public policies and policing strategies to ensure a steady and incremental appropriation of Palestinian lands and resources while also severely restricting Palestinian rights and freedoms. These policies and strategies continue more or less unabated even during so-called peace negotiations such as the current talks initiated at Annapolis in November, 2007.

A basic outline of Israel’s settlement enterprise – particularly when viewed across four decades – makes clear the extent to which settlement prevents the development of a viable Palestinian State [1]:

• First, the settlements on the West Bank violate international humanitarian law: It is illegal to transfer one’s own citizens to occupied territory or to make permanent changes in occupied lands unless it is to the benefit of the local population.

• Second, the settlements violate international human rights law: They violate the Palestinian rights to “self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living and freedom of movement.”

• Third, Israel’s methods of land confiscation are for the most part themselves illegal including: declaring Palestinian land “state land”; military seizures of land; declaring land “abandoned assets”; simple land expropriation as well as questionable “free market” property transactions.

• Fourth, Israel’s High Court of Justice offers the “mask of legality” to this process by, for example, not intervening when Palestinian land is appropriated by a government declaration of Palestinian land as “state land”.

• Fifth, confiscated land is given Israeli legal status. In practical terms, West Bank land has been annexed to Israel. The result is that the State of Israel governs the occupied territories in terms of “legalized separation and discrimination”: Within one territory, there are two separate legal systems. Individual rights are based on nationality and Israel determines both by virtue of its military occupation.

• Sixth, despite the illegality of the process, the Israeli government fosters its continuance directly and indirectly through various financial grants and incentives, encouraging migration into occupied territory. In fact, six government ministries offer differing forms of financial incentives encouraging Israeli settlement of Palestinian lands. Consider two telling statistics: the average per capita grants to local Jewish councils in the West Bank were roughly 65% higher than for councils inside Israel; average per capita grants for regional Jewish councils were 165% of that for councils inside Israel. Further, the Israeli government by-passes its own funding rules by channelling funds to the World Zionist Organization through its Settlement Division.

• Seventh, Israel assumed control of the planning powers of Palestinian planning institutions. Israel’s planning system - implemented by the Civil Administration - co-ordinates ongoing land encroachment through standard bureaucratic procedures such as approving outline plans or building permits for settlements and issuing permits for by-pass roads (Jewish only versus Palestinian only roads).

• Finally and crucially, Israel actively restricts Palestinian development while fostering Israeli development of Palestinian land. Israel uses various methods to inhibit Palestinian development. It denies access to or use of land and water resources unless authorized through Israeli channels. It rejects permits to build and imposes restrictions on movement thereby preventing the development of a community of Palestinians. In addition, the settlement blocks themselves prevent any natural urban development of Palestinian areas that might become one contiguous Palestinian territory.

By such means, the State of Israel insidiously steals Palestinian territory and resources even as it continually speaks of a “peace process”. In 1977 there were merely hundreds of settlers living on occupied territory. In 2007 there were 282,000 settlers in the West Bank alone with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem, the intended future capital of a Palestinian State.

The current Annapolis peace initiative needs to be understood as taking place within this settlement context; Israel never stops taking Palestinian land not even when actively engaged in negotiations to establish peace. Further, while in the past the United States official position emphasized the need to freeze settlement expansion as a precondition to peace talks, the Bush administration seems reluctant to take even this position. Instead President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talk of the need to reach a “definition of a [Palestinian] state” before getting immersed in more practical details such as the settlements [2]. More disturbing, the supposed neutral arbiter of these talks (i.e., President Bush) uses Israel’s “security and settlement policies” as the basis for defining the parameters of a Palestinian state [3].

This approach to establishing peace seems destined (or is that designed?) to fail. First, ignore settlement expansion. Second, define “Palestinian state” in Israel’s terms. Third, fail to establish a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians because the Palestinian perspective is disregarded.

Geoffrey Aronson of the Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories notes, “the settlement machine grinds on” irrespective of the current U.S. brokered Israel-Palestine peace initiative [4]. This is how a nation effectively strangles another nation to death. There is a word for what’s happening – for what the U.S. is doing nothing to prevent; Politicide. Baruch Kimmerling defines politicide as “a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinians’ existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity.”[5] While the world watches and the U.S. backs Israel’s policy and territorial objectives, Israel commits politicide against the Palestinians one settler, one settlement at a time. Stretch this process out over decades and all that remains is … well you know. You’ve seen it before elsewhere. Indeed, you live in a country that did exactly the same thing to its native populations. There is one difference, however. What is happening now can be stopped; if only those in a position to stop it actually wanted it stopped. Do they? Do you?

Notes:

[1] This outline highlights key findings of B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.) Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank. (May, 2002)
[2] “Bush’s ‘Big Picture’ Defined by Israel’s Settlement Map”. Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (Vol. 18, No. 3, May-June 2008)
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Olmert and Settlements: Lofty Goals Betrayed by Actions on the Ground”. Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (Vol. 18, No. 2, March-April 2008)
[5] Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians (New York, 2003)

Why did Israel shift from a tough line to diplomacy? There were no doubt many electoral considerations internal to Israel. But the real reason is that the Israelis found that they were unable militarily to bring Palestinian shelling of Israeli towns to an end. And everyone was drawing conclusions from this. Abbas reopened negotiations with Hamas. The Egyptians were pressing the Israelis and the Americans to negotiate with Hamas. And, of course, the Israelis are in a weaker diplomatic position than they would have been two years ago, not to speak of in the days of Arafat. Meanwhile, the French drew the conclusion that it was now safe to be urging serious concessions by Israel. Will American politicians, inside and outside of government, be as bold? As for Hizbullah, the Israelis tried to destroy them militarily and failed completely. It was an embarrassing show of the limits of Israeli military power.

by Immanuel Wallerstein - 07/01/08 - more at Agence Global

Let no one underestimate it. Barack Obama has won big. He has not only won the Democratic nomination for president. He is going to sweep the elections with a large majority of the Electoral College and a considerable increase in Democratic strength in both houses of the Congress. …

Now what will this mean? Obama is not planning some revolutionary turnabout in U.S. politics. He is surrounded by a lot of conventional Democratic politicians and advisors. But he will be swept into power by a wave of enthusiasm for change that the United States has not seen since Kennedy’s election. True, there is only so much he can do on the world scene, despite the fact that he will be cheered on by the entire rest of the world. The global geopolitical anarchy is far beyond the control of any American president today.

But he will be pushed to make important changes within the United States. Of course, the very election of an African-American will represent a remarkable cultural change, and cannot fail to have a great impact. His electors will expect him to launch the equivalent of another New Deal internally - health care coverage, tax restructuring, job creation, salvaging the pensions. How much he can do depends in part on the global recession, which is largely beyond his control, but even so forceful leadership can play an important role up to a point. The example of Roosevelt shows us that.

The biggest unknown is how far he will go to dismantle the quasi-police state structures that the Bush regime has instituted under the umbrella of a war against terrorism. This involves far more than appointing better judges. It means a radical revising of both legislation and executive policies and exposing the ultra-secret rules and practices to the light of day. Much can be done, as we know from what was accomplished in the 1970s, reining in the CIA and the FBI. But the situation is worse now and requires more. History may well judge Obama most of all on what he does in this domain. Up to now, he has been quite silent about this arena.

Obama has won big. His election will mark - mark, not cause - the end of the counterrevolution of the world right of the 1980s. He has rekindled hope, and created space for a more progressive world. But this space is structurally cramped by the constraints of an ever more anarchic world-system. The basic question is not whether he will transform the world and/or restore U.S. leadership in the world-system - he will do neither - but whether he will do as much as it is possible to do in allowing us all to push our way forward. Even if this is less than the world might wish he could do.

by Immanuel Wallerstein - 06/15/08 - more at Agence Global

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has begun, despite a last-minute flurry of cross-border attacks.

The truce is designed to halt Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip, and to stop missiles being fired from Gaza into southern Israel.

If it holds, Israel will ease its blockade on Gaza and there may be further talks on a prisoner exchange.

Correspondents say the eve-of-truce attacks underline how fragile the agreement could be.

There were no reports of fire from either side on Thursday morning.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group which controls Gaza, said it was confident all militants would abide by the Egypt-brokered truce, which is supposed to last six months.

Since the last ceasefire collapsed in April 2007, about 600 Palestinians and 18 Israelis have been killed in fighting between the two sides.

06/19/08 - more at BBC

transcript: question authority. including those who told you to … question … authority.

“Making the desert bloom”, a cornerstone of the early Zionist ideal, turns out not to have been such a smart idea. Agriculture consumes some 60% of the country’s total of 2 billion cubic metres of water a year, but contributes less than 2% of GDP, thanks partly to water-guzzling export crops such as bananas and citrus fruits, as well as dates (these are fine in their natural habitat of oases, but in Israel large plantations of date palms stretch across otherwise arid desert).

Israel shares its water sources with the Palestinians (the main aquifer that feeds many of its wells lies under the West Bank), as well as Jordan and Syria. Fast-growing populations are putting a strain on those sources. So is global warming: although average rainfall has not been dropping in the region, rain showers have become shorter and more intense, so more water runs into the sea instead of recharging the aquifers. The Jordan River is a trickle of its former self, and the Dead Sea, which it replenishes, is falling by around one metre a year.

More alarmingly, because rubbish dumping in Israel is better controlled than it used to be, contractors now dump more waste illegally in the poorly supervised West Bank, which adds to the contamination of the aquifer.

06/05/08 - more at The Economist

Ethan Bronner reports for the NY Times about the newest outrage resulting from US supported Israeli control of Gaza. We all know of the continuing depredations being perpetrated against Palestinians on a daily basis, the death and injuries, the almost complete control of most aspects of daily life. This new insult arises seamlessly from this control and is ominous because the canceling of scholarly exchange goes to the heart of academic freedom further eroding the idea that Israel has any interest in fostering Palestinian civic society. Whether by intent or casual indifference, Israel is alienating those who would most likely be needed and most open to establishing a stable peace in the region. Such impeding of Palestinian intellectual activity (and development) not only impoverishes Palestinian society but adds to the hallowing-out of Israel’s moral and intellectual culture. This is, unfortunately, of a piece with the recent banning of Norman Finklestein, reported on here, and the increasingly hostile attitude towards alternative/dissident positions in Israel as exemplified by the harassment of Ilan Pappe’ and the late Tanya Rheinhart, among others. As Americans we need to ask ourselves what is ultimately more worthwhile, funding the Israeli military to oppress Palestinians or funding educational exchanges that almost necessarily foster greater understanding cross-culturally. The obvious contradiction of US funding being used to stop US funding, besides the dark humor of the self-erasing nature of US actions, should raise serious concerns about US policy in the region.

by Rob Lipton - 05/30/08 - more at MuzzleWatch

[June 2, 2008 - Update

Gaza Fulbright grants reinstated

The state department has reinstated Fulbright grants for seven Palestinians in Gaza to study in the US.

This reverses a decision to withdraw the scholarships because Israel has not provided exit permits to the students.

Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized power there a year ago, largely cutting off the territory from the outside world.

The US consulate in Jerusalem has told the students that it is working to get them out of the territory.

“We are working very closely with the government of Israel in order to secure its co-operation in this matter,” an e-mail message to the students read.]

This is pretty shocking stuff. It’s particularly surreal, as Haaretz points out, because as a Jew with no criminal record, Finkelstein would be eligible to be an Israeli citizen. And then what? Glenn Greenwald over at Salon has a very thorough analysis of the entire story: he interviewed Finkelstein and his nemesis, Alan Dershowitz, who, shockingly, “was quite critical of Israel’s exclusion of Finkelstein.” Of course, none of the analysis mentions a) that Finkelstein isn’t just banned from Israel but from the Palestinian Territories over which Israel exercises complete control and b) that many, including Palestinian Americans and nonviolent human rights activists, are regularly held and turned back at the border. Even Condi Rice has complained about the treatment of American citizens of Palestinian descent, who are denied the right to see their own families and homes, while Jews who are in no danger and who may have never set foot outside of their hometown in the US or elsewhere are regularly invited to come “home” and become citizens. For those of us who have heard, witnessed or experienced these chilling first hand accounts of people turned back at the border, this is not new news. What is disturbing are newer reports that videotapes of US human rights activists are ending up in the hands of the Shin Bet, and that the FBI is working directly with the Israeli government to monitor US -based nonviolent activists. There is currently no way to document if these are just a few isolated cases or a trend.

05/28/08 - more at MuzzleWatch

Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.

This was published in the Pakistan Daily, May 20, 2008. It was brought to my attention (listserv) by Dr. Steven Jonas who writes at Political Junkies.

Here’s a bit about the interviewee from the start of the article:

Keep in mind when reading this, that the man being interviewed is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff.

Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.

The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones’ radio show.

Note: All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.

The Bush Junta Unmasked

“This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.” –Stanley Hilton

***

Accepting this as truth, what then?

-That the actions of a core of elite leaders - whose decision making cannot be without vested interests - are good old fashioned evil exactly in the Judeo-Christian sense that Nazi Germany’s actions were evil?

-That the U.S. government would be the engineers of the mass murder of its own people to create the pretext for the mass murder of other people? (Accepting, of course, that the mass murder is incidental. It is nothing more than a necessary occurrence in the service of far different objectives.)

Accepting this as truth, what then?

Then we are the ignorant fools we’ve been raised to be! Our understanding of the basics of military action, security, and terrorism not to mention the laws of physics are so rudimentary that our leaders can with impunity dupe (most of) us into believing a colossal lie! Why not let us behave as our leaders then and first kill a family member before killing someone else’s family member! And I’m sure amongst us there are people who would do exactly that. And you know how we regard those folk.

Accepting this as truth, what then?

-That democracy has become (always was?) a veneer whereby the core elite of a nation-state gain sanction to do what ever they want as long as the people who choose them can be duped?

but

How could we truly believe something so heinous could be perpetrated by this core elite? Do any of us really want to fathom that reality? That we are the ruled - the manipulated, the governed - rendered intellectually docile in the face of acts of evil? (Unless, of course, we are bloodthirsty ourselves and feel at one with the policies of mass murder in the name of …. some Higher purpose perhaps?)

How could we really believe this? It would make our World War II derived distinction between good and evil impossible to maintain. We’d be left with evil and evil. We’d have to begin to think of the U.S. governing elite in terms of evil. That would force comparisons we’d rather not make. Better to deny the whole matter, celebrate mass murder and/or make a shit-load of money off it instead!

If George W. Bush authorized the 9/11 attacks; if the attacks were in some major way an insider job, whether we are ignorant about it or not … well that’s the point isn’t it? What would be different if we were knowledgeable about it? Could elections really prevent such decision making? Can we really just vote them out of office? Would they already be incarcerated? Would we in any way be able to use traditional methods of justice to bring the mass murdering criminals to the kind of justice we give the common off-the-street mass murderer?

Can I hear laughter?