Why Peace
Is Elusive in the Middle East
July
14, 2006
The recent return of the Israeli
army into Gaza, along with the capture of a number
of Palestinian government officials who are now
essentially Israeli hostages, shows quite clearly
that Israel’s government is in total confusion.
The predictable results of their foolish policies
are now plain for all to see.
The roots of this crisis go back to last year
when Ariel Sharon “unilaterally” withdrew
from Gaza, pulling out Israel’s army and
its settlers. He did this without any coordination
with the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas,
and created a situation in which Hamas was able
to take credit for the withdrawal by crowing about
its violent “resistance” to Israel.
Hamas did agree to a cease-fire with Israel, and
stuck to it last year.
Because of the credibility it gained, and the
corruption in the Fatah-led PA, Hamas was able
to win the recent legislative elections and install
a Hamas leader in the Prime Minister office, while
Abbas remained President. In the anarchy that
Gaza had become, Palestinian groups such as Islamic
Jihad carried out rocket attacks on Israel, launching
over 600 rockets since the Israeli withdrawal.
These rockets are crude, with small warheads,
and did very little actual damage. But they gave
the Israelis a pretext to continue to attack Gaza,
which they did with gusto, and culminated in the
massacre of a Palestinian family picnicking on
the beach a few weeks ago. This horrible act that
Israel was directly responsible for ratcheted
up the violence, and a Palestinian group responded
by attacking an Israeli post within Israel, killing
two soldiers and fatefully capturing one. The
Palestinians now want to trade their prisoner
for prisoners held by Israel, but Israel has responded
by destroying the electricity and water supply
to 600,000 Gazans. This is collective punishment
and a war crime.
The situation is now one of complete policy quagmire
for Israel. Does it continue to invade Gaza? Can
it get out without making a deal with Hamas? How
do any of its actions lead to recovery of its
soldier? Israel claimed it would not talk to Hamas
until it renounced violence, accepted previous
agreements, and recognized Israel’s right
to exist. But then why did Israel refuse to negotiate
with Abbas all last year, when he had already
done all of those things?
The answer is that Israel does not want peace.
Well, technically speaking it does want peace,
but on terms that it has come to realize are unacceptable
to Palestinians. The primary goal of Israeli policy
with respect to the West Bank and Gaza from its
capture in 1967 till Rabin’s election in
1992 was the desire to fully annex those territories
into Israel, but in such a way that did not change
Israel’s Jewish majority. By 1992, which
was several years after the first Intifida, the
Labor (left-wing Zionist) Party in Israel had
concluded that such a goal was impossible, and
was now willing to part with a portion of the
West Bank so that Israel could separate from the
large Palestinian populations. The right-wing
Likud Party still held out hope that the West
Bank could be annexed eventually. In 2000, the
Labor Party put its cards on the table at Camp
David, where it was clear that it wanted to get
rid of the Palestinian people, but annex as much
of the West Bank as possible (almost 20%). The
map Barak proposed showed that Israel would not
dismantle even one major settlement on the West
Bank. The Palestinians correctly rejected this
ridiculous offer (it was generous only in the
minds of the Israelis, because it offered the
Palestinians something other than perpetual subjugation).
By 2004, the Likud Party, now in power behind
Ariel Sharon, had also finally conceded that the
Palestinians could not simply be kept enslaved
forever. But instead of trying to get the Palestinians
to accept what Barak had offered by another attempt
at negotiation, Sharon decided on just building
a wall that accomplished the same thing. The Israeli
wall is not a security fence, but a land-grab
fence, whose primary purpose is to put as many
settlements as possible within Israeli control,
while fencing out the Palestinians from their
own land. This is why the Israelis are not interested
in negotiating peace, because such a negotiation
would mean that the land theft would have to stop.
For real peace to be possible there needs to be
two major changes on the Israeli side. First is
that they need to recognize Palestine’s
right to exist, which no Israeli government or
major moderate or conservative American Jewish
group has ever done, and second they need to realize
that peace requires a return of the entire West
Bank and a removal of every settlement and settler.
They are illegal, they are a war crime under the
Fourth Geneva Convention, and they were a mistake
of Israeli and American policy. They have no legitimacy
and no standing. They are the main impediment
to peace and Israel and its supporters must come
to terms with this.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
has now boiled down to Israel’s desire to
steal the land between the 1967 border and the
current route of Israel’s land-grab fence.
When Israelis give up this attitude of greed,
this morally bankrupt notion that what is mine
is mine and what is yours is to be negotiated,
and this contempt for the Palestinians as a people,
then and only then will there be peace. Comments
can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
