ZGram - 11/23/2002 - "Israel's Choice"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Sat, 23 Nov 2002 18:45:00 -0800
ZGRAM - WHERE TRUTH IS DESTINY
November 23, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
The ZGram reader who sent me the following titled it "Israel:
Warming to ethnic cleansing as final solution". Ironic, isn't it?
START:
Israel's Choice
by Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Returning to Israel after an extended absence can be a disturbing
experience. On the way back from the airport to my Jerusalem
apartment, I noticed new posters tacked onto utility poles and
bridges along the highway. They read: Transfer= Peace and Security.
The meaning was unambiguous: Israel must expel the 3 million
Palestinians living in the occupied territories--and perhaps even its
own Palestinian citizens--in order to achieve peace and security.
While racist slogans have become pervasive in Israel, it was this
particular message--the notion of expulsion as a political
solution--that unhinged me. One does not need to be a Holocaust
survivor to recognize the phrase's lethal implications. The slogan,
however, does not merely underscore the moral bankruptcy of certain
elements in Israeli society; it also helps uncover some of the
inherent contradictions underlying Israel's policies in the occupied
territories.
From the extreme right (those behind the posters) to the radical
left, Israelis agree on at least two points: The current crisis must
be dealt with, and land is the major issue around which the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict revolves. After more than two years of
armed conflict, which has left close to 2,500 people dead--including
300 Palestinian and eighty Israeli children--most Israelis see the
situation as hopeless, a view that is, ironically, shared by many
Palestinians.
Israeli hopelessness does not stem merely from the Sharon
government's preference for military action over diplomacy (which
despite its ruthlessness has not stabilized the situation), but also
from the fact that public discourse has been colonized by military
calculations, which undercut the possibility of even envisioning a
positive change. The current absence of a political horizon helps
explain why no one greeted the government's announcement of early
elections with any enthusiasm.
Most Israelis appear to understand that the doctrine advanced by
former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and adopted by Sharon is no
longer tenable, namely that the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty while the
Palestinian population would be given some form of autonomy without
receiving full citizenship. The Israeli left has rejected this
solution for pragmatic and ethical reasons, recognizing that in
Israel's effort to maintain control over the territories it has
become an apartheid regime.
Israel has introduced a segregated road system in the territories,
transforming all major arteries into roads for Jews only. Palestinian
villages and towns have consequently been turned into islands,
hindering the population's access to medical facilities, work and
education. (According to UNICEF, close to a quarter-million
Palestinian children cannot reach schools.) Not surprisingly, the
Palestinian economy has also collapsed--a recent Israeli military
report states that between 60 and 80 percent of the population lives
on less than $2 a day.
Israelis on the left and right now realize that the conflict cannot
be resolved under the current conditions, regardless of the amount of
military force Israel employs. A new government will be expected to
come up with new ideas. Although the situation is complex, there will
be only three options from which to choose if we are to break the
current impasse.
The first is the two-state solution. Even if the Labor Party's new
leader, former Gen. Amram Mitzna, ends up forming the next
government, which is highly unlikely, it is not clear that he will
have the courage to radically alter the Oslo format. This option,
however, will be viable only if Israel implements a full withdrawal
to the 1967 borders and dismantles all Jewish settlements, which now
contain almost 400,000 people. While this may appear to be an
impossible endeavor, one should keep in mind that when France finally
ceded control of Algeria, it managed to evacuate a much larger number
of French citizens.
The second option is the one proffered by the extreme right: the
expulsion of all the Palestinians from their lands, forcefully
transferring them to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria or Egypt. This idea,
which until recently had been marginalized, is gaining broader
support among the powers that be. Polls indicate that the National
Union, a right-wing party advocating expulsion, is expected to
receive 10 percent of the vote in the upcoming elections, and its
members are not the only ones who are promoting this solution.
The third option is for Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
bestowing full citizenship on the Palestinian population, and thus
turning itself into a binational state rather than a Jewish one. This
solution, which had been perceived by Palestinians as a betrayal of
the struggle for self-determination, has recently gained legitimacy
within the Palestinian establishment. While the binational option is,
in a sense, the most democratic of the three, within Israel it is
still considered an abomination not only by the right but also by
Labor and the liberal Meretz.
If Israel's next leader is to overcome the current crisis, he will
have to decide whether to abandon the notion of a Jewish state,
employ a policy used by the darkest regimes (not least the Third
Reich) or dismantle the settlements and bring the Jewish settlers
back home. Each of these options negates certain elements of the
Zionist project, suggesting that the settlements constitute a
contradiction; they are now destroying the very project that
initiated and upheld them. They have come back to turn the Zionist
dream into a nightmare.
( Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021209&s=gordon )