http://antiwar.com/hacohen/pf/p-h050402.html
Letter From Israel
by Ran HaCohen
Antiwar.com
May 4, 2002
Killing
and Taking Possession
"The
word of Yahweh came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Arise, go
down to meet
Ahab king of Israel, who dwells in Samaria: behold, he is
in the vineyard
of Naboth, where he is gone down to take possession of
it. You shall speak
to him, saying, Thus says Yahweh, Have you killed
and also taken possession?
You shall speak to him, saying, Thus says
Yahweh, In the place where dogs
licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs
lick your blood, even yours." (1. Kings 21:17-19)
At the
end of March, the Arab League offered Israel full peace in
return for full
withdrawal from the occupied territories. At the same
time (29.3.02), Israel's
best-selling daily Yedioth Achronot published
an opinion poll:
"According
to a representative sample of 502 Israelis, 47% of the
public think all the
settlements in Gaza Strip and in the West Bank
should be dismantled for a
peace agreement with the Palestinians. This
is an amazing figure. 66% think
all the settlements in Gaza Strip
should be dismantled, and a majority of
70% support evacuating
settlements in regions densely populated by Arabs."
Note that the
poll was conducted without any prior campaign, without
an actual peace agreement,
and in the very month that saw more
terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens
than ever. A similar
poll published a month earlier in Ha'aretz yielded similar results:
74% of Jewish Israelis supported dismantling at least small isolated
settlements – in a framework of "unilateral separation", not even
a
peace agreement.
So the Israeli
people knows what it wants: dismantling the settlements
in return for peace.
The Arab world also knows what it wants: full
peace for full withdrawal. Never
before has peace in the Middle East
been more simple to achieve.
But the ruling
Israeli junta knows better. That very day (29.3.02), it
launched "Operation
Defence Shield", a ruthless total war against the
Palestinian people
in the West Bank, destroying every single symbol,
institution and infrastructure
of the Palestinian autonomy (save
Arafat's person): killing hundreds, destroying,
vandalising
and
plundering, securing Palestinian hatred for generations to come. Towards
the end of the Operation (22.4.02) Prime Minister Sharon announced in
cabinet
that his government would not dismantle even a single
settlement, and would
not even discuss the matter.
Terrorism
as Pretext
The pretext
for this war was the Palestinian attacks on Israeli
civilians, culminating
in the Passover massacre in Netanya (27.3.02,
28 civilians killed). Pretext?
Undoubtedly. To stop suicide bombers, a
fence would have been enough.
Yedioth Achronot has recently published a thorough research on that. The
cover page of its
weekend magazine (26.4.02) reads:
"Precisely
a year ago, President Moshe Katzav suggested building a
separation fence to
stop suicide bombers. The Prime Minister ignored
him. In December 2001, the
Head of the Shin Bet warned: 'a physical
barrier is a security must.' The Prime Minister ignored him. Ever since,
205 Israeli citizens have been killed
and 1.666 injured in terrorist
attacks inside the Green Line. The Prime Minister
ignored it." A
subtitle reads: "The Prime Minister's Office
admits: the fence is not
built because of 'political aspects'." And
the former Chief of Israeli
Police, Asaf Chefetz, spells it out: "Separation
will destroy the
concept Sharon has been employing all his life. He cannot
set a fence
after he spread the settlements in a way that makes it impossible
to
separate them from the rest of the country."
Yedioth Achronot
also quotes experts estimating the costs of a fence
along the 263 km of
the Green Line. The most expensive version, with a
double fence, a wide patrol
road, projectors, electronic detection
equipment and cameras, should cost
about one hundred million dollars.
The direct military costs of "Operation
Defence Shield" have already
exceeded six times this amount. Not counting
indirect economic damage,
not counting human lives lost on both sides, not
counting the millions
of damage inflicted on the Palestinians, not counting
future hatred.
Cheap Lives,
Expensive Lives
A fence
is not my favourite solution for the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict; an open
peaceful border is much better than a Chinese wall.
But the fence issue is
indicative for the priorities of Israel's
junta, with, at the top, maintaining
the occupation and expanding the
settlements.
In the junta's
eyes, there are three kinds of human beings. First
Palestinians, whose life
is a nuisance one should get rid of. Second
Israelis, whose life is a national
asset one can liquidate when
necessary. Occupation can be served by sacrificing civilians in terrorist
attacks and using their death to launch a war. The
third kind is
settlers: an incarnation of the occupation, hence sacred. "Our
Saviours", as former Prime Minister Yizchak Shamir once called them.
Yedioth Achronot (26.4.02) paid a visit to one Gershon Hershkowitz, a 25
year old settler living
alone in a detached caravan on a hill in the
northern West Bank. The journalist
"was appalled to find out that this
single settler was protected by
several reserve soldiers. They
[ironically] called themselves 'the Unit for
the Protection of One
Man'." The soldiers have "no fence, no detection equipment, no lighting,
totally exposed to the four winds. An
Israeli army jeep occasionally
came to check if they were still alive."
It is not an
exception. In the settlement of Netzarim, in the heart of
the Gaza strip,
50 houses are defended by almost one thousand
soldiers. Analyst Sima Kadmon,
who published the story, adds:
"When
the Prime Minister last week promised not to dismantle isolated
settlements,
it's those settlements he was referring to."
Since Sharon
came to power, 34 new settlements have been built on
occupied lands.
Dispossession
Resumes
"Operation
Defence Shield" is over; the next operation, probably in
Gaza, is waiting
for a pretext. The Israeli junta is already
harvesting the crop. Ha'aretz (25.4.02) reports of 31 new housing units to
be built in the settlement of
Maale Adumim and 480 in the settlement
of Elkana. There is also a new Jewish
neighbourhood at the heart of
Hebron, "behind the facades of shops
whose [Palestinian] owners had
been evicted after the massacre of Baruch Goldstein."
Yes: in 1994,
after a Jewish terrorist massacred scores of
Palestinians in prayer, Israel
"evicted" the Palestinian owners of the
shops which are now given
to Jewish settlers. That's the junta's game:
heads I win, tails you loose.
Israelis killed are a good pretext to
dispossess Palestinians; Palestinians
killed are even a better pretext
to dispossess them.
A mother of
a reserve soldier turned desperately to an Internet forum
for an advice: together
with other soldiers, her son was "ordered to
protect surveyors who
came to mark Arab olive-woods for building a
road on them and double the area
of settlement Alfe Menashe. Is
everything allowed in the name of protecting
the house? Evil is evil.
My son is a fighter and serves in reserve, but he
is now on the verge
of refusal. What can I do?"
Compare the
desperate e-mail message circulated by Fuad Kokaly, Mayor
of the Palestinian
town of Beit Sahour:
"Yesterday,
25 April, I received a visit at Beit Sahour Municipality
from the Israeli
Occupation Forces. The visit was to present me with a
new map. This new map
shows the new Beit Sahour; a Beit Sahour with
even less land than before.
They intend to confiscate yet more of our
property, property belonging to
residents of Beit Sahour. [...] More
and more is taken by Israel to build
settlements, bypass roads and to
take control of natural assets that legitimately
belong to
Palestinians. As a result, we are prevented from building new homes,
farming our land and having access to neighbouring villages and towns. For
how much longer must we have to accept this plunder of our land?"
"Have
you killed and also taken possession?"
So when Sharon
comes to Washington next week, don't wonder about his
peace plan: he hasn't
got one. Don't talk to him about a "peace
conference": he doesn't
want peace. Just remind him of the King of
Israel whose blood was licked by
dogs for killing just one man, for
taking possession of just one vineyard
in Samaria.
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