Ali Abunimah writes:
Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Danny Ayalon, paints a picture of an innocent Israel yearning for peace, virtually begging the intransigent Palestinians to come negotiate so there can be a “two-states-for-two-peoples solution” (“Who’s stopping the peace process?” Dec. 14). But it’s one that bears no resemblance to the realities Palestinians experience and much of the world sees every day.
Ayalon claims that the settlements Israel refuses to stop building on occupied land are a “red herring” and present no obstacles to peace because in the “43 years since Israel gained control of the West Bank, the built-up areas of the settlements constitute less than 1.7% of the total area.”
But let us remind ourselves of a few facts that are not in dispute. Since the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel signed the Oslo peace agreement in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has tripled to more than half a million. Ayalon’s deceptive focus on the “built-up areas” ignores the reality that the settlements now control 42% of the West Bank, according to a report last July from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
B’Tselem points out that there are now more than 200 Israeli settlements “that are connected to one another, and to Israel, by an elaborate network of roads.” These roads, along with various “security zones” from which Palestinians are excluded, cut across Palestinian land and isolate Palestinians in miserable and often walled, ghetto-like enclaves.
The old saying; “action speaks louder than words” has meaning in this conflict. Israel has continued to whine about everything and everybody being out to harm it. Yet, they or perhaps I should say their leaders, keep playing the “H” card, while stealing land they agreed to in the Oslo compact. This story is so boring, that if it wasn’t so tragic, it might be funny. It’s taken on the role of when someone flushes the toilet & it backs up because the septic tank is full, but they keep flushing it anyway. In the process, the children of both sides are exposed to the follies of the elders. Bigotry, plays a very big part of the problem. The parallels of what is taking place today, has its roots in the past, when the Jews were subjected to the “H” by the Nazis. One could equate the two as being drawn by the same architect. Perhaps just coincidental, perhaps not. One thing seems certain, the U.S. is afraid to back away, most probably because of the control Israel has on the Congress & State Department. Incompetence & corruption go hand in hand in both the U.S. & Israeli Governments. What a sad ending to both countries as we are now into the next decade of the 21st Century with both headed for the overflowing cesspool of reality.
Norman
Given the parallels of what is taking place today, with its roots in the past-“One could equate the two as being drawn by the same architect.”
As the tradgedy continues to unfold and the actions of Zionist Isreal overflow the ‘tank, as you say, how often such a thought has crossed my mind also. As is often the case the ‘victims’, if they survive, observe the ‘punishers well’ so as to improve on their sadist deeds when it is their turn to use them. They sure seemed to have learned well. “The abused most often become the abusers…..”
If only those the intransigent Palestinians would shape up!
We really have to “hammer” every day the reality on the ground in Palestine, so we know now that we have to repeat constantly the facts of the reality : Israel is uprooting hundreds of thousand very old olive trees (more than three hundred centuries ) and cover the destroyed palestinian landscape with new imported coniferous forests .
Such an ecological crime can only bear in the mind of invaders. Israel has no ecological sensibility of the invaded space, and even less of its ancient inhabitants. The israeli experience is a short time vision and a brutal one stick to the western colonial ideology .
There is no choice but human and moral boycott and sanctions to isolate this brutal and inhuman Israel.
It is also now a make-or-break issue for Jews as Zionism will not allow them to be “parasites” in Diaspora while it creates lebensraum for their FORCED arrival.
See Daniel Levy’s nice article and why I think, not just Palestinians, but Jews too are left without a choice. This comment was to his FORWARD article…maybe they’re still Jewish enough not to censor it out:
http://www.forward.com/articles/133960/#ixzz18VxisQAt
DE Teodoru · less than 1 minute ago
Mr. Levy fails to properly define the Zionist thesis which the current Likud Cabinet imposed on PM Netanyahu so, therefore he makes a besides the point argument. Zionism says: any Jew who does not move to Israel is a “parasite,” a flea on the “goy dog” thinking that the dog will tolerate him. 70% of World Jewry lives abroad as loyal citizens of the nations of their birth. FORWARD publishes for Diaspora Jews and should decide whether it is Zionist or not– not Jewish and therefore Zionist– for the Zionists are secularists who define a people by mother’s ethnic lineage, hence racially. A religious Jew is a freak to them, though now they tolerate religious Jews because they come to Israel and, though many do nothing but doven, at least they make babies almost as fast as Palestinians. Were Israel not in a demographic crisis it would not put up with them, as in past when it tried to mold children of Mizrahis by giving them away to “politically correct” Euro Jewish olims. A recent Israeli show available on YouTube is quite damning in history it tells.
On the other hand, America is a sinking power economically exsanginating. The Teabaggers have pushed for an end to Congressional Earmarkings. This means that the American secret grants and debt forgivenesses to Israel will no longer be possible in secret. In sum, all this means that the “Cool” Israel that claims to be such an economic dynamo can no longer expect Uncle Sam to turn over his pockets, nor the Europeans, as in the past. This leaves only one source: whatever assets the olims bring with them on their Grand Aliyah….Don’t tell me you’re all going to stay in Goyum lands…Don’t say that you’re all loyal citizens of the countries where you line…Don’t say that you deem Israel a nice place to visit but not to live, like all the Israelis trying to go abroad….Don’t say that your support for Israel is arm’s length and that you will not tolerate anyone who would deliberately stoke the fires of anti-Semitism in order to force you to stampede in fear to Israel…Don’t say that you are religious Jews, not a Jewish race…I know all this is true but unfortunately the Zionist in their thesis won’t accept that. They are expanding Israel, covering it with empty settlements to cover the land between the two rives– bit by bit– expecting that sooner or later you’ll ALL move there.
So, the real issue of Zionism is no longer a blahblah theory you can all just cheer from abroad. It is something you can only support by throwing all your assets, your backs and your very lives into its expansion. Ironically, per a recent poll, 30% of raging settlers said that if Iran goes nuclear they’ll skedaddle out of Israel. So, as Palestine dies, exterminated for lebensraum, you can’t say you’re pro-Israel unless you cease to be American Jews and go to become pioneers in Israel. Like the sabras you’ll have to sink or swim in the Promised Land because THAT is the thesis of Zionist lebensraum!