Patrick Seale writes: This past year has dealt a heavy blow — perhaps even a terminal one — to the project, long supported by the international community, of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of two states. When the United States itself proved unable to halt Israel’s relentless land grab, it seemed that nothing and nobody could rein in Israel’s iron-willed ambition to expand its borders towards a “Greater Israel.”
What will the immediate future bring? In the continued absence of firm international intervention, the likeliest scenario is that Israel will seek to consolidate its hold over 40 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, either by settlement expansion or outright annexation. The main centres of Arab population, such as Nablus, Jericho and Ramallah, would be fenced off, although Israel might allow them corridors to Jordan. This first stage of the project would, of course, be portrayed by Israel as a painful concession.
If Israel managed to get away with it, the next stage could be a good deal more radical, and could possibly involve the expulsion of large numbers of Palestinians, probably under the cover of war as occurred in 1948 and 1967, so as to complete the creation of a Greater Israel between the sea and the river.
After the experience of the past two years, no one should have the slightest doubt that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is utterly determined to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. Bantustans, for a while perhaps, but a Palestinian state, never! Netanyahu is known to be profoundly influenced by his father, the historian Benzion Natanyahu, now 101 years old, who was once the secretary of Ze’ev Jabotinsky – “the father of Revisionist Zionism” — and who remains a life-long passionate believer in a Greater Israel. He petitioned against the UN Partition Plan for Palestine of 29 November 1947 because he, and others like him, wanted the whole of Palestine for the Jews. That remains his dream.
Well, congratulations, Obama: you will go down in history as having betrayed the very people you swore in Cairo to support. I hope you enjoyed sucking up to AIPAC — another of your history-making activities. And I hope you enjoy your little future war against Iraq while Israel sits back and critiques your every move.
Greater Israel will never be because it lacks: (1) Jews; (2) honest people who will come together for a common cause; (3) the money from the Diaspora needed to keep it afloat. As a result, the manure floats to the top and Israel will, more and more, be taken over by total Ganofs, while the best and brightest depart for Diasporic shores. In the end, Israel– greater or lesser– will depend on handouts from its Sunni cousins. As the Arab Spring evolves, if it takes a turn for the better, the Arabs will seek terms of integration for the Jews as, the best of the Arabs and Israelis deeply realize that they need each other.
So far, a lot of Zionist money from Diasporic Fat Cats is being pissed away in media cover-ups and influence peddling pushing the big lie: ISRAELIS ARE BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE and worth more in order to squeeze more money from what they call the “dumb goyim” Americans. But far too many Jews are rising up to say, we’re Americans and, Jews or goyim, we’re not dumb, you are. A telling sign is how many Jews support Ron Paul’s call for an empire of health in service of the worst of Zionist extremists. Paul will steal away the 4-5% Republicans Romney needs to win. The Zio-fatcats know that neither Romney nor Obama will serve as Israel stooge. And so they waste a fortune on amoral Santorum and immoral Gingrich, hoping to intimidate Romney and Obama with their influence and ability to dominate media. But the proto-facist babble of the Republican Right makes it clear to all Jews that there’s no room for them in the Zionist paid-for camp. Israel’s only hope is that Obama will be friendlier. Ziofacism a la South African racism that we see today is a bluff. In reality, the extremists are crying that they are losing the Jews and that the Haredi, spoiled and selfish, are turning on them demanding: where’s the check?
The Palestinian future depends on the Arab Spring. In any Arab-Israeli rapprochement between pragmatic non-racists Israelis and Arabs, the Palestinians will play a key role as interlocutor. But first Palestinians must stop competing with each other for who attracts more Israeli bullets and bombs.
The two-state solution was never viable. It amounted to a shared fantasy among liberals and bureaucrats of various stripes. The subaltern Palestinian state (for that is what would have come into being, under Arafat or his successors) would have been permanently at the mercy of Israel, the surrounding Arab states, and the U.S. Stated more succinctly than is usually allowed, the situation boils down to this: Palestine is one country. Israel is one country. The problem is, they are the same country- the same land and resources, and in a perverse way, the same people. Long conflict links people together as closely as considerations of amity, mutual support and shared faith. The only solution- ultimately the only practical solution, is the one most difficult to envision but most essential in the end: one state, divested of the privileged claims and institutional discrimination of Zionism. Though it is hard to foresee today a path to this outcome, the abandonment of Zionism is the main prerequisite for a stable, peaceful Israel-Palestine.
The idea that Israel is important for the future, if fast becoming a fallacy, for the American Jews know which side of their toast is buttered. If the sided with the Israeli ;leadership, they would be there in Israel on the front lines. Yet, where are they? Right here in the U.S.A. Like the rest of the so called patriots here, they don’t want to die for an old thinking. When the Nu clear’s are used, it will be there, in there in and about Israel. Who wants to die for a bunch of madmen?