Posted By Amjad Atallah Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 5:44 PM Share
"A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration
will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands
of Palestinians from the West Bank or their
indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years. When the
order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically
become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished."
This
concise summary by Israeli reporter Amira Hass describes the latest round
in increasingly dangerous provocations by the Israeli government in its attempt
to ensure Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territory. And for the
Palestinians, it clearly sets out the potentially fatal weakness of American
government efforts to represent Palestinian interests in any meaningful way.
(For an excellent fact sheet on the new regulation, also see
Yousef Munayyer's analysis today.)
First, what does the military order really mean? In effect,
it confirms that all Jews who are in the Occupied
Territory (but which is labeled as
"Judea and Samaria"
on Israeli government maps) are subject to Israeli domestic legal jurisdiction.
For purposes of Israeli law, there is no difference between an Israeli settler
living in the middle of Hebron
and one who is living in Tel Aviv, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu keeps
trying to remind President Barack Obama.
But this order takes this de facto annexation one step
further. Now those who are not Jewish who reside in the West
Bank are effectively there illegally according to Israeli military
regulations. The rule requires Palestinians to hold a "valid permit",
but the rule does not define what these permits are, who would issue them, or
where they would come from.
Israeli human rights groups have already filed complaints
before the Israeli High Court to challenge
the regulation. The New
York Times cites Israeli human rights lawyer Elad Cahana as noting that
"the concern was less of a mass expulsion than of the military deporting
those officially registered as residents of Gaza,
as well as Palestinians or their spouses who moved to the West
Bank from abroad."
Palestinians are rightly in a panic over the new regulation.
Fatah and Hamas have been desperately trying to contain any new outbreak of
violence against Israeli provocations, convinced that Israel may seek
a new round of violence to deflect American pressure for a two-state solution.
Hamas in the last week has detained members of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah in the Gaza Strip to force their
compliance with the cease-fire. Today's clashes between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza which have left two Palestinians
dead are a reflection of just how difficult maintaining a cease-fire in
these conditions will be.
Fatah has attempted to deflect Palestinian outrage into
public campaigns to assert Palestinian sovereignty in the West
Bank and boycotts
of settler products. And yet, the only real strategy to confront this
latest in a series of provocations is to rely on international support to
pressure Israel
to back off.
There are two trends of thought on why the Israeli
government has accelerated its integration of the West Bank into Israel.
The first is that the Likud government is attempting to "train" the
American President in much the same way as it deals with Arab leaders. When
asked to do something it doesn't want to do, Israel will do the opposite of what
it's asked. Ultimately, it assumes that it will stop being asked to do things.
As former US Secretary
of State Jim Baker noted in 1991 when dealing with the Likud leadership in Israel at that time, "Every time I have
gone to Israel
in connection with the peace process...I have been met with an announcement of
new settlement activities. It substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring
about a peace process."
In fact, a cursory look over the last year of President
Obama's administration shows the pattern has been accelerated with various
types of provocations in response to several US visits or demands increasing qualitatively
and quantitatively.
The
following table links the Foundation for Middle East Peace's Settlement
Report and other
news events with major US
diplomatic visits with Israeli leaders. It reveals a clear pattern
consistent with Baker's observation almost twenty years ago.
Of course, there is another possible explanation for these
ever increasing jabs at a two-state solution, which is that Israel's settlement
machine has now so infiltrated the various branches of Israeli government that
Israeli prime ministers are just figureheads, powerless to stop their
relentless entrenchment of Jewish dominance over Arabs in the territory
occupied in 1967. In that sense, the "machine" of colonization has
now become so powerful that it is a state within a state, able to operate with
impunity and with no consequence either from the Israeli government or from
international actors including the United States.
Ironically, in light of his history as father of the
settlement movement, Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave credence to this
argument when
he assigned Israeli lawyer Talia Sasson to investigate the legal status of
settlement "outposts". What she found was that settlements were
being regularly constructed in violation of Israeli law (let alone
international law), supported by various civilian ministries as well as the
Israeli Defense Forces, and then subsequently being accepted.
Regardless of which theory is correct--whether Likud is
trying to "train" the United States
or whether the settler state within a state in Israel is trying to finally kill
the idea of a Palestinian state--profoundly important questions are raised for
both the Palestinian and US leaderships.
What to do in response?
This week, Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat issued a press
release in protest, calling on the international community to intervene.
But the United
States really has no address to send its
letter of complaint. Either the Israeli prime minister is the leader of the
efforts to provoke a new round of violence or he is simply the figurehead for a
more insidious machine operating within Israeli society, determined to oppose
the United States
while continuing to demand our unconditional support.
Meanwhile, Special Envoy George Mitchell continues to demand
that "proximity talks" between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
and Netanyahu start. But without an answer to how, when, and if the United States will separate itself from the
settler establishment in Israel
and their supporters in the US
political establishment, proximity talks are the least of America's worries.
Amjad Atallah
directs the Middle
East Task Force at the New America
Foundation and is editor of the Middle East
Channel.
Israel's thuggish conduct towards the native Palestinian population is clear to any thinking man.
What I don't understand is how can American Jews support Israel's thuggish or by extention any policies?
True there are rabid and very dangerous Zionists in America (they are clear danger to America); but a vast number of American Jews are relatively normal people; my question is directed to the latter.
I don't think Mitchell is in the ME any longer. Just caught him on C-SPAN as a show host. The program had nothing whatever to do with Palestine-Israel.
If Palestinian were serious about Peace they would
1) NEGOTIATE
2) NEGOTIATE IN GOOD FAITH
It is Palestinians that are refusing talks, to agree to borders, have walked out on all meaningful talks, Camp David, Taba... Palestinians rejected Clinton proposals and all variations. NEVER OFFERED A COUNTER PROPOSAL when rejecting a comprehensive settlement.
What negotiation and what counter proposals are needed to deal with thieves who have stolen land, bulldozed thousands of villages and homes of native Palestinians and in the process of their butchery, killed, maimed, tortured, humiliated, arrested millions of Palestinians?
What negotiations and counter proposals to get the Palestinian homes back for Palestinians from the foreign East European Jews?
Give back Palestine to Palestinians and go back to where you came from viz. Poland, Russia and America. Good riddance.
To those who might not be aware, Lal Qila is the Red Fort in Delhi, India, formerly a Mughal fort, now the symbol of Indian sovereignity. Certain Islamists find this an unbearable offence :
After the Kargil war of 1999, LET chieftain Hafiz Muhammad Saeed threatened, "The real war will be inside [India]." He swore his forces would "unfurl the Islamic flag on the Red Fort." As Swami explains, the Red Fort in New Delhi "has been a long-standing motif in Islamist Discourse, as old as Partition itself."
So, to the user who chose Lal Qila as his username, is this a coincidence, or are you one of those Islamist chaps ? Just asking, so I can filter the rest of your comments appropriately.
“We offered them everything and they refused” has long-since been discredited, and not just by the Palestinians. But also, among others, by former Israeli Foreign Minister and negotiator at Camp David, Shlomo Ben Ami, who said: “if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well”.
Israel walked out of the Taba talks. In addition, during Oslo peace process in the 1990’s Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land, constructed 250 miles of connector and bypass roads, doubled the number of settlers, and built 30 new settlements all the while agreeing to a complete settlement freeze. Is that what you call negotiating in 'good faith'?
Israeli leaders have rejected every Palestinian proposal for ceasefire or peace,blindly pursuing the Zionazi policy of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland in collusion, and bias with the US for 60 years. The Camp David offer? It is no surprise this history was also rewritten to shed Palestinians in a negative light.
It should first be noted that Palestinians have conceded their claim to 78% of historical Palestine, and agreed to form a new state on the remaining 22%, which is comprised of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• Israel proposed that 69 settlements, populated by 85% of West Bank settlers would be annexed by Israel. These settlements would reduce the Palestinian state by 10%, not to mention severely disrupt travel and daily life in the West Bank.
• Israel proposed “temporary control” of yet another 10% of land that housed the most extreme of settlers. Essentially this means that a foreign power would control the land of another sovereign nation.
• The remaining areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints, forcing Palestinians to live on bantustans or reservations (like South Africans or Native Americans), in a non-contiguous state.
• Palestinians were also expected to relinquish land considered most essential for trade and tourism.
• Israel would maintain very vital controls over Palestinian water, Palestinian borders, and Palestinian airspace.
Anyone in their right minds would not have accepted such a ridiculous proposal that would continue to force millions of people to live as slaves as in apartheid South Africa.
And as we see with this latest news, Israel is continuing to expand into Palestinian territory, in complete violation of international law - illegal and immoral actions.
You are in such denial with your ridiculous revisionist history, but then again history is usually written by its oppressors - and you, my friend are on the the side of the oppressor.
It was a walkout metaphorically, Palestinians let the clock run out. They stonewalled the negotiations. The Palestinians never actually agreed to anything borders or particularly important the 'refugee' issue and the clock ran out. Palestinians never formally agreed or accepted the borders, based on the 'Clinton Plan' and kept insisting on a 'right of return' which not not only is a not a right but a non starter if they are serious about a Two State Solution.
This is exactly the same position the PA takes now, they have not moved in 9 years!
The PA (Palestinians) don't agree to a Border or resolution of refugees issues all the time paying lip service to the 'Two State Solution' and keep navigating to a 'Final Solution' or as it is euphemistically referred to the 'One State Solution'.
Palestinians knew that Clinton was no longer going to be president in a few weeks and knew equally well that Barak was going to lose the elections because of the violence they, the Arafat orchestrated Second Intifada, initiated.
I already did. Palestinians have been very poorly served by their leadership over the past few decades. Initially the PLO was sleeping with communists / socialists, now with Islamists. So any semblence of a nationalist struggle is lost, because right now, we can't afford to let Islamists win a victory anywhere in the world. So Palestinians will have to purge their movement of all religious extremism.
When SIR_MIXXALOT et al keep talking about ethnic cleansing one never sees a tear shed for the far larger violent ethnic cleansing and persecution of Jews over the short period of time Arab states achieved independence before and after the Second World War.
There was no war in most of these Countries, Jews had not taken up Arms and were party to no conflict. Arab countries systematically implemented 'Nurenberg Laws' barring Jews from civil service and many professions and then ultimately revoked citizenship of those who tried to stay.
Jews were subjected to Mob and State violence, rounded up put in prisons, all property and wealth confiscated...
Not a word here from all the racist and antisemitic bigots who keep pretending they are concerned with justice and human rights.
Ashkanazim are Kazars is a myth perpetrated by the most racist and rabid Antisemites such eg LAL QILA.
Those who are curious can read the NY times abstract of Professor Hammer's DNA analysis that definitively proves not only are East European Jews not decended from Kazars but are in fact related to North African and Middle East Jews all descending "...from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago"
because influential campaign donors with deep pockets can get us elected to Congress if we do.
So what do we care if its genocide or not? We'll just have our PR guys spin it to death until no one of consequence is the wiser, and we'll move on.
We'll probably inspire and prolong Islamist terrorism against ourselves for another generation for doing it... but who cares? The name of the game is short term survival. We'll have long retired with a hefty campaign chest, and won't have to answer for the coffins of young Americans coming back from that region.
So unless you can somehow outdo the insane amounts of money one side spends to keep the status-quo going, all of this talk of principles and 'good foreign policy' is mostly just singing to the choir.
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