For over 20 years, Israel has been dedicated, with U.S. support, to separating Gaza from the West Bank. That’s in direct violation of the terms of the Oslo Accord 20 years ago, which declared that the West Bank and Gaza are a single territorial entity whose integrity must be preserved. But for rogue states, solemn agreements are just an invitation to do whatever you want. So Israel, with U.S. backing, has been committed to keeping them separate. You have to distinguish the rhetoric of a government from its actions, and the rhetoric of political leaders from their actions. For example, in February 2011, the U.N. Security Council considered a resolution which called on Israel to terminate its expansion of settlements. Notice that the expansion of settlements is not really the issue. ITS THE SETTLEMENTS. The settlements, the infrastructure development, all of this is in gross violation of international law. That’s been determined by the Security Council, the International Court of Justice. Practically every country in the world, outside of Israel, recognizes this. But this was a resolution calling for an end to expansion of settlements. What happened? Obama vetoed the resolution. That tells you something. And, in fact, if you look step by step, the military aid continues, the economic aid continues, the diplomatic protection continues, the ideological protection continues. By that, I mean framing the issues in ways that conform to Israeli demand. All of that continues, along with a kind of clucking of the tongue, saying, Well, we really don’t like it, and it’s not helpful to peace. One hundred percent of the casualties and the destruction and the devastation and so on could have been avoided if Israel had lived up to the ceasefire agreement from November 2012, instead of violating it constantly and then escalating the violation in order to block the unity government and to persist in the policies of taking over what they want in the West Bank and separating it from Gaza, and keeping Gaza on what they’ve called a diet, Dov Weissglas’s famous comment. The man who negotiated the so-called withdrawal in 2005 pointed out that the purpose of the withdrawal is to end the discussion of any political settlement and to block any possibility of a Palestinian state, and meanwhile the Gazans will be kept on a diet, meaning just enough calories allowed so they don’t all die, because that wouldn’t look good for Israel’s fading reputation, but nothing more than that. And with its vaunted technical capacity, Israel calculated precisely how many calories would be needed to keep the Gazans on their diet, under siege, blocked from export, blocked from import. Fishermen can’t go out to fish, the naval vessels drive them back to shore; over a third and maybe more of Gaza’s arable land is barred from entry to Palestinians — it’s called a barrier. That’s the norm. That’s the diet. They want to keep them on that, meanwhile separated from the West Bank, and continue the ongoing project of taking over the parts of the West Bank that Israel is integrating, and presumably will ultimately annex in some fashion, as long as the United States continues to support it and block international efforts to lead to a political settlement. And when you read in the press that the Arabs support the U.S. on so-and-so, what is meant is the dictators support us, not the populations. The dictatorships are moderately supportive of what the U.S. and Israel are doing. That includes the military dictatorship in Egypt, a very brutal one, and the Saudi Arabian dictatorship. Saudi Arabia is the closest U.S. ally in the region, and it’s the most radical fundamentalist Islamic state in the world. They’ve both tended to prefer radical Islam to the danger of secular nationalism and democracy. They have no interest in the Palestinians. So the dictatorships are not appalled by what’s happening. They probably are quietly cheering it. It’s worth remembering that, if you go back a couple decades, Israel was one of the most admired countries in the world. Now it’s one of the most feared and despised countries in the world. Israeli propagandists like to say, Well, this is just anti-Semitism. But to the extent that there’s an anti-Semitic element, which is slight, it’s because of Israeli actions. The reaction is to the policies. And as long as Israel persists in these policies, that’s what’s going to happen.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 07:39:31 +0000