Arab Israeli Palestinian Tragedy Blog

 

When I was in the Middle East during the Six Day War (1967) I expected Israel to do the morally right thing and return the parts of Palestine that it had just occupied, e.g., West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Sinai Peninsula. At the time, I justified this to myself by considering that Israel was in a position of demonstrated strength. I continue to be disillusioned that this has not yet been done (with the exception of the Sinai that was returned to Egypt in 1979). Israel has now gone on to an even greater level of force with continued major support from the United States. Israel has at least 200 atomic weapons with the capability to deliver them, plus the IDF is rated the fourth most powerful military in the world. It would be suicidal for any nation (especially a Middle East neighbor) to now attempt an attack.

 

Recently the thought has occurred to me that Israel has behaved toward the Palestinians, starting in 1947, similarly to the Nazis toward the Jews, beginning in the 1930s–however, without the gas chambers! I’ve recently learned that the IDF has used nerve gas against Gaza civilians in 2001 (see my summary of the DVD entitled GAZA STRIP in one of my previous blog entries.

 

This unknown type of Israeli gas seems to exhibit far more distressful symptoms than the gas (Zyklon B) used in the Nazi gas chambers. And it most certainly caused agonizing, slow deaths to the Palestinian victims.

 

Previously, I also hesitated to draw a comparison between the horrendous Holocaust and Israel’s cruel and humiliating treatment—occupation, colonization (1), and ethnic cleansing (2)—of the Palestinians; however, again that comparison has now been made. See Professor Richard Falk’s (a Jewish-American’s) essay entitled Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust.

 

Are we witnessing a sociological comparison to the known psychological phenomena of abused children becoming abuser adults when they mature?

 

It is very encouraging that Jews (in the US, in Europe, and in Israel) are now speaking out more forcefully concerning Israel’s historical and on-going inhuman treatment of the Palestinians. When Gentiles take this perspective their beliefs are discounted and invariably deemed to be anti-Semitic (never mind that the Semitic race also includes the Arabs).

 

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict is first of all a dual tragedy. As the rest of the world becomes more aware of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, Israel will increasingly be seen as a pariah nation. The Conflict also has the potential to become a multi-tragedy.

 

Finally, the growing danger is that this Conflict can initiate World War III! The mix of the three major religions with racism—plus the prize for control of the world’s largest energy (crude oil) supply—is now politically extremely explosive.

 

 

 

Reference Sources

 

1. See Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? 1973, by Maxime Rodinson

2. See The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, by Ilan Pappe

 

(Both of these books are must reads.)

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         A DVD Documentary, 2002 (90+ mins.) Available through Netflix

 

(By American filmmaker James Langley based on his three months of filming that began in January 2001)

 

This period included the election of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and depicts the Israeli Occupation Force's use of an unknown nerve gas on Gazan civilians that caused violent physical and neurological distress. This was not reported by American news media. The documentary includes commentary by Langley with very graphic images of civilian injuries caused by Israeli attacks in response to children’s symbolic rock throwing at the beginning of the Second Intifada. It is noted that these children engaged in this activity in defiance of their parents’ orders (this is counter to what Israel has reported to the outside world.)

 

Langley found the Gazans to be very friendly to Americans in spite of their understanding of America's strong support for the illegal Israeli occupations. He includes a final statement regarding this illegality based on the Fourth Geneva Convention.

 

Langley also has produced an excellent DVD entitled Iraq In Fragments that is now available through Netflix. Both documentaries are presented through the minds of twelve-year-old boys with their parents' permission.

 

I strongly recommend viewing both DVDs.

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Relating to the 1967 Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights

I’m a native-born American of European ancestry, who found himself becoming very much aware of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict while living and working in Saudi Arabia during June 1967. I had joined the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) as a chemical engineer ten years earlier.

 

Prior to joining Aramco, I was completely unaware of the complex Middle Eastern culture, history, and geography. My limited exposure consisted of Sunday School lessons relating to ancient Israel as a young boy at the small Protestant Church of my grandmother and mother. This early impression left me with a general simplistic sense that the early Israelites held strong ethical imperatives towards humanity (notwithstanding some violent passages in Deuteronomy about what they should do to the original inhabitants of the Promised Land!).

 

In 1960 I arrived with my small family at the American Camp of the Saudi Arabian Oil Refinery and Marine Terminal called Ras Tanura on the western shore of the Persian Gulf. It wasn’t long before I became very interested in learning about all things concerning this part of the world, a world at once so completely peculiar to my Western experience.

 

Before long, my wife, Margaret and I took advantage of occasional opportunities to explore the surrounding desert and the few nearby Arab villages. Sunday through Thursday was the workweek with Friday the Muslim holy day and Saturday completing the weekend. Saturday was a popular shopping day for the Aramco wives who could take the free company bus to nearby Al Khobar. There, Arab merchants offered useful household items imported from Europe in addition to interestingArabian artifacts like coffeepots, antique chests, brass trays, etc. Newly arriving wives soon learned that it was de rigueur to display an Arabian coffee pot and chest in their company sitting room.

 

In the early 1960s, Aramco’s job training program was graduating young Saudis to replace American refinery and terminal operators. Without any exceptions, all the young Saudis that I met were well mannered, respectful, and of a serious disposition—eager to meet Americans, to learn about American life, and to prove that they could handle their new jobs. During the late 1960s, young Arab engineers, recently graduated, began to arrive to work alongside their older American counterparts. Some of these Arabs were my first contacts with Palestinians. While I knew that they and their families had suffered hardships during 1948, we never discussed details.

 

Of course, I read the weekly international Time and Newsweek magazines, and listened daily to the BBC to keep abreast with world news, especially from the Middle East.

 

I soon became aware that there was an ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with its roots going back to 1948 when the new state of Israel was founded. My knowledge of the founding of modern Israel was limited to the little that all Americans learned at that time from their news media. Additionally, I was aware of the Holocaust, and had carefully followed all relating news reports during World War II. While mentioning The Holocaust, one must emphasize that only Europeans were responsible for this tragic occurrence; but, as Primo Levy has said, “the Arabs have been made to pay for it.”

 

Just before the outbreak of the Six Day War in June 1967 Aramco had given each of its Arab employees a small transistor radio as a safety reward for helping the company meet an accident-free period. When the war began, these radios were very much in evidence throughout the refinery. While I understood no Arabic, the martial music and strident speech coming from stations in nearby Arab nations was ominous. I later learned that American naval vessels were stationed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and gave justified cause for Arabs to believe that the US was providing military cover for Israel’s preemptive attack against Egypt. As it turned out, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Sixth Fleet intelligence-gathering ship, resulting in the killing of 34 American servicemen. This shameful Israeli and US cover up dates back to the Johnson Administration.

 

I recall the looks of confusion, of “how could you do this” that filled the faces of my Saudi fellow workers during the first day of the War.

 

I remember thinking at that time that Israel then had its chance to demonstrate its moral fiber––from a position of strength––by returning their recently occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. However, this was not to be.

 

Aramco’s work routine returned to normal after a few weeks.

 

Now forty years later, it has become all too clear to the rest of the world—if not yet to the majority of Israelis and Americans—that Israel tragically missed an historic opportunity!

 

I’ve recently learned that even Israel’s then Prime Minister Ben Gurion advocated a “conditional withdrawal from the territories just won.” (1) “He understood what holding on to those lands, and the Palestinian people who lived in them, would mean: a mortal, political and moral disaster [my italics] for the state he had founded and loved. The mortal threat is clear to this very day. The victory of 1967 turned Israel into a military occupier, and occupied people will always fight back eventually, as the Palestinians did in earnest with the first intifada that erupted in 1987, through the suicide bombings of the 1990s and the second intifada that began in 2000. Of course the forty years since 1967 have been most painful for those who have lived their lives under occupation: the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. But the inevitable consequence of that pain has been danger and perpetual conflict for the people of Israel [my italics]. The political threat is less visible but just as obvious. Ben-Gurion understood what even Ariel Sharon would see three-and-a-half decades later: that if Israel was to live up to its own ambition of being a Jewish democratic state, it could not rule over a Palestinian Arab population that would one day be its numerical equal. Yet that is the statistical situation today, with equal numbers of Jews and Arabs in the historic land of Palestine.” (1)

 

After leaving Aramco and Saudi Arabia in 1974, I moved with my family to Ahwaz, Iran where I worked two years as a senior engineer in the area’s oil fields for the Oil Service Company of Iran (OSCO). Again I experienced a marked respect as an American. This deference was coupled with sincere friendliness from all my Iranian work associates, especially the younger ones. I find it now very depressing to realize how America has (since 9/11) squandered the strong goodwill that I found so freely given by Middle Easterners in the 1960s and 70s.

 

We left Iran in the fall of 1978 just ahead of the violent overthrow of the Shaw and the shutdown of the Iranian oil facilities.

 

I had retired and no longer lived overseas when the 9/11 attacks occurred. However, by this time I understood how Arabs had come to perceive US Middle East policy as support for Israel’s cruel and unjust occupations of Palestinian lands.

 

Considering the true facts and a balanced history of the region, I found it very troubling that so many of my American friends had closed minds concerning the Arab justifiable anger toward Israel’s 1948 ethnic cleansing and 1967 occupations in Palestine. I interpret this as due to the average American’s ignorance and apathy with this subject. I have attempted to correct my friends’ prejudices by relating my experiences and my understanding of the complex historical, racial, political, and religious dynamics of the Middle East. This led me to write a Position Paper, and put it up on the Web along with other material that I searched out. You may visit my Website at the following address:

http://hometown.aol.com/positionpaper/myhomepage/index.html

In addition to my Position Paper you will find material concerning The Nakba, the Six Day War, and much more in Addenda II at the following Web address:

http://www.members.aol.com/positionpaper/A-I-P_Addenda_II

It must be said that there has been a well orchestrated on-going program, especially since 1967 here in the US, to misinform (cover up) true historical facts and reasoned analysis behind the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

 

I have found this to be true with most of my friends, many of whom have begun to close their minds on the subject. They are unable to place themselves in the position of an average Arab––to understand how Arabs view the reality of Israel’s colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This reality includes America’s strong financial, military, and political support for Israel’s Palestinian policies.

 

Is it too much to hope that there now seem to be more people speaking out to right this shameful miscarriage of humanitarian justice? Consider these examples: the Walt & Mearsheimer Paper published last fall that discussed the powerful lobby called American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its influence on the US government; Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid; and in particular, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s (2006) book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. For me, it is this last book that finally connects all the dots. Pappe lays out the factual details that explain the fundamental cause of deep-seated and long-evolving Arab anger against Israel and its primary supporter—the US. Of course, the US’ and Britain’s preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq have only added fuel to the smoldering fire in the Middle East.

 

To balance my abovementioned perceived small positive change—that more influential people are now speaking out about the tragic injustices done to the Palestinians (including generations of refugees and the 1.4 million people presently living on the edge of starvation in the Gaza Strip which has become the world’s largest open-air concentration camp)—it is appropriate to quote from the current Report On Israeli Settlement In The Occupied Territories, May–June 2007, published by The Foundation for Middle East Peace, Washington, D.C.: “Now they [Israeli Pro-Settlement Forces] are on the offensive, aiming to take command of the settlement agenda and to bury the idea of [Israel’s] withdrawal from the West Bank.”

 

The Western World must first recognize and understand this sixty-year racial injustice for what it is (ethnic cleansing, colonization, and occupation) before remedial action can begin. These are indeed crucial times for all of us on the planet. Hopefully, our nations’ policies and actions will soon begin to redress the injustice done to the Palestinians in 1948, in 1967, and continuing to this day, and allow us all to pull back from the abyss. The Jewish-American academic, Prof. Richard A. Falk, in his article entitled, Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust presciently states that we are indeed now at the edge of an abyss. [Click on the title link to read the article.]

 

This conflict is a double tragedy, obviously for the Palestinian People, but also for the Israelis themselves.

 

My Middle East experience has become a part of who I am. If my sharing my story and my understanding of what I see as a double tragedy can in some small way help ameliorate this conflict then my effort will not have been in vain.

 

I have found no better statement of what must now be done to begin to end this horrible conflict than the recent written words of Stephane Hessel: “It is time for the leaders of Israel to adopt a policy that the wisest and bravest Israelis (alas, still a small minority) have been urging for a long time: one that leads to a State of Israel with a strong Jewish majority on three-fourths of the former British Mandate, democratically governed and granting liberal civil rights to its Arab minority; and a sovereign State of Palestine on the remaining fourth of the land, getting trade and financial support from its Israeli neighbor, communicating freely with its Arab neighbors and having its capital in East Jerusalem.” (2)

 

 

 

Reference Sources

 

1. “Six Day War Has Never Ended,” by Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian Weekly, Comment & Debate, and

     p. 17, 1 June 2007. [Freedland is a British journalist who belongs to the Semitic race.]

 

2. “Israel’s Choice,” by Stephane Hessel, The Nation, pp. 6–7, 2 July 2007. [Hassle, who fought with the

     French army and the resistance in World War II, was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at

     Buchenwald. After the war he served as a French and UN diplomat and was named a Grand Officer of

     the Legion of Honor in 2006.]

 

Tags: middle east story, middle east, conflict, peace, israel, israeli, palestine, palestinian, saudi arabia, ras tanura, sixday war, six-day war, ethnic cleansing, israeli occupation, east jerusalem, gaza, gaza strip, golan heights, west bank, uss liberty, aipac, slouching toward, palestinian holocaust, richard falk, stephane hessel, primo levi, ilan pappe

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A sound basis for a realistic peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians must include recognition of the brutal ethnic cleansing that the Palestinians endured during 1948 and 1949. Two hundred Palestinian villages were occupied and their inhabitants violently expelled during the five months prior to the end of the British Mandate, and creation of the State of Israel, on May 15th 1948. “. . . there is no denying that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 [of the Palestinians by the Israelis] has been eradicated almost totally from the collective global memory and erased from the world’s conscience.” See The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe, 2006, page 9. Only through truth and reconciliation, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, can this elusive peace process begin. Once this process is seen in the Middle East to begin, it will become much easier to begin to resolve the Iraq quagmire.

 

References to the European Holocaust are illogical, and fraught with danger, when used in a Middle East setting. Primo Levi (an Italian-Jewish Holocaust survivor) said it best when he called the Palestinians “The Jews of the Middle East.” The Palestinians had no responsibility for the Holocaust; however, they have been made to pay for it.

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                                                                                                      28th January 2007

 

My Letter to the Tribune-Review

 

Your editorial implies that Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid contains “adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime.” The editor committed a basic blunder by not bothering to read the book under review. The book’s sparse mention of Saudi Arabia is not “adoring praise.”

 

The editor has thrown down a “red herring” in order to distract attention from the book’s real issue. This is the ongoing 59-year colonization and dispossession of the Palestinian people’s land by Israel. Carter deliberately used the South African word “apartheid” in order to jump-start a too long absent US discussion. The use of this word in reference to the West Bank is appropriate, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has stated. To criticize secular Israeli governments is definitely not to be anti-Semitic (nor “anti-Israel” as stated in the editorial)!

 

The editorial criticized Carter for “ignoring the Holocaust.” The Palestinians had absolutely no responsibility for Europe’s Holocaust; however, they have been made to pay for it. It was Primo Levi (a Jewish survivor) who said it best when he termed the Palestinians, “The Jews of the Middle East.” The Holocaust is mentioned on pages 18 and 66.

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My reaction to the front page of the Tribune-Review on Aug. 21 was that it was almost obscene.

 

The photo of two young Lebanese boys enjoying fishing at the beach at Tyre (“Fishing for Normalcy”) was obviously meant to spin the impression that life had returned to normalcy, especially for children, in Lebanon.

 

Children throughout the Middle East have been in jeopardy for a long time. Israeli forces have arrested around 4,000 Palestinian children since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000. Israel’s current collective punishment attacks (including sonic booms) against Gaza civilians are causing children to have panic attacks, sleep disturbances, bed-wetting, etc.

 

At Qana, Lebanon, on July 31, according to the AP, 15 children under age 12 were killed by an Israeli Defense Forces air attack. This precision guided missile was manufactured in the United States, as proven by a fragment upon which was written “For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B.”

 

Yes, the IDF have “turned back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”

 

No, the photo of two Lebanese boys enjoying fishing is most assuredly not typical of today’s children in Lebanon nor anywhere else in the Middle East!

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American-Israeli policies now being acted out militarily in the Middle East are producing disastrous effects: (a) exacerbating humanitarian crises in the region; (b) promoting more Arab ill-will that will last for generations; (c) encouraging an ever stronger Arab backlash against the US and Israel.

 

Note that reference sources 2 and 3 [below] are Israeli Jews. It’s my opinion that more Jews must begin to speak up against successive Israeli governments’ Palestinian-Arab policies. Non-Jews still suffer from reluctance to pay the penalty for speaking up by being called “anti-semitic,” and Jews because of being called “self-hating Jews.” Hopefully, more Jews (especially American) are now beginning to speak out.

 

The following quotes, from five recent sources, support my above concerns: (a), (b) and (c).

 

Some of the following quoted statements are the strongest that I’ve yet seen in print concerning Israeli governments’ state terrorism (collective punishment), Palestinian policy (ethnic cleansing), and land expansionist goals.

 

I.  The Arab Backlash

 

“The disproportionate attack on Lebanon may backfire, strengthening Hezbollah, increasing sectarian strife, and weakening Lebanon’s democracy and security.” (1)

 

“Throughout the Arab world, including the ‘friendly regimes,’ there is boiling anger [my italics] at the U.S., at the heart of which is not only the occupation of Iraq, but the brutal oppression of the Palestinians, and the U.S. backing of Israel’s policies. The new axis of the four enemies of the Bush administration (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran) is viewed by the Arab world as resisting U.S. or Israel’s rule, and standing for Arab liberation.” (2)

 

II.  Israel’s Long Standing Policy Of Ethnic Cleansing

 

“[W]hen the Israeli army left Southern Lebanon in 2000 the plans to return were ready. But in Israel’s military vision, in the next round, the land should be first ‘cleansed’ of its residents, as Israel did when it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, and as it is doing now in southern Lebanon. To enable Israel’s eventual realization of Ben Gurion’s vision, it is necessary to establish a ‘friendly regime’ in Lebanon, one that will collaborate in crushing any resistance. To do this it is necessary to first destroy the country, as in the U.S. model of Iraq. These were precisely Sharon’s declared aims in the first Lebanon war. Israel and the U.S. believe that now conditions have ripened enough that these aims can finally be realized.” (2)

 

“The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine that became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the ‘Israeli Arabs,’ those Palestinians who avoided expulsion [20 percent, my insert], have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for ‘security reasons,’ but really to acquire their lands for Jews.” (3)

 

“Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilization that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.” (3)

 

III.  Israel’s Use of Terror Tactics

 

See above II., 2nd paragraph. The Palestinians now refer to the 1948 War as “The Nakba” (The Catastrophe).

 

“To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood [the Holocaust, my insert] among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has ‘no partner for peace’ is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.” (3)

 

IV.  Israel’s Quest For More Land

 

“Many Zionists want all the land of ‘Eretz Israel,’ the biblical Jewish homeland many Jews believe God gave to the 12 tribes of Israel. It includes much more than present day Israel and the Occupied Territories—Lebanon, mostof Syria, part of Egypt and a large portion of Jordan. (4)

 

Unlike other countries, Israel has no fixed borders—deliberately. It has been that way so Israeli governments have lots of wiggle room to establish them one day as they choose or are able to do. Most important is the plan to include as part of Israel the ancient lands of ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria,’ the West Bank's biblical parts of Israel that the Palestinians call the Occupied Territories and claim as their homeland. Israel has maintained the pretense of being willing to allow the Palestinians an independent state. But by refusing to negotiate seriously and continuing to encroach on Palestinian land with new and expanded settlements as well as erecting its ‘separation’ wall, its clear Israel’s real intent is to seize all the land it wants for its own use—leaving the Palestinians only some isolated Bantustan-like less valuable parts.” (4)

 

V.  The American Public Has Been Misinformed re Hamas and Hezbollah

 

“It didn’t matter that Hamas declared a unilateral cease-fire [for 16 months, my insert] wanted negotiations and was willing to recognize Israel as a legitimate state provided Israel gave the Palestinians equal recognition, was willing to return to the pre-1967 borders, released Palestinian prisoners [9,000including children] and stopped killing and abusing Palestinians without provocation. Israel refused and, in fact, was as concerned about the Hamas cease-fire as it was about the one the PLO observed in1982 which Prime Minister Shamir explained was the reason Israel invaded Lebanon. Back then, the provocation was the incident in London against the Israeli Ambassador and today it’s the capturing of an Israeli soldier. These are hardly reasons for going to war unless the Israelis planned to wage one anyway and only needed a reason to do it. The reasons for Israeli actions today are much the same as in 1982—to destroy the Hamas-led government as it did the PLO then and to reinstate one again subservient to its wishes. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) is that kind of leader, has always been in his past dealings with Israel, and is the one Olmert wants to lead a future Palestinian government or someone just like him.” (4)

 

Israel initially encouraged Hamas to organize and develop in order to weaken Arafat’s PLO. This was an Israeli tactic that failed.

 

“Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah, never tight-knit, expanded into an umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims.” (5)

 

VI.  The American Public Has Been Misinformed re: Suicide Attackers

 

“[T]he biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. We identified the names, birthplaces and other personal date for 38 [out of 41]. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

 

What these suicide attackers and their heirs today shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation [also should apply to Palestinians and Iraqis, my insert]. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.

 

Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has little chance of destroying the Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the bombing of civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollah’s recruiting.” (5)

 

 

 

Reference Sources

 

1.  Email, UCC’s “JPANet Weekly Action: US Must Stop Middle East Violence,” July 26th.

 

2.  Jewish Peace News, by Tanya Reinhart (Professor Emeritus of linguistics and media studies at Tel Aviv

     University). Email ex Janet Gillmar (UCC Hawaii), dated August 3rd 2006.

 

3.  Editorial ex The Independent (UK), by Oren Ben-Dor (an Israeli Jew), Email ex Janet Gillmar (UCC Hawaii),

     dated July 28th 2006.

 

4.  Its Time to End the “Last Taboo” and Hold Israel Accountable for its Actions, by Stephen Lendman who lives

     in Chicago, http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com, Email dated July 16th 2006.

 

5.  Quotes ex Robert A. Pape, professor of political science at the University of

     Chicago (author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism), ex Email quoting The New York

     Times, August 3, 2006.

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An update needs to be made based on events since this Paper was first presented on the Web 2 1/2 years ago. The then established Israeli trends designed to divide, weaken, and subjugate the Palestinian people have continued (and if anything accelerated): (A) Israel's creation of facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank are now very well developed with expanded Jewish settlements, interconnected Jews-only road systems (using tunnels and fencing) linking with Israel; (B) East Jerusalem (the Arab section that was to become a future Palestinian state capitol) is losing its Arab presence and now has Palestinian access tightly controlled by Israel; (C) The West Bank is now divided into several small Arab cantons separated from each other by Israeli military checkpoints restricting access by Palestinians; (D) Israel's construction of The Wall is moving well along and reduces the Palestinian's land area from 22% of Old Palestine (prior to the 1967 Six Day War) to approximately 15%; (E) Arafat's death and his replacement by Mahmoud Abbas has probably encouraged Israel to push ever harder for a "peace" settlement based on Israel's hardline terms with meager consideration given to Palestinians' welfare or their historic expectation of a future national state of their own; and (F) "Israel's campaign of assassination that the Israeli army is conducting in the West Bank and Gaza. . . ." (4)

 

Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip has resulted only in a larger Palestinian prison, since Israel retains full military control over the surrounding sealed borders (land, air, and sea). Palestinian access points between Gaza and the West Bank (and of course Israel) are very tightly restricted. Israel's final resolution is pending, however, and conditions are ominous. (3)

 

Palestinian living conditions (quality of life) in the Occupied Territories are now far more desperate than ever before. "Since 2000 the economy of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has lost a potential income of approximately $6.4 billion and suffered $3.5billion worth of physical damage at the hands of Israel's army [IDF]." (1) The IDF, between 2000 and 2004, demolished some 4,600 Palestinian homes. Palestinian children are increasingly denied access to education and health care. "According to the WorldBank, Palestinians are currently experiencing the worst economic depression in modern history. . . ." (1) Israel's previously well hidden (to American eyes) policy of ethnic cleansing by breaking the will of the Palestinian people so that they will emigrate into surrounding Arab lands is beginning to be clearly apparent to all. However, Palestinian will shows no signs of diminishing!

 

This has resulted in Palestinian violence becoming more and more likely. Meanwhile the United States Administration continues to heavily fund Israel, while giving only lip service towards a peaceful solution to this multiple tragedy, e.g., the moribund Road Map. (3)

 

Perhaps the present dire situation will at last force a re-imagining and rethinking of the original Zionist foundation of Israel. A new world understanding may yet be forming "that real peace can be found now only in one system of law that protects everyone [Jew and Arab] equally in one land." (2) The next three to six months may well see some form of fundamental change in the historic Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

                                                                    (11th November 2005)

 

 

Reference Sources

1. "A Dubai on the Mediterranean," by Sara Roy, London Review of Books,

     Nov. 3, 2005, pp. 15-18.

2. "Quisling and Occupier," by Virginia Tilley, Ibid., pp. 16-17.
3. "Sharon's West Bank Policy Leaves Little Role for the PA," Foundation For

     Middle East Peace, Supplement Report, Vol. 15, No. 6, Nov./Dec., 2005.

4. "In Fact," The Nation, Nov. 21, 2005, p. 8.

 

 

 

Click below to read the Arab Israeli Palestinian Tragedy Position Paper: http://www.members.aol.com/positionpaper/A-I-P_Tragedy_Position_Paper

 

Click below to visit the Arab Israeli Palestinian Tragedy Web site:

http://hometown.aol.com/positionpaper/aippeace.html

 

 

Tags: arab, israeli, palestinian, conflict, tragedy, war, middle east, israel, jewish state, jerusalem, zionism, zionist, israeli defense force, idf, palestine, occupied territory, occupied territories, gaza, gaza strip, west bank, settlements, syria, golan heights, arab backlash, islamist, palestine liberation organization, plo, anti semitic, anti-semitic, holocaust, nakba, ethnic cleansing, hamas, hezbollah, hizbollah, hizbullah, suicide attack, suicide bomb, mahmoud abbas, abu mazen, george bush, president bush, ariel sharon, ben gurion

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