- "Perhaps the most extraordinary public relations
gimmick in this entire charade between two militarists is the notion that
Israel is "giving up" control over Gaza and thereby merits a
concession by the United States."
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- When George Bush meets with Ariel Sharon in the White
House on Wednesday, each leader will be doing his best to confer legitimacy
on the other's failed policies of occupation.
-
- Sharon will give Bush's declining popularity a boost
when he helps the US President reframe our current war against the people
of Iraq as a struggle against terrorism. For thirty-seven years Israeli
governments have used that approach to justify their own occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza--and it has worked politically to convince many
Israelis to ignore the evidence that it is the occupation that causes the
terror and not vice versa.
-
- President Bush may hope that Americans can be convinced
that the United States should follow Israel's example and respond to both
terror and legitimate resistance with heightened repression. Israel has
just assassinated the leading sheik associated with Hamas terrorism, and
the Sharon government has refined a technique of collective punishment
so that over the years it has punished millions of Palestinians for the
acts of a handful of terrorists. While Sharon's policies have actually
generated an increase in the number of Israelis hurt by terror, the impression
of "standing tough" has worked to retain his popularity among
many Israelis who have become convinced that Israel has every right to
hold on to the West Bank. If the strategy works for Sharon, it might work
for Bush's adventure in Iraq as well--if Bush can find a way to convince
Americans that the Israeli strategy America seems to be following in Iraq
is precisely the way to stand strong against terror.
-
- In exchange, President Bush is reportedly planning to
give Sharon a written commitment that the United States will no longer
push for a return of Israel to its pre-1967 borders. This concession would
be the most significant accomplishment yet achieved by the Israeli right.
For decades US policy has aimed at convincing Israel that it must live
by the same principle that has governed international law since the end
of World War II: that countries must not be allowed to increase their territory
through armed conquest. It was that very principle that was used to justify
US support for the autocratic government of Kuwait when it was attacked
by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990, and it is the cornerstone of the hopes
of the international community to prevent endless wars in the twenty-first
century. If he abrogates that principle, Bush not only opens the way for
Israel to permanently annex major sections of the West Bank and permanently
end the hopes of the Palestinian people for an economically and politically
viable state of their own; he also sets a precedent for national expansion
through war as dangerous as his pre-emptive war strategy for Iraq.
-
- Perhaps the most extraordinary public relations gimmick
in this entire charade between two militarists is the notion that Israel
is "giving up" control over Gaza and thereby merits a concession
by the United States. Unlike the West Bank, where Israel can cite biblical
ties and divine promises as additional motivators to its security concerns
for continuing occupation, Gaza has been nearly universally recognized
as a drain on Israel that provides exactly nothing for Israeli security
or well-being. Having kept more than a million Gazans in a state of penury
and malnutrition that could only be rectified by UN aid, Israelis have
long flirted with the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from the seething
caldron of hatred that its occupation has managed to create. Yet Sharon's
withdrawal will involve continued military presence in the south of Gaza
and along all of its borders-effectively turning it into one large Palestinian
ghetto with no means of economic or political support.
-
- Instead of withdrawing from Gaza as part of a process
aimed at open-hearted and generous reconciliation and lasting peace, Sharon
has concocted a withdrawal for the sake of occupation in the West Bank.
Indeed, before he left for Washington, Sharon promised settlers in the
West Bank that six major settlement areas there would permanently remain
under Israeli sovereignty, and that his Gaza withdrawal was intended to
"keep us from being dragged into dangerous initiatives like the Geneva
and Saudi initiatives." Sharon may hope that the forces of Hamas,
dominant in Gaza because Israel failed to provide social services and instead
allowed them to be delivered to the Palestinian refugees by the Islamic
fundamentalists, will use the withdrawal to establish their own regime
separate from the Palestinian Authority, thereby further decreasing the
chance for a viable Palestinian state. Certainly a Hamas takeover in Gaza
would increase Israelis' fear of the vulnerability they might face should
they withdraw from the West Bank--and that fear will play well for Sharon's
electoral future.
-
- No wonder, then, that Palestinians see these "concessions"
by Sharon as political ploys that are aimed at increasing support for Israeli
annexation of the West Bank. The Bush/Sharon axis of occupation has little
chance of bringing lasting peace, but it may bring temporary electoral
advantages, even as it erodes the moral authority of two countries that
could have been beacons of hope and instead have become symbols of insensitivity
and arrogance.
-
- For those of us in the United States who know that the
best interests of both the United States and Israel will be served not
by perpetuation of the occupations but by peace and reconciliation, there
is a greater urgency than ever to counter the Bush/Sharon Axis of Occupation.
That's why many of us are organizing a Teach-In to Congress April 25-27
in Washington, DC, at which we will present the Geneva Accord and other
specific proposals for how to achieve a lasting peace for Israel-Palestine,
as well as our ideas about how a spirit of generosity and respect toward
the people of Iraq would be far more effective in calming the situation
there than sending more troops and increasing repression.
-
- For more info on the Teach-In, go to www.tikkun.org or
510-644-1200.
-
- This article can be found on the web at:
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- http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040426&s=lerner
-
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