I am off to Baghdad on Sunday for an Arab League conference on Palestinian detainees held in Israel. This is part of my determination to devote more of my time to helping the Palestinian cause. It seems to me we are at a crucial point where the Palestinians are in genuine danger of an accelerated genocide, as Israeli intentions to annex Est Jerusalem and the West Bank become ever plainer.
In retrospect, my life has mostly been based on the idea that I may not be able to do much to help in a particular situation, but it is incumbent on me to try. So I am trying.
A “two state” solution has, from the start, been advanced in bad faith by promoters such as Blair and Bush, with the intention always that it would be a Bantustan solution. For those too young to recall, the grand plan of apartheid South Africa was that the black population would be corraled into a number of small regions which would become “independent states”.
I have said before that I am often pleasantly surprised by Sky News security correspondent Sam Kiley, who seems to get away with talking great sense by hiding behind a Ross Kemp style persona. A couple of days ago he reported from the West Bank that Israel was “moving towards an apartheid state”. There is no doubt that is true – even in Israel proper, there are over three hundred ethnically based Israeli laws prescribing different treatment for Jews and others, across almost every activity of the state. I fear Sam Kiley will not be on mainstream TV long – a tendency to tell the truth being career fatal.
Bibi’s desire to kill off the two state solution is a terrible, genocidal threat but strangely also an opportunity. Botha and De Klerk did not succeed, and Bibi may not either. I personally would have deplored a Bantustan based solution, with crammed and split Palestinian lands deprived of resources, water, communications and any hope of economic viability.
The ultimate solution must involve a proper single state in Israel/Palestine which is blind and fair in its laws to race and religion. That solution can ultimately bring security to the people of Israel, not based on their ability to kill or evict their neighbours and steal their land. The essentials of the agreement will have to be most people staying where they are – including most West Bank settlers – and very serious compensation to dispossessed Palestinians, with the settlements enlarged to become mixed communities.
On the Palestinian detainee question, for me it shows up yet again Israel’s extraordinary capacity for shameless sophistry in matters of international law. Israel justifies its naval blockade on the San Remo Convention, which is only applicable in times of armed conflict. Israel states that it is in a de facto permanent armed conflict. However it denies being in an armed conflict when it comes to its treatment of Palestinain detainees, captured outside Israel, who are not treated as prisoners of war. Both positions cannot be held simultaneously, but secure in the collusion of the West’s bought politicians, Israel does so.
Another crime of genocide being committed by Israel, the extermination of the Ethiopian Jew.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israel-s-ethiopians-suffer-different-planned-parenthood.premium-1.484110
If (according to Fred’s logic) Israel’s refusal to create a Palestinian state constitutes a “genocide” (a position which defies both legal and dictionary definitions, but nevertheless), then the Palestinian policy to eradicate the state of Israel must also be considered a “genocide”.
These conditions are bound to culminate in the fascinating resolution that is brilliantly depicted in Jonathan Bloomfield’s award-winning book, “Palestine,” in which actual history and future predictions are thinly veiled as fiction.
@Macky
Once again, and with respect, the maps you are linking to *are* wildly inaccurate and totally misleading.
Here’s something from a reputable news outlet:
BBC Key Maps
Since 1967, Israel has pursued a policy of building settlements on the West Bank. These cover about 2% of the area of the West Bank and are linked by Israeli-controlled roads. There are also large tracts of Israeli-controlled land designated as military areas or nature reserves.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/settlements_checkpoints.stm
What the BBC fails to point out is that these Israeli-administered areas (including settlements) are constructed on uninhabited semi-desert terrain and people don’t get displaced in their construction.
So there’s no ethnic cleansing as you claim, never mind genocide. (And no, these two are not the same thing, but that’s a different story.)
It’s just bullshit, plain and simple.
@Macky
Further thoughts on your musings…
“Killing Palestinians because they wish to continue living in Palestine is exactly the same as killing Palestinians because they are Palestinians” – Macky
Well… no. Palestinians are not generally killed simply because they wish to continue living in Palestine, nor for any other random reason, as you imply.
For example, the 17 year old who was recently shot in the West Bank had attacked and pummelled an armed border-police officer, and then pulled out a weapon (which turned out later to be a replica) – before being shot by a second officer.
Ha’aretz carries video showing the attack:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/watch-idf-video-shows-israeli-officer-shooting-palestinian-who-attacked-guard.premium-1.485462
And those killed in Gaza were not killed “because they wish to continue living in Palestine”, but because Hamas had used them as human shields, embedding their rocket launchers in heavily built-up areas in clear contravention of the Geneva Convention.
I wonder how much outcry there will be in the UK for Palestine’s Hamas officials to be tried for this war crime?
@Ferret,
Ultimately it’s pointless discussing I/P with an ardent Zionist, because just like any other believer in the certainty of their answer to the Human Condition, they know that they are ultimately right, and that everybody else is wrong; this is what I meant in my previous Post by talking about the Conceit of the Greater Good. To understand something fundamentally, you have to be prepared to examine the underlying driving factors: I didn’t bother to flesh out my aforementioned Post, but basically the certainty that religious people have, is exactly the same thing as the certainty that Atheists live by, and exactly the same certainty that a Nationalist believes in, exactly the same certainty that an Idealist believes in with their Higher Ideals, ie they all believe that they know something that gives a guided meaning to Life in general, and entails associated obligations to their own lives. These obligations ensure that they live their lives in consistence & in furtherance of the particular Certainty that they “know” is both more important, and that also provides the role for their existence. A devote Muslim by definition has already submitted their entire life to living in accordance with the certainty of their version of God, and actually mirrors the devote Christian, in considering that life here is just a preparation for the real eternal life that awaits following mortal death. A Nationalist considers the well-being & continuation of their people as the Certainty that gives meaning to life, like Hitler’s vision of a Thousand Year Reich, and an Idealist, would be like a French Resistance fighter willing to sacrifice their life for the sake of Liberty.
For those with a Certainty, not only does everything else pales into insignificance to it, but also anything can be rationalized if it is considered for the “Greater Good” iro their Certainty; for instance, for fervent Zionists, the regular mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, although bad PR, is for the Greater Good of safeguarding & helping ensure the existence of the national home of the Jews. The Certainty factor is further compounded for some Zionists, as they have both the religious & the nationalist Certainty convictions.
Anyhow, judging by the off the wall “rebuttals”, even by Zionists standards, contained in your Posts, I guess all the above will mean nothing to you, as you seem to be living in your own counter-factual reality, so in your case I can scrub out the “ultimately” from my first sentence above, as you are already so too far off the page, that discussing I/P with you is like talking to a paid-up member of the Flat Earth Society, about the curvature of the Earth.
It is interesting that there is much information on the web covering further details of the racist-genocidal treatment meted out to those Arab and North African jews imported to Israel to work the land as slaves for the Zionist supremacist Ashkenazi cult. Suggestions that – with the full support of Israeli political leadership – these people’s healthy children were bombarded with calculatedly near fatal overdoses of x-ray and other radiation, ostensibly to treat ringworm (as reportedly happened after WW2 CC camps were ‘liberated’), abound, many living victims exhibit characteristic burned scalps and relate horrific memories. The result as well as many immediate deaths in the short term, were huge incidences of cancers and – probably the principal goal – genocidal total infertility. It would once have been more difficult to believe claims that up to 4000 of these children were removed to the US and subjected to human experimentation, and presumably then killed, but such doubts recede.