| If you don't get MER, you just don't
get it! (202) 362-5266 - 26 September 2004 - MER@MiddleEast.Org |
||
| News, Views, &
Analysis Governments,
Lobbies, & the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know MiddleEast.Org  MER is
Free
|
||
| The most honest, most comprehensive, and most
mobilizing news and analysis on the Middle East always comes from MER. It is indispensable!" Robert Silverman - Salamanca, Spain |
||
| - Real Palestinian
State no longer possible - The Israelis now control all Palestinian areas through hundreds of military Checkpoints, No-go zones, By-pass 'Jews only' Roads, Settlements, Outposts, and in recent years Fences, Walls, and Electronic Monitoring systems throughout the West Bank similar to what was done in the past to Gaza. In addition all Palestinians must even receive Israeli military permission to travel from one city and village. The situation is today far worse than Apartheid was in South Africa. As a result, no real, contiguous, and even minimally sovereign Palestinian State is possible any longer in the area that was Palestine in 1947. |
||
'Roadmap' to nowhere
'Withdrawal' Fantasies
and
Reality MAPS of PALESTINE
"The current American 'roadmap' now morphed into
the Ariel Sharon-inspired notion of 'Israeli withdrawal'
is in reality the latest deception on top of so many others."
MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - 26 September 2004: At the end of World War I the Arabs believed they had fought the war to achieve 'Arab Independence'. Then at the 'Paris Peace Conference' of 1918-1919 -- the infamous 'Peace To End All Peace' -- the Arabs found out they had been deceived and their lands were carved up by the victorious Western Powers, primarily France and Britain at the time with U.S. acquiescence. Most of the conflicts of today can be traced back to that period, to that 'Peace Conference', to the lies and deceptions of that era, and they are the direct responsibility of Great Britain, France, the United States, and the 'League of Nations' of that era.
At the end of War War II it was the future of the historic Holy Land, of Palestine, which dominated world attention. The Zionist movement was already strong, but it was the aftermath of the European Holocaust which propelled so much support for the idea of a 'Jewish State'. Once again the victorious Western Powers were behind what happened, especially this time the United States which pushed through the United Nations 'Partition Plan' and then recognition of the 'Jewish State' of Israel.
Now flash forward more than 55 years after numerous 'peace plans' and 'peace conferences' coupled with numerous wars and political deceptions of so many kinds.
The current American 'roadmap' now morphed into the Ariel Sharon-inspired notion of 'Israeli withdrawal' is in reality the latest deception on top of so many others from the past.
While the Israelis continue to dispossess and practically imprison the Palestinians, what they are calling 'Withdrawal' is a plan to take a small number of Gaza Settlers, about 7000, out of that small area so that the Israeli army will no longer have to protect them and the gates of the world's largest ghetto/prison can be shut even more tightly.
The reality is the Israelis of both major political parties have wanted to get out of Gaza for quite a long time; but they wanted to 'sell' the Palestinians this Gaza withdrawal at a high price pretending it was a big concession on their part.
The further reality, to repeat and emphasize this tragic situation, is that Gaza has itself morphed into the largest prison in the world, a huge teeming ghetto with the Israeli army controlling all entry and exit points. Think Warsaw Ghetto if you will...but much larger and much worse. Or think Apartheid if you will...but as Mahatma Gandhi's grandson recently noted, "ten times worse".
Meanwhile, the really important activities that are going on are on the ground in all the other parts of Occupied Palestine where the Israelis are rushing expansion of the major West Bank and Jerusalem area settlements. Here too...the talk of 'settlement withdrawal' is totally fictional and deceptive. The few settlements they say they might 'withdraw' from are in fact small, isolated, in many cases hardly existent ones that were never viable in the first place. These potemkin settlements, sometimes called 'outposts' as did President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. General Assembly, are now fulfilling the role they were always meant to -- pretend 'withdrawal' from some small isolated ones in order to further expand and consolidate all the important ones.
The Israelis today -- thanks to so much American assistance and world acquiescence -- control all Palestinian areas through military Checkpoints, By-pass Roads, no-go-zones, Settlements, Outposts, and in recent years major building of Fences, Walls, and Electronic Monitoring. Now in fact the Gaza model is being applied to all Palestinian cities and areas throughout the West Bank. The reality is that no real, contiguous, and even minimally sovereign Palestinian State is any longer possible anywhere in the area that was Palestine in 1947.
For those needing a brief refresher course 'on the ground', the following maps help tell the story both of why the Palestinians remain so determined to resist the Israelis and on their 'right of return', as well as why no real separate Palestinian State is any longer possible.
Additionally, in a very important historical way -- one which of course the Americans and the Israelis are determined to prevent from gaining traction, vilifying all who dare mention such historical connections -- the origins of today's warfare, today's suicide bombers, and regional Arab and Muslim 'terrorism' can be found in large part in this history of the past hundred years of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
