Another Brick In The Wall (Robert Fisk)

[Violet_Crumble]

We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned.

West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away.

Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima Party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres.

This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie.

Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the groveling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel.

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-fisk060406.htm

[the_dude_abides]

1. Hi violet

Im currently reading Fisks book...the great war for civilisation..the conquest of the middle east..I wonder if he gets much published in the US?

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Snap!

I'm about halfway through it right now. I haven't enjoyed a book for a long while as much as this one. I'd also be interested to know if the book was promoted as heavily in the US as it was here, though him visiting Australia seemed to coincide with the release of the book and probably helped its sales...

btw, welcome to DU :)

Violet...

[Scurrilous]

3. Israeli rights groups denounce barrier

<snip>

"Settlement expansion is the main motive behind the route chosen for the separation barrier in the West Bank, an Israeli human rights group and NGO have found.

An 82-page study by human rights organisation B'tselem and NGO Bimkom says only 20% of the barrier's route run along the Green Line (the former armistice line between the West Bank and Israel).

As a result, more than 530sq km or 9.5% of the West Bank have been in effect confiscated, Palestinians say."

<snip>

"When completed, the total length of the barrier is expected to be 680km.

Along its route, 30,000 people in 21 Palestinian villages will be sandwiched between the wall and the 1967 border.

Another 50 smaller towns and villages, with a total population of 244,000, will also be surrounded by the barrier on at least three sides as is the case with the town of Qalqilya in the north-western part of the West Bank."


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