Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

[Violet_Crumble]

Posted mainly for the :popcorn: value. Personally, I disagree with his call about genocide and was a bit disappointed that he didn't go into detail about why he thinks Israel's policies fall into the area where the definition of genocide would apply in this case.

by Ilan Pappe



On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.



On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.



B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.



The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.



On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=11882

[burythehatchet]

1. that's cute

[papau]

2. Genocide?? - But the facts he presents are also what Carter is trying to point out

He and Carter have a piss poor choice of words for their theme - and those themes are not proven in anyway by the 2 books - but the facts on the ground are true-

The Israeli attempt to control terrorists in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza (which is the same problem) has resulted in crappy living conditions in those locations.

Given the deal has always been on the table of Israeli control ended if terrorism ended, it would seem control of the direction that this situation goes is in the PA/Hamas hands

Indeed that is the main complaint about Carter's book - (beyond the bad history and a few lies he repeats because he knows you can't trust Jews or those that aren't at war with Israel to tell the truth about history or anything) - namely - he ignores that the end of the nightmare is but a decision away for the PA/Hamas.

Meanwhile Hamas demands the end of the Jewish State of Israel - to be replaced by the Islamic State of Israel, that unlike Israel, will restrict religious and physical freedom of non-Muslims under the reason that there is a need for "Islamic Law", and heck - that is democracy if a few additional Muslims get to vote in that decision, so who could object?

Like Carter's book this is useful in that it exposes the very real suffering - and how that suffering is man made.

For me, I just want them to look at Taba/Geneva and note that they are inches away from the goal line if that is the starting point. Perhaps these latest "24 month - 6 to agree, another 18 for details" negotiations will lead to peace - if Hamas agrees the PA represents them at these talks.