March 27, 2008 at 05:39:20

Jonathan Cook's "Blood and Religion"

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By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 6 of 8 page(s)

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Israeli professor Yoav Peled called the new law a watershed, viewed it with alarm, and believed it's "a very dangerous turning point" in the country. Previously, Israeli laws disguised discrimination. No longer. Henceforth, according to Peled: "Palestinian citizens who are (moved) will not be transfered to another state - a Palestinian state where they can realise their rights - because there will be no other state. Their citizenship will not be transferred; it will be revoked."

Citizens would, by law, become non-citizens. They'd be moved against their will to a "pseudo-state" under Israeli rule and striped of their voice entirely. "Palestinian citizens will move from being Israelis with rights to residents of the occupied territories - and residents of the occupied territories have no rights at all."

Redrawing the Green Line

Professor Arnon Sofer heads up geopolitics at Haifa University. He also counts Jews and Arabs and expresses concern for what he finds. In his opinion, "in the next 15 years either we will see Israel surviving or we will see the end of the Zionist dream....We are counting down to the end of Israel." Only one viable option remains - partitioning the land. "We can no longer think about Greater Israel; we have to think about divisions." Why? Because Palestinians, especially in Gaza, reproduce faster than Jews.

For Sofer, the same problem exists inside Israel, and swift action, in his judgment, is needed to address it. "We have the Israeli Arabs in the Triangle and the Galillee. What to do about them?" Referring to the Triangle and its quarter million Palestinians, he's "ready to get rid of Wadi Ara and Taibe - no problem. We can change our borders and lose the Triangle but we cannot give up the Galilee....Muslims must be isolated....we must use a carrot and stick. There is no right or left at the moment. It's Jews versus Arabs," and that includes Israeli Arab citizens.

Since the 1967 war, Israel forestalled territorial division, built Israeli settlements in the Territories, and continue expanding them in the West Bank after the Gaza disengagement. Today, Palestinians and Jews are so intwined in neighboring communities that separating them can only happen in one of three ways:

-- evacuating settlers that's politically impossible (except for isolated settlements);

-- expelling the Palestinians that's highly probable; or

-- dramatically redrawing the Green Line as another likely choice.

More than ever today, Israel covets occupied Palestine's choicest parts, including East Jerusalem, and it's no secret why - to complete its dream of "Eretz Israel," and since the 1967 war, to use settlers as pawns to expropriate Palestinian land for a Greater Israel. The process has gone on ever since but was stepped up post-Oslo.

The historic agreement ostensibly was for peace in the spirit of compromise. In fact, it was a Trojan horse. It established a vaguely-defined negotiating process, specified no outcome, and left major unresolved issues for indefinite later final status talks. It granted Palestinians nothing in return for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel's right to exist and being its enforcer. In contrast, Israel got what it wanted - the right to continue land seizures, colonize the Territories and move inexorably toward territorial separation of an enlarged Israeli state from a smaller adjacent Palestinian one in name only.

Post-1993, settlements grew dramatically and now exceed 200. According to various sources like B'Tselem, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others, their population tops 400,000. UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine John Dugard estimates 460,000, and included is over 220,000 in occupied East Jerusalem (Dugard's figure is 253,000) where Palestinians are being squeezed out entirely.

Disengagement, separation barriers, and a fragmented Palestinian state are parts of the scheme - in three disconnected cantons: around Nablus and Jenin in the north, Salfit and Ramallah in the center, and Bethlehem and Hebron in the south. Wedged between them are Israeli settlements around Ariel in the north and the Ma'ale Adumim "envelope" to the East of Jerusalem. On the West Bank's east side, Israel would control the Jordan Valley. East Jerusalem would then be severed from the rest of the West Bank. In the end, Palestinians would have an illusory state under Israeli control that few analysts believe can be "viable."

Israel is shaping it, the West Bank's choicest parts are being taken, ethnic cleansing continues, borders are being redrawn, the Green Line is a fiction, Palestinians are impotent, and Washington is on board. Where will it lead? Three possible outcomes are suggested:

-- Palestinians will be confined to urban ghettos; they'll grow poorer and more desperate; lacking a future, middle-class and ambitious ones will emigrate to neighboring Arab states;

-- Palestinians will settle for a cantonized "prison state," according to Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Israel will relax its military harshness and replace it with colonial exploitation masquerading as economic development; the process is well-advanced, Palestinian cities are ghettos, agricultural land is disappearing, Israel plunders the land, intends to exploit an expendable cheap labor pool, and the Territories are being "asphyxiated;" and/or

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