Hostility resulting from the Palestinian response to such discrimination and their lands slow, continual pillage with the approval, help and acquiescence of the Israeli government has often resulted in Palestinian death or imprisonment. Palestinians in the territories are arrested without charge or due process and detained for as long as Israeli authorities wish. This policy of detainment has also applied to Palestinian children.
A convoluted system of Israeli rules, dictate Palestinian travel, building and business that by design discourage and hinder their normal prosperity and growth. None of this has led to any serious consequences for Israel. Israel has used excessive force, degrading treatment and extensive detention, demolition of homes and schools and discrimination against Palestinians with impunity. When Palestinians fight back, Israel claims "we are the victim."
The US has many tools to encourage a better standard of behavior from Israel, but we have refused to discuss, let alone apply them. We promote our solidarity with Israel, which turns around and continues to carry out the same policies, for the same reasons and with the same excuses and the same outcome. US actions have given Israel a free pass to continue what it has been doing. When we embrace our "unbreakable bond", deflect criticism of bad behavior, excuse or ignore human rights violations and abuses and fail to impose any serious penalties while Congress supports every misdeed and action as the fault of someone else, what is the world to conclude? What does Israel conclude? It is business as usual.
The US encourages this response by failing to impose sanctions on Israel that affirm "rights come with obligations." Great power carries greater responsibility. However, when there is no enforcing any limits on power and no demands that obligations be associated with rights, the only outcome is abuse. Israeli power (not right) is what currently justifies the execution of its policies in the territories it controls. Israeli obligations associated with that power are difficult to find. Instead of opposing that attitude by Israel, the US has enabled, supported and encouraged it by our inaction and inability to demand Israel change its direction or course, or suffer the consequences of US sanctions associated with such intransigence. Use of the word "disputed" is no excuse for injustice, inequality or human rights violations. But since it has been used this way, the US could start by insisting Israel adopt the word "occupied" to describe the territories instead of "disputed" as all other countries in the world do today.
This administration cannot be both a proponent of human rights, and ignore Israeli actions and behaviors in the territories it controls. Such duplicity makes the US position on human rights a shame, only applicable to those with whom the US disagrees, not our friends with whom we share an unbreakable bond. If there is only solidarity and no pressure and sanctions on Israel, then how is Middle East peace to be achieved? Why would Israel seriously embrace peace when it gains far more by the present process of expropriation and settlement without any serious consequences arising from those actions and behaviors? A lack of US sanctions encourages business as usual, peace be damned, a likely outcome indeed.
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