Any hope for peace in the Palestine-Israel Conflict?
For many Israelis, the assassination of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 marked a grim turning point for their country. In the
words of the commission set up to investigate the murder, "Israeli society
[would] never be the same again. As a democracy, political assassination was
not part of our culture."
In the eyes of most people, the murder ended all hope for
the Israeli-Palestinian peace process through the Oslo Accords and altered the
course of history.
I have been quite skeptical on the prospect of a lasting
peace to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since at least 1977 when the Likud
Party of Menachem Begin came to power. For peace to really work, it requires
justice, something that has never been in the DNA of the Zionist founders and
leaders of Israel .
They saw Palestine
as a colonial enterprise, which was to dispossess and rob the indigenous
population, one way or another. Negotiations were only ploys to justify illegal
annexation and used to hoodwink the world community, and nothing else.
The more I read about Zionism the more I felt hopeless realizing
that the right-wing Likudniks would never go back to the pre-1967 border and
would do everything possible to hold onto the Occupied
Territories , the so-called Judea and Samaria . Without those
occupied territories, the dream of an Eretz Israel is incomplete. The toxic
influence of Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) – the iconoclastic founder of
Revisionist Zionism - loomed very high on the Likud Party.
And yet, in my heart I hoped for a miracle of sort that the
bad Zionists would evolve into real human beings feeling the pain and suffering
of the dispossessed Palestinians and would compromise so that the holy land can
be shared by all its peoples amicably. Prime Minister Rabin presented himself
as a person who seemed serious about a two-nation solution to the decades-old
problem. But when he was assassinated on November 4, 1995, all such daydreams
of mine faded away. I believed that the rightwing Likud politician Benjamin Netanyahu
was not just a direct beneficiary of that assassination but that he had triggered
the very event by creating an environment of hatred and animosity in which Rabin
had to die for Bibi to shine in Israeli apartheid politics.
Recently, in early November, 20 years to the day after the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing religious extremist, Amos Gitai’s mesmerizing and disturbing new film “Rabin, the Last Day” premiered in Tel Aviv’s symphony hall — about 200 yards from the spot where Rabin was shot. According to movie reviewers, it’s no ordinary movie in the context of
Gitai is both a living legend of Israeli cinema and a highly
controversial cultural figure, and with “Rabin, the Last Day” he seized the
third rail of Israeli politics with both hands. He set out to prove in his
brave and provocative new film, Rabin's assassination was not just the act of
one fanatic Yigal Amir, an orthodox Jew. Rather, it was the culmination of a
hate campaign that emanated from the rabbis and public figures of Israel 's far
right, esp. the likes of Netanyahu.
As I have stated many times, Zionism has betrayed Judaism.
It has created a breed of rabbis that are bigots and racists to the core.
Without their blessings, Jewish terrorism or so-called vandalism against the
unarmed Palestinians inside Israel
would have been rare. Consider, for instance, the religious legitimacy
for attacking Arabs given by the prominent rabbis at Od Yosef Chai to the
hilltop youths. In their 2010 book, “The King’s Torah (Torat Hamelech), Part
One: Laws of Life and Death between Israel and the Nations,” Rabbis
Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur declared, “The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not
Murder’ applies only ‘to a Jew who kills a Jew’.” It is worth recalling that up
until 2013, Od Yosef Chai yeshiva received government funding and support. It
has also received money from American donors.
This should come as no surprise. After all, the Likud Party
of Bibi Netanyahu upholds Ze'ev Jabotinsky’s principles. Jabotinsky organized
Irgun Zvi Leumi, a terrorist military organization, which fought against
the British and the Arabs in the pre-partition days. He died in 1940, eight
years before the birth of the Israeli state. His legacy, however, was carried
on by Israel 's Herut party,
which merged with other right wing parties to form the Likud Party in
1973. It is also worth pointing out that Benzion Netanyahu, the current prime
minister’s father, was Jabotinsky’s disciple and private secretary. The elder
Netanyahu said as recently as 2009 that the Arabs’ existence “is one of
perpetual war” and argued that Israel
should beat back any hint of Palestinian nationalism with the threat of
“enormous suffering.” He passed these poisonous beliefs on to his son Bibi
Netanyahu, who like Jabotinsky, is a brutal, racist, territorial maximalist who
allows no concession in his aspiration to guard the pariah Jewish state by
crushing the Palestinians.
It is not difficult to understand why the peace process has
been dead since Bibi came to power again. Netanyahu is opposed to the
two-nation solution of the deadlock. Remember his election promise
last year? He vowed to increase construction in the Occupied East Jerusalem,
and said the city would never be divided. “We will continue to build in Jerusalem , we will add
thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the (international)
pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital,” he
said. He also vowed in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa (a
Jewish settlement that Netanyahu helped to build during his first term as prime
minister in 1997; the sprawling district now houses more than 20,000 settler
residents) that Palestinian state would not be established if he was elected.
Recently, Netanyahu announced that the Israelis shall
"forever live by the sword” – a Biblical phrase going back to the
admonition of Avner, King Saul’s general, who cried out to King David’s general
Yoav "Shall the sword devour for ever?"
Thus, under Bibi’s watch the illegal settlements for the
Jewish settlers in the West Bank have become
the norms rather than exceptions. As the apartheid Israeli state constructs new
illegal colonies, it demolishes Palestinian homes forcing their eviction. Last
Tuesday, for instance, the Civil Administration in the West
Bank demolished 23 Palestinian homes and three outhouses in the southern Hebron hills villages of
Jinba and Halawa. And surely, those crimes won’t be the last ones in the Jewish
state!
Last month Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon
approved the establishment of a new settlement inside a church compound in the
West Bank, about which the U.S. state
government was "deeply concerned". Jewish vandals, likely
religious right-wing extremists, vandalized Jerusalem 's Dormition Abbey. The Benedictine
monastery abutting the walls of Jerusalem 's Old City
has been the target of repeated anti-Christian vandalism and in February 2015.
The vandals wrote anti-Christian slogans on the edifice's walls and doors using
red and black markers. These included: "Christians to Hell",
"May his name be obliterated" (a supposed Hebrew acronym of Jesus'
name in Hebrew), "Death to the heathen Christians the enemies of Israel ",
etc.
Such hostile activities, of course, are discomforting to
some highly placed friends of Israel .
Even the U.S. ambassador had
to confess that Israel
has legal double standard in West Bank .
Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in
Tel Aviv, Dan Shapiro said "Too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank
goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough
investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule
of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."
The peace process has been deadlocked since a US peace mission
collapsed in April 2014. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has been a
failure to make a difference. He rightly said Friday that he was
"ashamed" at the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process. "I feel guilty, ashamed of the lack of progress," he
told an event organized by the United Nations Association - UK in association with foreign affairs
think-tank Chatham House in London .
"Basically it's up to the leadership of Israel and the Palestinians to put
an end to the conflict," he said.
UN diplomats say Ban is hoping to get peace talks moving
again before he steps down as secretary-general at the end of the year.
I don't see any hope of a peaceful solution as long as the
dreamers of Eretz Israel
continue to control the Israeli politics and have powerful international
supporters. They know their strength and are willing to exploit
such to extract further concessions from their backers. It was no accident that
Jonathan Pollard, the American spy who leaked highly sensitive defense and
national security info to Israel, had to be freed by President Obama in
the days leading up to peace negotiations with Iran. He was serving a long
prison term, until, of course, lately. And yet, Benjamin Netanyahu was not
fully satisfied. He told the
World Economic Forum in Davos that his country will need more US military aid because of the nuclear
deal with Iran. Netanyahu, whose country is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East , though it has never declared it, strongly opposed
the accord and labeled it a "historic mistake."
Israel is currently negotiating a new 10-year military aid
package with Washington that it says will need to grow beyond the $3.1 billion
yearly currently provided by the United States. The figure excludes US
spending on projects including Israel 's
Iron Dome missile defense system.
Well, with the Israel-first 'Amen Corner' placed inside the Capitol Hill the pariah state does not need too much patting on the shoulders to get what it wants. And I am sure the US government will again comply with Netanyahu's request, esp. coming as it does in an election year. All the presidential candidates in the major two parties – Republican and Democratic – from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump (let alone evangelicals and born-again Christian fundamentalist candidates) - are unabashed supporters of Israeli hegemony and Palestinian marginalization.
Well, with the Israel-first 'Amen Corner' placed inside the Capitol Hill the pariah state does not need too much patting on the shoulders to get what it wants. And I am sure the US government will again comply with Netanyahu's request, esp. coming as it does in an election year. All the presidential candidates in the major two parties – Republican and Democratic – from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump (let alone evangelicals and born-again Christian fundamentalist candidates) - are unabashed supporters of Israeli hegemony and Palestinian marginalization.
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