PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Eliminating the Palestine homeland
Angie Todd
IN his carefully prepared speech to a Muslim
audience at the University of Cairo, Egypt on June
4, Obama Barack, the current U.S. president,
correctly recognized that central to peace in the
Middle East is the solution to what he described as
the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the
Arab world.
He first made it clear that "America's strong
bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is
unbreakable…" he affirmed, before going on to state,
"It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people,
Muslims and Christians, have suffered in pursuit of
a homeland..." – as if they never had one that was
taken from them – "for more than 60 years they have
endured the pain of dislocation…"
The choice of the word ‘dislocation’ is likewise
a tremendous euphemism for the initial assaults on
Palestinians living in land that remained theirs
after the initial division of the Palestinian state
in 1948, resulting in up to 950,000 refugees; the
Israeli war of expansion in 1967, which produced a
further approximate total of 300,000 exiles forced
to flee to Jordan, Syria and the Lebanon, among
other neighboring countries; and a steady aggressive
expansion ever since, plus the ferocious military
containment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West
Bank.
In Cairo, the U.S. president’s only clear demand
of his Israeli allies referred to Israeli
territorial expansion: "The United States does not
accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli
settlements. This construction violates previous
agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace.
It is time for these settlements to stop."
Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also
issued clear ‘orders’ on that subject to Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visited the United
States shortly before the June 4 address to Muslims
in Egypt.
However, back in Israel, the recently elected
Israeli premier’s response was not promising. After
referring to "understandings" over such
encroachments agreed with the Bush administration,
in a major speech on June 14 he came out with a new
version of expansionism within the West Bank, re-labeling
it "natural growth, as opposed to "freezing family
life." Washington’s initial response to that was one
of "cautious optimism."
And ongoing Israeli expansions/expropriations
within Jerusalem and the West Bank are moving
strongly ahead, via strategies illustrated in a
recent Al Jazeera Television series. The following
excerpts are taken from its online site:
"Israel has approved the construction of 50 new
homes in a West Bank settlement and announced plans
to expropriate more Palestinian land.
"The Israeli Defense Ministry presented plans to
the Supreme Court to relocate settlers from an
illegal outpost in the West Bank to a settlement
north of Jerusalem.
"And there are plans for another 1,400 housing
units at the site, Israel's anti-settlement group
Peace Now told the court. But Gabriela Shalev,
Israel's UN ambassador, said on June 29 that the
Obama administration had assured Israel that it
would continue defending it at the UN.
"We were told explicitly [by the Americans] that
there are no consultations and no discussions at all
within the administration in this direction," Shalev
told Israel's Channel Ten television.
"Some 500,000 Israelis live among 2.5 million
Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
"This would be the largest area of land ever
confiscated by Israel in one go since 1967" stated
Hatem Abdel-Qader, Palestinian minister."
"The Palestinian village of Silwan clings to a
steep hillside facing the southern walls of
Jerusalem's Old City.
"In the valley below, Al Bustan neighbourhood
stretches out in the shadow of Haram al-Sharif.
"The Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have plans
for the network of narrow alleyways and walled
compounds that make up Al Bustan. They say the area
has been ear-marked for parks and open spaces – and
most of the homes here were built without permits.
"A total of 88 buildings have received demolition
orders from the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem
municipality. If the municipality proceeds with its
demolition plans, 1,500 people will become homeless.
"…another person who risks losing his home is the
local imam, Sheikh Mousa Mahmoud Odeh. He believes
there is a systematic plan to remove Palestinians
from areas close to the Old City and redevelop the
area for Jewish residents and the tourism industry.
And he accuses the municipality of working hand-in-hand
with right-wing Jewish settler groups.
"I see a black future," said Sheikh Mousa. "The
Jews are trying to displace all the Palestinians –
from Silwan and from Jerusalem itself – so they can
build a so-called 'holy basin'… "They consider all
places overlooking Al-Aqsa mosque to be part of that
holy basin. I think that we have lost Jerusalem."
"As the Palestinians are being squeezed out, the
settlers are creeping in.
"There are now about 70 Jewish families living in
the Silwan area. They either buy homes from
Palestinians or simply grab them under Israel's
Absentee Property Law."
The article concludes by stating: "The Fourth
Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from
destroying the property of people living in the
territory it controls."
"Adalah, a legal centre for Arab rights in
Israel, claims that the possibility of Palestinians
returning to the homes they left in what is now
Israel is slowly being eroded away by the sale of an
increasing number of their properties to private
individuals.
"In most cases, the original owners are either in
exile or unable to afford the prices offered by
tender on the Israel land administration website.
"Based on its law, Israel is allowed, as a state,
to use this property. However it is not allowed to
sell it to private hands," Hassan Jabareen, the
managing director of Adalah, said.
"But at least 282 homes have been sold in the
past two-and-a-half years." he told Al Jazeera.
"Israel calls them "absentee properties" – houses
and land belonging to nearly 700,000 Palestinians
who left or were expelled when Israel was created in
1948.
"The Palestinians have always argued that the
refugees should be allowed to go back, even to lands that
are now part of Israel.
"Some of the refugees scattered across the West
Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and beyond
even keep the deeds and the keys for their old
properties in the hope they will one day return."
In the last week of August, Netanyahu visited
London and Germany prior to an Israeli delegation
meeting with George Mitchell, the U.S. peace envoy.
His tour prompted contradictory press coverage, from
tensions between Washington and Israel in the
settlements context, to major advances on the same
issue, with "a harder line on Iran in exchange for a
"partial freezing." (London). In Germany, Merkel
told him that, for her country, "halting the
construction of settlements is… a condition for re-launching
the peace process."
However, the Israeli government appeared to be
anything but deterred and Netanyahu himself made no
reference to the matter in press conferences in
those two countries.
After the Obama meeting in New York on September
22 with President Ahmoud Abbas of Palestine and a
smug Netanyahu, Mitchell told reporters: "We are not
identifying any issue as a precondition or as an
impediment for negotiations," thus officially
announcing the U.S. capitulation.
All that remained were Obama’s insubstantial
statements in his speech to the UN General Assembly.
Given that the United States is the central agent
of any renewal of the peace process, none of the
Israeli actions within Jerusalem reported in the Al
Jazeera series are counter to the U.S. president’s
thinking on an Israeli-Palestine peace process,
despite the settlements issue. According to the
electronicintifada.net website, Obama is insisting
that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel
and it must remain undivided" – despite the fact
that East Jerusalem remains the designated capital
of a future Palestinian state, in line with the Oslo
Accords and the Road Map peace process.
In relation to Palestinian refugees, the U.S.
president’s appraisal is that "the right of return
is something that is not an option in a literal
sense (Ibid)." Yet another euphemism, as what other
‘sense’ is there apart from a virtual one, or its
elimination?
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