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 Looking Back on 40 Years of OccupationPosted on Jun 3, 2007
By Chris Hedges Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank 40 years ago this week. The victory was celebrated as a great triumph, at once tripling the size of the land under Israeli control, including East Jerusalem. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory. As the occupation stretched over the decades, it transformed and deformed Israeli society. It led Israel to abandon the norms and practices of a democratic society until, in the name of national security, it began to routinely accept the brutal violence of occupation and open discrimination and abuse of Palestinians, including the torture of prisoners and collective reprisals for Palestinians attacks. Palestinian neighborhoods, olive groves and villages were, in the name of national security, bulldozed into the ground.
“We are raising commanders who are policemen,” former Israeli General Amiram Levine told the newspaper Maariv. “We ask them to excel at the checkpoint. What does it means to excel at the checkpoint? It means being enough of a bastard to delay a pregnant woman from getting to the hospital.” The occupation was benign at the beginning. Israelis crossed into Palestinian territory to buy cheap vegetables, eat at local restaurants, spend the weekend in the desert oasis of Jericho and get their cars fixed. The Palestinians were a pool of cheap labor and by the mid-1980s, 40 percent of the Palestinian workforce was employed in Israel. The Palestinians flowed over the border to the shops and beaches of Tel Aviv. But the second-class status of Palestinians, growing repression by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and Gaza and festering poverty saw Palestinians, most of them too young to remember the moment of occupation, rise up in December 1987 to launch six years of street protests. The uprising eventually led to a peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasir Arafat. Arafat, who had spent most of his life in exile, returned in triumph to Gaza. The Oslo Accords that followed momentarily heralded a new era, a moment of hope. I was in Gaza when they were signed. The Gaza Strip was awash in a giddy optimism. Palestinian businessmen who had made their fortunes abroad returned to help build the new Palestinian state. The radical Islamists seemed to shrink away. Palestinian women threw off their head scarves and beauty salons sprouted on city streets. There was a brief and shining sense that life could be normal, free from strife and violence, that finally Palestinians had a future. But it all swiftly turned sour. The 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, coupled with mounting draconian restrictions on Palestinians to prevent them from entering Israel and keep them in submission, led to another uprising in 2000. This one, which I also covered for The New York Times, was far more violent. This latest uprising has led to the deaths of more than 4,300 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis. It ushered in an Israeli policy that saw Jewish settlers relocated from Gaza. Gaza was then sealed off like a vast prison. Israel also began to build a security barrier—at a cost of about $ 1 million per mile—in the West Bank. When it is done, the barrier is expected to incorporate 40 percent of Palestinian land into the Israeli state. Israeli air strikes have, over the past year, decimated the infrastructure in Gaza, destroying bridges, power stations and civilian administration buildings. The breakdown in law and order, coupled with the growing desperation in Gaza, has triggered an internecine conflict between Hamas and Fatah. There are some 200 Palestinians who have died in clashes and street fighting between the two factions during the past year—more than one-third of those killed by Israel during the same period. The Israeli abuses have been well documented, not only by international human rights organizations, but Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem. On June 4, 2007, Amnesty International released a new 45-page report called “Enduring Occupation: Palestinians Under Siege in the West Bank,” which again illustrates the devastating impact of four decades of Israeli military occupation. The report documents the relentless expansion of unlawful settlements on occupied land. It details the ways Israel has seized or denied crucial resources, such as water, to Palestinians under occupation. It documents a plethora of measures that confine Palestinians to fragmented enclaves and hinder their access to work, health and education facilities. These measures include the 700-kilometer barrier or wall, more than 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a complicated system of permits to heavily restrict movement. “Palestinians living in the West Bank are blocked at every turn. This is not simply an inconvenience—it can be a matter of life or death. It is unacceptable that women in labor, sick children, or victims of accidents on their way to hospital should be forced to take long detours and face delays which can cost them their lives,” said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “International action is urgently needed to address the widespread human rights abuses being committed under the occupation, and which are fueling resentment and despair among a predominantly young and increasingly radicalized Palestinian population,” said Smart. “For 40 years, the international community has failed to adequately address the Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another 40 years to do so.” Of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents, a staggering 1.1 million now depend on outside food assistance. The World Food Program has identified Gaza as one of the world’s hunger global hot spots. The WFP is a principal food aid provider to Palestinians, providing assistance to 640,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them in Gaza. The desperation—with young men unable to find work, travel outside the Gaza Strip or West Bank and forced to sleep 10 to a room in concrete hovels without running water—has empowered the Islamic radicals. The desperation has led the Palestinian population, once one of the most secular in the Middle East, to turn to radical fundamentalism. The more pressure and violence Israel employs, the more these radicals are empowered. The Israeli lobby in the United States is captive to the far right of Israeli politics. It exerts influence not on behalf of the Jewish state but an ideological strain within Israel that believes it can crush Palestinian aspirations through force. The self-defeating policies of the Bush administration are mirrored in the self-defeating policies championed by the hard-right administration of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. Israel flouts international law and dismisses Security Council resolutions to respect the integrity of Palestinian territory. It has instead trapped Palestinians in squalid, barricaded ghettos where they barely survive. It is not in Israel’s interest—or our own—to continue to fuel increased Palestinian strife and rising militancy. Economic sanctions and an arms ban against Israel are our last hope. These were the tools that toppled the apartheid regime in South Africa. And it was, after all, the sanctions imposed by the first President Bush—he suspended $10 billion of loan guarantees for resettling Russian immigrants in Israel—that prodded right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to attend peace talks in Madrid. A trade embargo—even if imposed only by European states—would be a start. It is outside pressure that can alone halt the inexorable slide into a conflict that could become regional. And a new regional conflict with Israel could spell the end of the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. It may be quixotic, perhaps even impossible, but it is the last measure left to save Israel from itself. Chris Hedges is a veteran journalist and former Mideast bureau chief for The New York Times. His most recent book is “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America.” Previous item: Satire: Hillary Tries to Fatten Up the Competition Next item: Sentencing for Dummies Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
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By Inherit The Wind, June 13, 2007 at 7:55 pm # “Take, for example, my effort to reach out to ITW by suggesting that he actually watch the marvelously factual one hour, 9 minute documentary which Robert linked to in comment #76638 and to then return so that we could entertain an honest, intellectual discussion.” ****************** Your idea of an intellectual discussion is for me to watch an hour and 18 minute piece of pure propaganda from one of Robert’s favorite biased shills, that starts off lying in the very first note it displays, and THEN discuss this as if it’s hard fact??? That’s not reaching out, Earnest, that’s “Framing the discussion” just the way the Fox Noise Propaganda Net does. That’s how Sean Hannity “discusses” things. It’s playing with loaded dice and a marked deck and I’m not stupid enough to fall for such an elementary trick. I guess you must take me for a real chump. “You can’t cheat an honest man, but never give a sucker an even break, and don’t wisen up a chump.” --W.C. Fields. At least TW is never insulting, just wrong.
By Inherit The Wind, June 13, 2007 at 10:59 am # “Billy the Dik on 6/13 at 10:03 am ITW, you’re really that thick? Zionism is the victim of the holocaust? No, Butcher Boy, Jews were the victims. Ideologies do not bleed, they suck blood. Your anthropomorphism of a poison idea is a dead giveaway that YOU are a victim of deep, dark indoctrination. “ Billy, I suggest you take a course in remedial reading and comprehension. I never said anything of the sort. Try actually READING what I write. You’ll find insults just make you look stupid when you attack someone for something they never said. Unless, of course, you are deliberately making stuff up to see if, when you fling enough of it, any sticks. Which I would not put past you. Still trying to figure out the Horst Wessel Song (your future anthem) or did you actually “google the Internets” as fearless Lead Ignoramous would say?
By Charles Barton, June 13, 2007 at 4:18 am # “So the Palestinians possess a few rockets with which to strike back.” - Ernest Ernest, This is typical, anti-Zionist language. First the Palestinians have launched not a few rockets, but thousands, a fact which your language so deceitfully hides. Secondly the Palestinians are not striking back at Israel, the entire rocket campaign is being paid for by Iran. The rocket launching squad gets paid $20,000 a launch. The Hamas government, the elected government of the Palestinians, knows who is launching the rockets, and knows where the rockets are built. They have the power to put a stop to the rockets if they chose. But they have Iranian paymasters too, and the Iranians tell them to allow the rocket launches. Hamas is openly anti-Semetic. It openly states that its goal is to destroy israel. Its spokesmen call for the killing of all Jews, not just Isrelis. These are the people you support. These are the people you sympasthize with. You aback a bunch of anti-semetic, murderous thugs and pretend to be on the side of Justice and truth. Look at what Hamas is doing in Hamas. %6 people killed in Gaza sonce the weekend, more dying every day. If they were being killed by Israelis, you would be screaming, but being the hypocritical little twirp that you are, you are utterly silent about Hamas’s violence toward Palestinians. Ernest, When Israelis defend themselves against Palestinian violence, you compare them to Nazis. When Palesti9nians try to kill Israeli civilians, you justify them. When the Palestinian government begins to slaughter the people of Gaza, you fall strangely silent. And you no doubt think yoourself to be a good person.
By Inherit The Wind, June 13, 2007 at 3:52 am # “Tony Wicher on 6/13 at 12:35 am Re #77349 by Inherit The Wind on 6/12 at 10:38 am “Teitelbaum is an criminally idiotic and morally bankrupt. Jews weren’t responsible for the Holocaust and anyone who says they were, like Teitelbaum, is scum.” But that isn’t what Teitelbaum says. He precisely does NOT say that “Jews were responsible for the Holocaust”. What he does say is that ZIONISTS were responsible for the Holocaust. According to him, Jews were their innocent victims. I know you are having a hard time distinguishing Jews from Zionists in your own mind, because Zionists have done everything possible to identify them, but the fact is that they are completely different things. To me Zionists are apostate Jews who have substituted this secular nationalism for their former religion, and they are misleading Jewish people into an untenable situation which will ultimately result in their destruction, unless they repudiate Zionism. Rabbi Teitelbaum understands this, and so do many other rabbis. “ I stand by my original statement. Neither Jews in general nor Zionists in particular are responsible for the Holocaust. It is morally reprehensible to blame the victims and inferentially excuse the Nazis, which of course, is what you are both doing. It is also false history. The rise of the peculiar and unusually vehement form of anti-Semitism that Hitler guided was not his invention, but grew out of a bastard mis-interpretation of Darwin’s evolution, and Spencer’s variation on it, Social Darwinism. In the late 19th century, in Vienna (Hitler was Austrian, remember), this new strand “Biological Racism” emerged. Unlike traditional anti-Semitism in Europe and the Arab world, where by conversion to Christianity or Islam a Jew would be accepted, in “Biological Racism” such was not possible. A Jew was a Jew even if he rose to become a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Because of the extraordinary assimilation of Jews in Germany, which had been one of the more liberal and tolerant places in Europe since at least Frederick the Great, the conversion criterion was irrelevant. There were many philosphical thinkers in Greater Germania in the 19th Century (Marx and Engels were among them) but while many were great, many more were 3rd rate thinkers, and it was these who latched on to Social Darwinism and twisted it into a global conflict of races (as Marx and Engels saws a global conflict of classes). Combine this with Germany’s long-standing inferiority complex, after all, Germany didn’t exist as a nation until 1871, and the constant plaint that she was denied her “place in the sun” Jews became the easy scapegoat. Why would Zionism feed this? The Zionists wanted the Jews to leave Germany (and Europe) and move to Israel. The “biological racists” wanted the Jews out of Germany too--Hitler later toyed with Madagascar as the place to ship all Jews. So, TW, you can see why I STILL stand by my statement. The history of Germany and anti-semitism that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka was no knee-jerk reaction, especially not to Zionism. To blame the Holocaust on Zionism is to excuse National Socialism. That’s like a murderer telling telling the victim it’s the victim’s fault. It is morally bankrupt. Teitelbaum is morally bankrupt. He’s not ignorant, he knows this history. I’m hoping you are merely ignorant and now will educate yourself on this history. But if you continue to hold this position in light of facts I will view you as equally bankrupt. I hope not.
By Inherit The Wind, June 12, 2007 at 8:27 pm # “re comment #77349 by Inherit the Wind. I would agree that “Jews weren’t responsible for the Holocaust.” I would not suggest, as you do, that anyone who suggests otherwise is “scum.” I suspect that such individuals would run the gammut from neo-Nazis to the utterly uninformed. I will not label as “scum” those who are merely ignorant.” Y’know, You make a point. I can’t argue with that--but two points: 1) You gotta INCREDIBLY ignorant to say something like that an not be morally bankrupt. 2) Rabbi Teitelbaum is certainly not ignorant and IS morally bankrupt. You keep missing the fundamental difference between Nazi Germany and Israel. Germany’s survival was never in danger from Jews or anyone else until Hitler put them in danger. Israel’s destruction has been the constant goal of many Arabs, including leaders of nations for 60 straight years. Israel’s siege mentality is clearly justified. Nazi tactics are not justified by anyone. But what happens when every moral rule is broken by the other side? When ANY humanitarian action like letting an ambulance through, is corrupted by the enemy stuffing it with explosives? When a pizza parlor full of children is deliberately targeted for bombing how can the Palestinians claim the moral high ground? How can you? I do not want to see the Palestinians slaughtered. I would love to see them living peacefully side by side with Israelis rebuilding the personal and economic bonds that, when strong enough, make war impossible. But it has to be as two states now. But even today the Palestinians are slaughtering each other--Al Fatah and Hamas are ramping up the violence as each tries to violently crush the other. Why would Israelis give up security and trust them? They came so, so close to peace only to throw it away to continue the infatada. Why? |
Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post
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