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C&P: The Great Land Grap
HAIRY
Member Posts: 23,606
George S. Hishmeh: The untold story of the great land grab
Israel is once again mixing apples and oranges when it declares that the deplorable suicide attack in Jerusalem this week is the reason for building the separation, or more aptly, the apartheid wall and the Palestinian case against the wall. This is a cover-up for a major land grab.
No Palestinian will disagree with Israel if it chooses to build a fence along the so-called Green Line, which has since 1949 divided Israelis from the indigenous Palestinians, to keep would-be suicide bombers or other guerrillas away. Basically, the issue is that the wall is being constructed on Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, causing extreme hardship and resentment.
And here, it is important to underline that the Green Line was only an armistice line and not an "internationally recognised border" as the well-meaning writer Noam Chomsky has mistakenly written in a praiseworthy Op-Ed column in the New York Times recently.
In fact, Israel has never identified its borders since the establishment of the state in 1948 or, for that matter, its constitution.
Regrettably, Israel and, shockingly, the United States and the Europeans, have stayed away from the International Court of Justice, ICJ, at The Hague, which began oral hearings earlier this week on the legality of the wall snaking through Palestinian territory.
The court's action was prompted by a UN General Assembly request for a non-binding advisory decision on the legality of the network of walls, razor-wire fences and electronic monitors that are being built on mostly Palestinian land.
To counter this Palestinian legal offensive, Israel has resorted to launching a well-financed media campaign. A case in point has been an incident involving two Israeli mothers who lost their children to suicide bombers.
They called last week on The Baltimore Sun, a visit arranged by the Israel Project, which is undertaking a "prolific" advertising campaign on major television outlets, including CNN and Fox, to support the partition wall.
The paper's Perspective editor, G. Jefferson Price III, blamed "the incapacity of the Jewish or the Palestinian leadership to make peace" for this calamitous situation and then he reported on the meeting he had with the two grieving mothers.
He wrote: "Astonishingly, though, my Friday visitors complained about a media bias against Israel, a notion that the Palestinians get a better break in the press because they 'offer ready-made stories and pictures, as (one of the mothers) put it.
"I was astonished by this because in a decade as foreign editor of this newspaper and in the last three years as editor of Perspective, I could not recall a visit like the one from the Israel Project from anyone representing the Palestinians.
"In eight years as Middle East correspondent in the 1970s and 1980s, I could not recall any presentation from any Palestinian group with the sophistication of the Israel Project. Certainly, I cannot recall an advertising campaign from the Palestinians as far-reaching as a week full of spots on major television networks in America."
This amazing and sad revelation by the honourable journalist from The Baltimore Sun came as I was being told by pro-Palestinian sources here that they were still hopeful, a day after the opening the hearings in The Hague, of placing a one-page advertisement in The New York Times at a cost of $42,000 to explain the Palestinian objections to the apartheid wall.
Another shocker came this week from another friend, Corinne Whitlatch, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of 19 churches and related organisations. She said she has recently hired a firm for some research about mainstream American Christians.
"What we have found is that most of these people do not have an understanding of the historical developments of this area of the Middle East nor of the (Arab-Israeli) conflict. Many of them do not understand what the word 'occupation' means or have any concept about (the illegal Israeli) colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories," she said.
Negative impact
There can be no excuse for this Palestinian failure at getting their act together and presenting to the world in timely fashion a forceful message about the disastrous effects of the 680-kilometre long wall, 85 per cent of which is built on Palestinian-owned land.
Nino Kader, communications director of the newly-established American Task Force on Palestine, says the wall, in some areas 60 to 100 metres wide, covers 600,000 acres which is "equivalent to the crop land of Pennsylvania or the size of the State of Rhode Island."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, estimated that over 500,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Nearly 18 per cent of the Palestinian share of the Western Groundwater Basin alone will be lost.
The negative impact of this annexation wall which, in the words of Senator George McGovern, "fractures whole societies and impedes the search for peace" in the Middle East, deserves to be told more effectively. But in no way should this failure be an excuse for the Bush administration and some European governments to stand idly by.
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
Hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue.
Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.
Israel is once again mixing apples and oranges when it declares that the deplorable suicide attack in Jerusalem this week is the reason for building the separation, or more aptly, the apartheid wall and the Palestinian case against the wall. This is a cover-up for a major land grab.
No Palestinian will disagree with Israel if it chooses to build a fence along the so-called Green Line, which has since 1949 divided Israelis from the indigenous Palestinians, to keep would-be suicide bombers or other guerrillas away. Basically, the issue is that the wall is being constructed on Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, causing extreme hardship and resentment.
And here, it is important to underline that the Green Line was only an armistice line and not an "internationally recognised border" as the well-meaning writer Noam Chomsky has mistakenly written in a praiseworthy Op-Ed column in the New York Times recently.
In fact, Israel has never identified its borders since the establishment of the state in 1948 or, for that matter, its constitution.
Regrettably, Israel and, shockingly, the United States and the Europeans, have stayed away from the International Court of Justice, ICJ, at The Hague, which began oral hearings earlier this week on the legality of the wall snaking through Palestinian territory.
The court's action was prompted by a UN General Assembly request for a non-binding advisory decision on the legality of the network of walls, razor-wire fences and electronic monitors that are being built on mostly Palestinian land.
To counter this Palestinian legal offensive, Israel has resorted to launching a well-financed media campaign. A case in point has been an incident involving two Israeli mothers who lost their children to suicide bombers.
They called last week on The Baltimore Sun, a visit arranged by the Israel Project, which is undertaking a "prolific" advertising campaign on major television outlets, including CNN and Fox, to support the partition wall.
The paper's Perspective editor, G. Jefferson Price III, blamed "the incapacity of the Jewish or the Palestinian leadership to make peace" for this calamitous situation and then he reported on the meeting he had with the two grieving mothers.
He wrote: "Astonishingly, though, my Friday visitors complained about a media bias against Israel, a notion that the Palestinians get a better break in the press because they 'offer ready-made stories and pictures, as (one of the mothers) put it.
"I was astonished by this because in a decade as foreign editor of this newspaper and in the last three years as editor of Perspective, I could not recall a visit like the one from the Israel Project from anyone representing the Palestinians.
"In eight years as Middle East correspondent in the 1970s and 1980s, I could not recall any presentation from any Palestinian group with the sophistication of the Israel Project. Certainly, I cannot recall an advertising campaign from the Palestinians as far-reaching as a week full of spots on major television networks in America."
This amazing and sad revelation by the honourable journalist from The Baltimore Sun came as I was being told by pro-Palestinian sources here that they were still hopeful, a day after the opening the hearings in The Hague, of placing a one-page advertisement in The New York Times at a cost of $42,000 to explain the Palestinian objections to the apartheid wall.
Another shocker came this week from another friend, Corinne Whitlatch, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of 19 churches and related organisations. She said she has recently hired a firm for some research about mainstream American Christians.
"What we have found is that most of these people do not have an understanding of the historical developments of this area of the Middle East nor of the (Arab-Israeli) conflict. Many of them do not understand what the word 'occupation' means or have any concept about (the illegal Israeli) colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories," she said.
Negative impact
There can be no excuse for this Palestinian failure at getting their act together and presenting to the world in timely fashion a forceful message about the disastrous effects of the 680-kilometre long wall, 85 per cent of which is built on Palestinian-owned land.
Nino Kader, communications director of the newly-established American Task Force on Palestine, says the wall, in some areas 60 to 100 metres wide, covers 600,000 acres which is "equivalent to the crop land of Pennsylvania or the size of the State of Rhode Island."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, estimated that over 500,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Nearly 18 per cent of the Palestinian share of the Western Groundwater Basin alone will be lost.
The negative impact of this annexation wall which, in the words of Senator George McGovern, "fractures whole societies and impedes the search for peace" in the Middle East, deserves to be told more effectively. But in no way should this failure be an excuse for the Bush administration and some European governments to stand idly by.
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
Hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue.
Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.
Comments
"No Palestinian will disagree with Israel if it chooses to build a fence along the so-called Green Line,..." That is not true. Many Palestinians want Israel just plain old gone. No Green Line, no Israel. I believe Hamas and Islamic Jihad both still subscribe to the eradication of Israel.
"In fact, Israel has never identified its borders since the establishment of the state in 1948..." To be fair, who would Israel establish its borders with? Up until the late 70's, it was at war with ALL of its neighbors. How can borders be established and agreed upon when you're at war with the very people who could define your borders?
"Regrettably, Israel and, shockingly, the United States and the Europeans, have stayed away from the International Court of Justice, ICJ, at The Hague, which began oral hearings earlier this week on the legality of the wall snaking through Palestinian territory."
Regrettable, yes, but hardly shocking. The various implements of international diplomacy are just a peaceful way for strong nations to get weaker ones to do as they're told. The U.S. regularly ignores World Court rulings when it rules against us. Makes sense we'd do the same for Israel.
Mind you, I'm not for the wall and the rest of the artical makes some pretty good points. But painting the Palestinians as saints and the Israelis as land-grabbing Nazis kind of blurs the lines in this situation.
Put plainly: There are no good guys here. Both of them have a lot of growing up to do. And the sooner they stop fighting like babies and strat talking like adults, the better off they'll all be.
But, I was disappointed to see that the US position regarding the World Court was that "Israel and Palestine should work this out as a political problem. Charley Reese put it nicely when he said it is akin to Churchill and Roosevelt saying to Poland when Germany invaded, "work out the political problem." [}:)]
There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
Hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue.
Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.
But it's hard to say who Germany is and who Poland is in this particular situation. Remember that the Palestinians sided with the Arab alliance back in the late 40's to eradicate Israel.
They sided with them again in the 60's.
And the 70's.
It's only when everyone else figured that Israel couldn't be beat that the Palestinians went it alone, because they were the only ones left who were dumb enough to tangle with the IDF. I mean, there's resistance and then there's throwing gasoline on a burning house.
The Palestinians, therefore, could be construed as the aggressor and, having lost their wars, have given up all rights to the land they once held. After all, very few people bring up East Prussia (taken from Germany after WW2) because Germany lost.
Most people give very short shrift to Indian claims over the Aksai Chin region in China because they lost their war after provoking China in the late 60's.
And most folks really don't care about Japan's lost share of Sakhalin Island (that is, except for the Japanese... who close to sixty years later are under the delusion that they were the victims and not initiators of WW2).
My point, mind you, is NOT that the Palestinians deserve this. I just believe that things will only get better when the Palestinians 'fess up and admit their past actions have led them to this current sad state of affairs. When they do that, they will have true moral high ground as opposed to this fabricated feel-good nonsense that Palestinian apologists are trying to peddle off on us.