[Marxism] The West Bank as Reservations -

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

comrades should subscribe to Middle East  Reports _www.middleeast.org_ 
(http://www.middleeast.org)  for coverage  and anaysis not easily found even in 
the 
left press - Xxxxxx  Xxxxxx
 
ISRAEL's MASTER  PLAN
Overlooked by so many - Covered  Up by many others

"Israel's 'ethnic  cleansing' has gone on now for decades 
with all kinds of legal ruses, public  relations twists, and 
propaganda campaigns to make it appear it isn't what  it is."

"With a systematic methodology  that raises the possibility 
that there is some conscious,  organized master plan, 
Israel continues the trend it  began [long] ago." 


_MIDDLEEAST.ORG_ (http://www.middleeast.org/)  - MER - Washington - 27  
January:     Once again  some of the best journalism and truth telling about 
the 
real situation in  Occupied Palestine comes from the courageous Israeli 
journalist Amira Hass  writing in Ha'aretz, the Israeli  newspaper which 
continues to 
pride itself on covering many angles from many  perspectives.    
Israel's  sui generis form of 'ethnic cleansing'  has gone on now for decades 
with all kinds of legal ruses, public relations  twists, and propaganda 
campaigns to make it appear it isn't what it  is.   These 'on the ground' and 
demographic realities are far more  important than the day to day manueverings 
so 
much in the  news.



 
____________________________________



    

Separating `J'lem from  the `West Bank'

By Amira  Hass

Ha'aretz -  26 January:     The U.S. and Europe gave Israel  good marks for 
easing travel through the checkpoints and allowing East  Jerusalemites to vote 
on the Palestinians' election day. Their respective  spokesmen again are 
speaking of a window of opportunity that has opened  with the election of PA 
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. So please, don't bother us  with the petty details of 
what 
is taking place on the ground  meanwhile.

Those countries have many representatives who reside  here and are 
sufficiently involved with life in this area to experience  the depth of 
changes Israel 
is creating in the occupied territories and  the Palestinians' natural social 
fabric. They know there is no real  significance to one day's partial relief 
at one or another checkpoint when  the rest of the year the checkpoint system 
becomes only more  sophisticated. They know that the "disengagement from Gaza" 
accompanying  the deepening of Israeli control over the occupied West Bank is 
not "a  step in the direction of peace."

They need to know that giving  Palestinians the right to take part in an 
election process in the PA is  nothing more than a symbolic gesture when in the 
same breath, a secret  decision by Israel enables it to steal private property, 
within the area  annexed by the country in 1967, from Palestinian West Bank 
residents, as  Meron Rapoport exposed last week in Haaretz.

With a systematic  methodology that raises the possibility that there is some 
conscious,  organized master plan, Israel continues the trend it began more 
than a  decade ago: By denying the Palestinians freedom of movement and the 
right  of residency in Jerusalem based on various excuses, Israel is striving 
to  
disconnect the West Bank from East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Jerusalem,  and 
its surrounding neighborhoods and villages that, like it, were annexed  to 
Israel.

By July, Israel plans to complete the procedure not only  with physical 
measures like constructing the wall, fence, obstacles and  barriers dividing 
neighborhoods, even houses in half and artificially,  finally separating 
"Jerusalem" 
from the "West Bank," but also with a  bureaucratic separation. As of July, 
Palestinian Jerusalemites will not be  allowed to go to Ramallah. That's when 
the wall in Jerusalem will be  completed, and the Qalandiya checkpoint will be 
turned into a form of a  "border terminal," even though it is far from the 
Green Line. Those who  want to go to Ramallah will have to ask for special 
permits, as has become  evident in recent days.

True, this is not new. In October 2000, the  Central Command's general issued 
an order prohibiting Israeli citizens and  residents from entering 
Palestinian controlled Area A. The explanation:  concern for their security. 
That order 
remains in effect to this day. In  principle, that also applies to Palestinian 
Jerusalemites, and is mostly  enforced on those who seek to enter besieged 
cities like Nablus today and  Jenin and Tul Karm at other times. It is not 
enforced for those going to  Ramallah, and usually not for those on their way 
to 
Bethlehem. Both  cities, together with Hebron, have deep family, economic and 
social ties  to Jerusalem. But Ramallah, in particular, and more so in recent 
years, is  intricately tied to Jerusalemites: They work in PA offices, NGOs, 
the 
 private sector. Many divide their lives between Ramallah and  Jerusalem.

The policy of disengagement is being applied slowly but  surely, just like 
the policy of breaking up the West Bank into  disconnected Palestinian 
enclaves. 
The Israelis raise security  explanations for far-reaching geographic changes 
and new bureaucratic  restrictions on Palestinians, adding more draconian 
rules and regulations.  It's not being done all at once, creating the illusion 
that it is  reversible, anaesthetizing the attention to what is being done. And 
when  they see there is no vehement reaction, they continue: enforcing the  
latest regulation on a new group of people, in other  places.

Experience shows that "asking for an entry permit" is not  as simple as it 
sounds. Asking does not mean getting automatically. Asking  means the Shin Bet 
will try to enlist collaborators in exchange for a  permit, asking means 
waiting days and weeks for an answer, wasting days in  lines and on the 
telephone, 
and then hearing that you don't have the right  to go to Ramallah because you 
did not prove that your presence there is  vital. That's beyond the humiliation 
involved in the very need to ask for  an Israeli permit in order to do the 
most natural things in the world:  visiting a sister and friends, going to work 
or the doctor, buying cheaper  produce in the market, finding a book in a 
bookstore, or hearing poet  Mahmoud Darwish give a poetry reading at the 
theater.

Experience  shows that the humiliation and difficulties involved in getting a 
permit  reduces the number of those seeking one. Ramallah could gradually 
empty  itself of Jerusalemites the way Nablus and Jenin and Gaza have ceased  
hearing the Jerusalem accent on their streets. Or alternatively, many  
Jerusalemites won't be able to give up their ties to Ramallah, and they  will 
do what, 
for decades, Israeli governments have been openly hoping  for: They'll give up 
their residency in Jerusalem completely. 
 
____________________________________
/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=531937



Plans for Massive Israeli  Land-grab in East Jerusalem Come to Light


A secret July 2004 Israeli cabinet decision, which has only recently  been 
publicized, is intended to steal hundreds of acres of East Jerusalem  property 
worth hundreds of millions of dollars from their rightful owners who  live in 
the West Bank.

The decision intends to dust off the long-shelved  and highly suspect â
Absentee Property Law,â which Israel passed in 1950 to  expropriate the land 
of 
Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes  when Israel was founded 
in 
1948.  People whose property is expropriated  under this law have no hope of 
appeal or compensation.

Many of the  so-called âabsenteesâ whose land will be transferred to the 
State of Israel live  only a few meters from their land, separated from it by 
Israelâs illegal  Annexation Wall.  Their names and addresses are well known, 
and 
their  property deeds prove their rightful ownership.

Former Israeli Justice  Minister Yossi Beilin, the leader of the Yahad party, 
equated the application of  the 54-year-old law to property theft.

While Israel has claimed  repeatedly that the Wall is only a temporary â
securityâ measure, the current  decision to annex the Palestinian land sliced 
away 
from the West Bank by the  Wall is a smoking gun; it is strong evidence that 
the Wall is intended for  permanent annexation purposes and to impose facts on 
the ground tantamount to de  facto borders.

Such unilateral actions effectively negate the possibility  for meaningful 
negotiations related to final-status issues in the future.   They are 
devastatingly damaging to prospects for peace and in direct  contravention of 
international law.

Specifically, the fourth Geneva  Convention, to which Israel is a high 
contracting party, states that âAny  destruction and/or confiscation by the 
occupying power of real or personal  property belonging individually or 
collectively 
to private persons, or to the  State, or to other public
authorities, or to social or cooperative  organizations, is prohibited.â

The lead editorial in the Israeli  newspaper Haaretz on January 21, 2005, 
called the decision âtheft as well as an  act of state stupidity of the 
highest 
order.â     
The Palestine Monitor - 27  January 2005
 
 
 
 
ABU MAZEN POISED TO
ACCEPT SHARON PLAN

_MIDDLEEAST.ORG_ (http://www.middleeast.org/)  - MER - Washington - 27  
January:    With no real Palestinian State any  longer possible west of the 
Jordan, 
the U.S. and Israel have worked long and  hard to get to the point where they 
could force a quisling Palestinian  leadership of their choosing into a kind 
of convoluted submission while  pretending it is an agreed settlement brought 
about by the 'Peace Process'.  By assassinating Ahmed Yassin and Yassir Arafat 
in 2004, and then by  manipulating the quick 'election' of Abu Mazen in 2005, 
Ariel Sharon in tandem  with the Americans has set the stage for this further 
attempted historic  deception and geopolitical triumph.    

American Secretary  of State Condoleeza Rice -- who received more negative 
confirmation votes in the  Senate this week than any Secretary of State in 
history since 1825 -- is rushing  to the region in a few days hoping to 
consolidate 
a quick deal before opposition  can swell and the realities of the situation 
become more starkly  understood.

Bottom line:   Abu Mazen and the key Palestinian in the background,  Nabil 
Shaath (the  long-time PA 'Foreign Minister' operative working closely with the 
Israelis and  the CIA), are poised to in effect accept the Sharon Plan for 
what will be called  a 'Temporary State' with 'Provisional Boundaries' in about 
25% of historic  Palestine.   Everywhere the Palestinian 'population centers', 
i.e.  Bantustans and Reservations in reality, will be surrounded by the 
Israeli army  which will continue to control all entry/exit and airspace of 
what is 
to be a  permanently cripped and controlled 'Palestinian state'.     

The plan is then to flood the Palestinian Bantustans with two things to  give 
this new arrangement a chance to work -- monies largely from Europe and the  
World Bank to make daily life a little better (not hard to do in view of how 
bad  things are) and guns supplied by Israel along with the U.S. and U.K. so 
P.A.  forces will be able to enforce an end to the Palestinian Intifada and in 
effect  become the Israeli police-force in the occupied territories (much 
harder to do  and quite likely to erupt at some point into civil war).

It is an  arrangement far worse than that rejected by the Palestinians when 
Yasser Arafat  was alive; but the powers to be hope to get away with it by 
repeatedly declaring  it is just a temporary State with just provisional 
borders 
and thus holding out  hope for something more 'on good behavior'.  

Meanwhile the actual  'on the ground' realities of the situation are quite 
bleak for the Palestinians  as Israeli settlements in the major areas continue 
to expand, Jerusalem is being  further disenfranchied of Arab people and 
property, the Apartheid Wall is being  completed, and Palestinians everywhere 
have 
been turned more than ever into a  modern-day kind of Indians on Reservations 
in what was once not that long ago  their own country.   


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism