Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: (MO) su Annapoli, il punto di vista di uno dei pochi israeliani non stronzi.

When the Roadmap is a One Way Street 
Israel's Strategy for Permanent Occupation
By JEFF HALPER
November 28, 2007 
From Tikkun: "After Annapolis" 
http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=20071125065746428
One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish
community of Israel is between those of the political
right, who want to maintain the settlements in East
Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to "redeem" the
Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those
of the left who seek a two-state solution with the
Palestinians and are thus willing to relinquish enough
of the "territories", if not all, in order that a
viable Palestinian state may emerge.
This is not really the case. Polls and the make-up of
the Israeli government suggest that perhaps a quarter
of Israeli Jews fall into the first group, the
die-hards, while not more than 10 per cent support a
full withdrawal from the occupied territories.
(Virtually no Israeli Jews use the term "occupation,"
which Israel denies it has.) The vast majority of
Israeli Jews, stretching from the liberal Meretz party
through Labour, Kadima and into the "liberal" wing of
the Likud, excepting only the religious parties and the
extreme right-wing led by former Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and the current minister of
strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, share a broad
consensus: for both security reasons and because of
Israel's "facts on the ground", the Arabs (as we
[Israelis] call the Palestinians) will have to settle
for a truncated mini- state on no more than 15-20 per
cent of the country between the Mediterranean and the
Jordan River.
What's more, it's agreed that the decision whether to
relinquish any territory and how much is an exclusively
Israeli decision. We may proffer to the Palestinians
some kind of a "generous offer" if they behave
themselves and it suits our purpose, but any initiative
in the direction of "peace" must be unilateral. The
Palestinians may indicate a preference, but the
decision is ours and ours alone. Our power, our
all-encompassing concern for security and the plain
fact that the Arabs just don't count (except as a
nuisance factor) limit any peace process to, at best, a
willingness to grant them a tiny Bantustan on four or
five cantons, all encircled by Israeli settlements and
the military. Israeli control of the entire Land of
Israel, whether for religious, national or security
reasons, is a given, never to be compromised.
This is, of course, completely unacceptable to the
Palestinians. That by itself doesn't matter, but it
does raise a fundamental problem. In any genuine
negotiations leading to just, sustainable and mutually
agreed-upon agreement, Israel would have to give up
much more than it is willing to do. Negotiations must
take place once in a while, if only to project an image
of Israel as a country seeking peace--Annapolis being
merely the latest charade--but they can never lead to
any real breakthrough because two- thirds of the Jewish
public support a permanent Israeli presence in the
occupied territories, civilian and military, that
forecloses a viable Palestinian state. How, then, does
Israel retain its major settlements, a "greater"
Jerusalem and control over territory and borders
without appearing intransigent? How can it maintain its
image as the only seeker of peace and the victim of
Arab terrorism, effectively concealing its own violence
and, indeed, the very fact of occupatio n in order to
shift the blame to the Palestinians?
The answer for the past 40 years of occupation is the
status quo, delay, while quietly expanding the
settlements and strengthening its grip on Judea and
Samaria (again, we do not use the terms "occupation" or
"occupied territories" in Israel, not to mention
"Palestinian"). Just look at the run-up to Annapolis
and the negotiations Israel is promising. Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert said recently that "Annapolis is a
landmark on the path to negotiations and of the genuine
effort to achieve the realization of the vision of two
nations: the State of Israel--the nation of the Jewish
people; and the Palestinian state--the nation of the
Palestinian people". Sounds good, doesn't it? Now look
at the pre-conditions Israel has imposed just in the
two weeks before Annapolis:
Redefining Phase 1 of the Road Map. The first phase of
the Road Map, the very basis of negotiations, calls for
Israel to freeze its settlement construction. That is
something Israel will obviously not do. So, on the
basis of a letter former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
received from President Bush in 2004--a fundamental
change in American policy that nevertheless does not
commit the other members of the Road Map "Quartet",
Europe, Russia and the UN--Israel announced that it
defines the areas considered "occupied" by the Quartet
as only those areas falling outside its major
settlement blocs and "greater" Jerusalem. Thus,
unilaterally, Israel (and the US apparently) reduced
the territory to be negotiated with the Palestinians
from 22 per cent to a mere 15 per cent, and that
truncated into fragmented cantons.
Requiring recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state."
The Palestinians are required to formally recognize the
state of Israel. They did so already in 1988 when they
accepted the two-state solution, at the outset of the
Oslo process and repeatedly over the past two decades.
Now comes a fresh demand: that before any negotiations
they recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Not only does
that introduce an entirely new element that Israel
knows the Palestinians will not accept, but it
prejudices the equal status of Palestinian citizens of
Israel, a full 20 per cent of the Israeli population.
This leads the way to transfer, to ethnic cleansing.
Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, recently told a
press conference that the future of Israel's Arab
citizens is in a future Palestinian state, not in
Israel itself.
Creating insurmountable political obstacles. Two weeks
before Annapolis was to convene, the Israeli
parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that a majority
of two-thirds would be required to approve any change
in the status of Jerusalem, an impossible threshold.
Delayed implementation. OK, the Israeli government
says, we'll negotiate. But the implementation of any
agreement will wait on the complete cessation of any
resistance on the part of the Palestinians. Given the
fact that Israel views any resistance, armed or
non-violent, as a form of terrorism, this erects yet
another insurmountable obstacle before any peace
process.
Declaring a "transitional" Palestinian state. If all
else fails--actually negotiating with the Palestinians
or relinquishing the occupation not being an
option--the US, at Israel's behest, can manage to skip
Phase 1 of the Road Map and go directly to Phase 2,
which calls for a "transitional" Palestinian state
before, in Phase 3, its actual borders, territory and
sovereignty are agreed upon. This is the Palestinians'
nightmare: being locked indefinitely in the limbo of a
"transitional" state. For Israel it is ideal, since it
offers the possibility of imposing borders and
expanding into the Palestinian areas unilaterally yet,
since its fait accompli is only "transitional," seeming
to conform to the Road Map's requirement to decide the
final issues through negotiations.
The end result, towards which Israel has been
progressing deliberately and systematically since 1967,
can only be called apartheid, which means "separation"
in Afrikaner, precisely the term Israel uses to
describe its policy (hafrada in Hebrew). And it is
apartheid in the strict sense of the term: one
population separating itself from the rest, then
dominating them permanently and institutionally through
a political regime like an expanded Israel locking the
Palestinians into dependent and impoverished cantons.
The overriding question for the Israeli government,
then, is not how to reach peace. If peace and security
were truly the issue, Israel could have had that 20
years ago if it would have conceded the 22 per cent of
the country required for a viable Palestinian state.
Today, when Israel's control is infinitely stronger,
why, ask the Israeli Jewish public and the government
it elects, should we concede anything significant? We
enjoy peace with Egypt and Jordan, and Syria is dying
to negotiate. We have relations with most Arab and
Muslim states. We enjoy the absolute and uncritical
support of the world's only superpower, supported by a
compliant Europe. Terrorism is under control, the
conflict has been made manageable, Israel's economy is
booming. What, ask Israelis, is wrong with this
picture?
No, the issue for Israel is rather how to transform its
Occupation from what the world considers a temporary
situation to a permanent political fact accepted by the
international community, de facto if need be or, if
apartheid can be finessed in the form of a two-state
solution, then formally. And here's the dilemma, and
the source of debate within the Israeli government:
does Israel continue with the strategy that has served
it so well these past 40 years, delaying or prolonging
negotiations so as to maintain the status quo, all the
while strengthening its hold over the Palestinian
territories or, at this unique but fleeting moment in
history when George Bush is still in office, does it
try to nail it all down, forcing upon the Palestinians
a transitional state within the framework of the Road
Map?
Olmert, following Sharon, is pushing for the former.
Netanyahu, Lieberman, the right-wing (including many in
Olmert's own party) and, significantly, Labour Chairman
and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, always a military
hawk, are resisting out of fear that even a process of
pretend negotiations might get out of hand, creating
expectations on Israel. Better, they say, to stay with
the tried-and-true policy of status quo which can, if
cleverly managed, extend indefinitely. Besides, Bush is
a lame duck, and no pressure will be put on Israel
until June 2009, at least six months after the next
American president is inaugurated, Democrat or
Republican. We're just fine until then; why rock the
boat? The only tricky time for Israel is the two years
in the midst of a presidential term. We can weather
that. Annapolis? We'll try cautiously for apartheid,
hoping that Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], prodded by
Quartet envoy Tony Blair, will play the role of
collaborator. If that doesn't work, well, status quo is
always a reliable default.
In the meantime, as long as the Israeli public enjoys
peace-and-quiet and a good economy, and as long as it
remains convinced that security requires Israel to
retain control of the territories, no pressure will
come from the home front for any meaningful change of
policy. Given this political landscape in Israel, in
the territories and abroad, it's hard for Israeli
leaders to conceal their ebullient feeling that,
whether formally or not, "we've won".
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate, with
the Palestinian peace activist Ghassan Andoni, for the
2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at
je...@icahd.org
.

AP ha scritto:
"di uno dei pochi israeliani non stronzi."
di' che lo fai apposta, almeno



come lo vuoi chiamare un regime segregazionista militare?

"uno dei pochi israeliani non stronzi"
e poi ti stupisci di essere chiamato razzista
N.