Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ha'aretz - critica alla 'volontà i pace' israeliana'

Ri-posto da it.cultura.ebraica 
Attenzione : H'aretz è uno dei principlai organi di stampa israeliani.
Non è Indymedia nè Liberazione nè il Manifesto.
Puo' essere interessante quando si parla degli sforzi di pace
israeliani
Thursday, February 13, 2003 Adar1 11, 5763 Israel Time:  14:46
(GMT+2)  
 
Ha'aretz
 
    Last update - 02:12 12/02/2003 
 
 
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=261904
The myth of the state and the reality of the annexation 
 
By Amira Hass 
 
 
 
 
The conventional wisdom in Israel is that in 2000, the Palestinians
rejected the "generous" Israeli offer for a permanent solution and its
readiness for a Palestinian state, and then the Palestinians initiated
the outbreak of the bloody conflict. According to that same belief,
many Israelis continue to support the establishment of a Palestinian
state, even now - but not before the Palestinians stop the terrorism. 
That belief plays an important role in the media and political
propaganda effort made by Israel - meaning the IDF - in the West Bank
and Gaza, along the lines of: the Palestinians started it, so they can
suffer. 
How absurd. During the decade of negotiations, which began in 1991
with the Madrid Conference, the idea of a "Palestinian state" as a
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won ever-increasing
numbers of supporters in Israel, and at the very least became a
legitimate issue for discussion in the political arena, as it never
had been before. But at the same time, the Palestinian lands earmarked
for that state shrank, and were carved up and divided. It's all been
documented and reported. But like now, back then, most Israelis never
went to the territories. Therefore everything that took place was
abstract. A bypass road? Land expropriations? Settlement expansion?
Uprooted trees? Closure? What's all that compared to talk of Israeli
readiness for concessions in some undefined future. Thus the myths
became tangible and real - the myth of concessions like the myth of
support for a Palestinian state. And those myths continue to feed the
nearly unshakable support for the Israeli military policy in the
territories. 
In January 1991, when Israel began using closures, both to deny
freedom of movement for Palestinians into Israel and between the West
bank and Gaza, it was perceived by many as "a return to the Green
Line." Very quickly it turned out the Green Line was back when it came
to Palestinian travel, but for Israeli Jews, it was erased: the
"decade of peace" was characterized by unceasing settlement expansion,
and the doubling of the number of settlers in the West Bank and Gaza
(not counting the areas annexed to Jerusalem) while swallowing up tens
of thousands of dunam of land vital for Palestinian planning and
development. The large settlement "blocs," about which there's an
Israeli consensus that they will be annexed to Israel and not given
up, carve the West Bank into zones. During the "decade of peace" huge
areas in the Jordan Valley and southern West Bank were declared
"closed military zones," making it possible to evict Bedouin shepherds
and farmers from the lands they had lived on for decades. 
The annexation ambitions were made clear in the interim agreements.
First, there was no definition of the areas from which Israel was
meant to withdraw the army in the "redeployment," signaling that there
would be endless foot-dragging at every stage of the negotiations over
every enclave assigned to the Palestinians for civilian development.
Secondly, the occupied area was divided into three imaginary areas -
A, B, and C. In area C, under full Israeli military and civilian
control, Israeli construction was accelerated on huge bypass roads and
inside the settlements. On the eve of the second intifada, some 60
percent of the West Bank was defined as Area C, meaning off-limits to
Palestinian planning and development. 
When the intifada broke out, the army and settlers worked together to
cut off Palestinians from their lands and to tear up what they had
planted. Now, the construction of the separation wall involves more
land expropriations and destruction of tens of thousands of dunam of
farm land, annexing some 30 water wells, and cutting off thousands of
people from their land. In crowded Gaza, huge agricultural areas,
whether destroyed by bulldozers or not, have become fields of death:
the settlements, after all, were put in the heart of the agricultural
areas. Anyone appearing in one of those fields is shot, according to
the army's rules of engagement. And half of the Gaza coastline, the
only escape from the crowded cities and refugee camps, has been
blocked to Palestinians. 
The Israeli tendency is to regard this process as practically
predetermined - Israeli responses only meant to counter the terrorism.
It's convenient to forget that when the closure order was given in
1991, it wasn't because of mass suicide bombings in Israel, even
though access to Israeli cities was far easier then than it is now. It
is easy to forget the expansion of the settlements. 
It is easy to say that the enormous, painful expropriations of
Palestinian land for the separation wall - and the fences around all
the settlements - are only for security reasons. It's much more
difficult to see the truth - which has perhaps been the intention
since 1994: to use the cover of the myth, the negotiations, and the
security talk, to reduce to a minimum, the necessary areas that remain
for independent Palestinian development, and with Israeli military
force, make the Palestinians accept a "state" that more or less
resembles Avigdor Lieberman's cantons plan. 
As in the Oslo years, most Israelis ignore the fact that the Israeli
policy, of building in the large settlements, not the small ones, and
expropriation of land along the separation wall, foil any peace
agreement that is not imposed or surrendered to, based on a real
solution of two states.
 
 
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La libertà è libertà di dire che due più due fa quattro.
Concessa questa libertà, tutte le altre ne seguono.
George Orwell, 1984

 By Amira Hass
Autrice gia' nota per le sue posizioni contro il governo israeliano :)
Ne dice di tutti i colori :)
Abbastanza noiosa.
-Stefano