« Sunday cartoon | Main | its subsidies by another name »
September 15, 2003
circles of violence
This editorial in The Australian on the decision by the Israeli cabinet to force Palestinian President Yasser Arafat into exile is standardly pro Israel. It follows Ariel Sharon's line that Arafat is the central problem. There is very little criticism of Israel here even though the talk is liquidation.
What the editorial ignores is the blindness of the Israeli leadership to the root of Israel's problem: namely, Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. As Helena Cobban says:
"Since then [1978], the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories--including East Jerusalem, which many Israeli tallies of this figure don't even bother to include these days-- has soared to more than 400,000. Four million-plus Palestinian refugees still languish in their forced exile. Three million Palestinians live in the walled-off Bantustanettes that the occupation authority has devised for them..."
Hence the Palestinian suicide bombings are a sympton, not the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like Israel the Palestinians want peace and security.
What is ignored by The Australian is made explicit by Amin Sokal in today's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, p. 63.) That Ariel Sharon needs to be reigned in by the US. Sharon is effectively undermining the road map as uses targeted assassinations and collective punishment of the Palestinian people to push on with his long-term goal of repressing the Palestinian people to the point of accepting a peace settlement on his terms.
Sokal argues that Sharon justifies this by exploiting America's war on terror n by blurring the differences between the international terrorism practiced by al Qaeda and the violent actions of militant Palestinan groups.
The Australian does not see the circle of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 15, 2003 08:23 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/620
Comments
"the blindness of the Israeli leadership to the root of Israel's problem: namely, Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands"
Well maybe the Israeli leadership isn't blind... maybe they just know the situation a heck of a lot better than you do...
In particular they know that no Palestinian leader has ever said that the struggle will end with the West Bank and Gaza.
I mean just look at any Palestinian website...
Posted by: the shadow at September 23, 2003 01:35 AM
Shadow,
good point. I deal with it in a recent post entitled Michael Walzer interview on September 19th.
It divides the Palestinian and the Israeli positions into different strands and positions.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 23, 2003 10:08 AM