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July 16, 2005
Israel: thinking differently in Australia
The discourse on Israel in Australia is broadening with posts such as this by Evan Jones over at Alert and Alarmed and by this by Antony Lowenstein. These posts challenge the hegemony of the neo-con discourse of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) that sanctions the harsh neo-colonial Israeli measures against the Palestinians in the occupied territories and acted as an apologist for the settler movement.
It has always suprised me how much Australians have gone along with this conservative Jewish discourse with its hostility to those sympathetic to Palestinian national aspirations; even though they are aware that the settler movement is a land grab, which has been subsidised and legitimated by the Jewish Israeli state. In doing so these Australians have supported, and been comfortable, with the idea of Israeli sovereignty over all of Palestine and with the completion of the settlement grid is a major element.
Though Israel is effectively a client state of the US, it has had a lot of say in the way empire functions in the Middle East.
The US supports the two-state solution as a way to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet it knows that this probably means that the Palestinians will eventually end up with only 12-15 percent of their land, made up of disjointed ghettoes over which they will have no effective sovereignty.
That is neo-colonialism is it not?
Does that not mean that the conditions for an independent Palestinian state have been killed off by the inexorable and irreversible advance of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza? Does that mean that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an idea, and a possibility, whose time has passed? Does that now mean that a single, secular polity that would encompass both Israel and the Occupied Territories is now looking increasingly attractive?
Does that mean that the one-state solution, in whatever form (binational or ethnically cleansed), is now the only option. Does that mean that that Israel should confront its obsolete ethno-nationalism and face a post-Zionist vision for the country, however hard that might be. The alternative --the forced transfer of Palestinians out of the territory---does not look to be attractive.
An argument for such a singular secular entity.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 16, 2005 11:46 PM
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