by Jerry Levin
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine
January 3, 2006
Every time my wife, Sis, and I leave
Palestine, we think the situation couldn't get any worse while we are gone.
But it does! And when we return, we think that it couldn't get any worse. But
it does!
Once again, our time away was no exception. Nothing during the past two and
a half months has changed the dreary conviction that today is worse than yesterday
for the Palestinians and the Israelis trying to help them overcome the longest
lasting occupation in a century; and tomorrow will be worse than today. This
is the truth of the situation, despite recent events - such as the retreat from
Gaza - which has been characterized as hopeful by those who innocently don't
know any better or - more to the point - by those who craftily actually do know
better than that.
Those last are stealth hawks, mean birds of a feather in a position to affect
public opinion who try to portray the sow's ear of the relentless downsizing
of the West Bank and its many disconnected areas as really a silk purse. Stealth
hawks are birds of prey adept at cooing like doves for propaganda purposes while
at the same time cynically masterminding the continuing relentless territorial
inroads too often currently taking place in the West Bank.
For instance where Palestinian aspirations for parity with Israel are concerned
with respect to 1) reversing the occupation and negotiating a roll back to something
approximating the 1967 borders, as well as 2) eliminating the army-backed police-backed
settler menace, there is no hopeful news to report. But the stealth hawks would
have us think otherwise. It takes monumental chutzpah to term recent events
taking place in the West Bank beneath the radar of main stream mass circulation
press coverage as dovish, but that is precisely what the stealth hawks, anxious
to finesse the institutionalizing of the galloping annexation of half the West
Bank (or more!) into the State of Israel, have been successful at doing. Events
in the territories can only be termed hopeful by those Israelis and likeminded
fellow travelers throughout the world who, despite the dark at the end of the
tunnel, actually would have us believe there is light.
The so called peace process that continued while we were gone was nothing more
than the same old "piece" process during which the West Bank has been
and is inexorably being reduced by half. And when one considers that since 1967
the West Bank and Gaza have constituted only twenty two percent of the land
area that once was all Palestine, what is being left to the Palestinians will
not be much more than nine or ten percent. And the growth of the number of settlers
currently living within the original borders of the West Bank is exponential.
From the end of the 1967 Six Day war until Oslo in the mid nineteen nineties
(about twenty eight years), the number grew from approximately zero to 250,000.
Since then the number has shot up to around 425,000.
Every Israeli political leader in Israel with the presumed ability to form a
government is a stealth hawk. For instance, phoenix-like Ariel Sharon is being
lionized by other stealth hawks for dumping Likud, the right wing political
party that he almost rebuilt in his own image but not quite, and forming instead
Kadima, a new Sharon-centric political party being termed excitedly as center
right. But a center right party headed by Sharon is not good news for Palestine.
Kadima has been created in order to provide a more amenable political base for
tough but realistic Israeli colonialists who believe in Sharon's brand of iron
fisted bloody unilateral pragmatism: a pragmatism embracing strategic military
retreats (disengagement) that mean probably the abandoning of fringe settlements
that he expects in time will lead to a piece of paper entitled "Final Status
Agreement."
But Sharon style pragmatism is giving the concept a bad name, because the Final
Status Agreement he envisions is one that will institutionalize the already
de facto annexation of some of the most productive Palestinian agricultural
areas in the West Bank and much of its water resources that already are under
complete Israeli control. Such heavy handedness will inevitably provoke official
Palestinian reluctance to sign on the dotted line which will be duly characterized
by the stealth hawks and parroted elsewhere as selfish anti-dove intractability.
But…am I making too much of Sharon-style pragmatic cosmetic disengagement
unilateralism? If the New York Times reporter in the November 22nd edition got
his quote right, I think not. With respect to borders, Sharon described what
he is after this way: "A peace agreement in which WE (capitalization added)
will determine the permanent borders of the State." See why I call it a
piece process. If you think by "we" Sharon intends Final Status Agreement
negotiations to be a cozy win-win conflict resolution exercise with Palestinian
opposite numbers, just remember what Tonto said to the Lone Ranger when the
two were trapped by 1,000 very angry Sioux, "What do you mean "we"
masked man?"
Despite the fact that the Labor Party's new chairman has been described as "dovish"
by mass circulation news organizations around the world, the real fact is that
where the piece of Final Status Agreement paper is concerned, his vision is
quite similar to Sharon's. One of Amir Peretz earliest statements concerning
the occupation, after his elevation to the Labor top spot, was to endorse the
continued expansion of Maale Adumim, the huge settlement which is in the process
of being inexorably and contiguously linked to East Jerusalem. Haaretz quoted
him on November 11th as saying, "Maale Adumim is part of one of the settlement
blocs which should be kept under any final-status agreement." Just from
this statement alone, Peretz would have been better described as a wolf in dove's
clothing. But stealth hawk will do.
Although he may differ somewhat from Sharon in degree as to how much of Palestine
should disappear behind annexation walls and fences, Labor and Kadima nevertheless
are probably going to be essentially two political stealth hawk peas sharing
space in the next national unity coalition pod. Here's what I mean about that.
Take a look at the annexation numbers below. They have to do with the number
of settlers living in the largest settlement blocs in the West Bank. Both Sharon
and Labor consider them nonnegotiable.
A-Ariel 38,000 settlers
B-Maale Adumim 33,000 settlers
C-Gush Etzion 41,000 settlers
Nonnegotiable Settlement Blocs A, B, C 112,000 46% of 242,000 Total West Bank
settlers
Remaining West Bank Settlers 130,000 54% of 242,000 Total West Bank Settlers
While Peretz and Sharon see eye to eye on pulling West Bank settlement blocs
A, B. and C comprised of almost half the current total of West Bank setters
into Israel, Sharon has also voiced a similar conviction about three other settlement
blocs (D, E, and F below) which, as can be seen would swell the total current
settler nonnegotiable population to more than fifty percent.
D-Givat Ze'ev 13,000 settlers
E-Kirat Arba 6,500 settlers
F-Hebron 450 settlers
Nonnegotiable Settlement Blocs D, E, F 19,950 08% of 242,000 Total West Bank
Settlers
Nonnegotiable Settlement Blocs A, B, C, D, E, F 131,950 54% of 242,000 Total
West Bank Settlers
Remaining West Bank Settlers 110,050 46% of 242,000 Total West Bank Settlers
Even if blocs D, E, and F should not disappear behind annexation walls and fences
the magnitude of the U. S. backed land grab, give or take a few acres, is enormous
and contemporarily unprecedented in both its scope and flouting of international
agreements to which the U. S. and Israel are signatories. But the vast scale
of the colonizing skyrockets when East Jerusalem numbers are included. And they
need to be included because, although East Jerusalem lies on land conquered
in the 1967 war, it was unilaterally annexed almost immediately in spite of
and in defiance of post World War II international agreements concerning conquered
territory. What was once Arab (as was all of the West Bank and Gaza) East Jerusalem
is now 46% Israeli.
Nonnegotiable East Jerusalem Settlers 184,000 settlers
Total West Bank/East Jerusalem Settlers 426,000..settlers
Remaining West Bank Settlers (110,050) settlers
Nonnegotiable East Jerusalem/West Bank Settlers 315,950 74% of 426,000 Total
East Jerusalem/West Bank Settlers
Taken together the fate of only 26% of all Israelis who moved into East Jerusalem
and the West Bank appears to be questionable and possibly subject to removal
in connection with future disengagement schemes. And in the meantime it is going
to take a continued massive military presence to keep the "piece"
for that 26%. So the occupation continues: augmented and reinforced by the troops
and war material freed up after the retreat from Gaza. For it wasn't out of
the goodness of a dovish heart that Sharon folded his tents. It was the drain
on material and soldier power needed to enforce the on going occupation and
whittling away of the West Bank that caused him to steal away.
A few hours after arriving back in Hebron, I talked with a young Israeli soldier
who had been part of the Gaza pull out. Now he was guarding Gates Four and Five
leading into Hebron's Old City. Since I had been gone I discovered that the
army had installed a turnstile to slow down the number of Palestinians leaving
or entering the Old City at one time. I asked him if he liked what he was being
ordered to do.
"I don't."
"Why?"
"The settlers. They make too much problems"
Then a big surprise. "You know I was talking to my father on my cell phone
right from this gate," he said. "I told him where I was: at this gate
right here; and he said 'that's where I was when I was a soldier in Hebron long
time ago.'"
"Your father was a guard in this same place?"
"Yes. That's what he told to me. And you know something?"
"What?"
"I am not married yet. But some day I will be."
"And?"
"I will have a son. And he will be here guarding this gate. Just like my
father and me."