Israeli Gaza pullout

[LalaMimi]

Two more articles, one by Mustafa Baghouti, the other by Tanya Reinhart.

Make sure 'Gaza first' is not 'Gaza last'
By Mustafa Barghouthi
International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2005


RAMALLAH, West Bank As Palestinian factions vie for credit for Israel's disengagement from Gaza, many forget that the success really belongs to the ordinary men, women and children of Palestine who have remained in their homeland during 38 years of devastating occupation and clung to the belief in the justice of their cause. The disengagement is a direct result of their patience and resilience, and now the occupation has only one direction to go - backward.


Serious risks and challenges lie ahead, however. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has learned that there is a price to pay for oppressing and dispossessing the Palestinian people. But instead of embracing a negotiated peace based on international law, he has used limited tactical unilateral actions to deflect attention in other directions.


His tactics have laid three main challenges in front of the Palestinian people.


First, Palestinian mismanagement of the Gaza Strip would encourage critics to claim that Palestinians are unfit for self-rule.


We can avoid this by holding fair democratic elections in the legislative council, municipalities and all representative bodies, making sure competition between factions is expressed only through the ballot box, in a peaceful and pluralistic manner. Forcing opinions on people using violence, intimidation, favoritism and patronage must be avoided at all costs.


Rumors that the evacuated lands might be monopolized by influential members of the Palestinian political establishment can easily be dispensed with if the Palestinian Authority follows the rule of law with complete transparency when allocating the lands. Privately owned land must be returned to its rightful owners, and public lands must remain under public domain to be used for the public good.


Second, many fear that Israel's "disengagement" is nothing more than a redeployment that will render Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza impossible. If Israel removes its settlers and soldiers but maintains control over all access to Gaza by land, sea and air, the strip will remain an isolated, impoverished prison. Palestinians must insist on complete Palestinian control over the Gaza coastline and the border with Egypt, with no Israeli interference or supervision.


Third, Sharon's attempt to use the disengagement to cut Gaza off from the West Bank and freeze the peace process indefinitely presents the biggest challenge.


Further delay gives Sharon time to impose more facts on the ground that prejudice final-status negotiations. By continuing to build the Wall, expand settlements and slice East Jerusalem off the political map, Sharon is attempting to impose a unilateral final resolution that is unacceptable to the Palestinian people and at odds with international law.


Sharon's vision of bartering Gaza for East Jerusalem and vast and vital areas of the West Bank would destroy the dream of Palestinian statehood and replace it with a nightmare of isolated, impoverished cantons, similar to the bantustans that black South Africans rejected under apartheid. It could mean a third intifada.


After the disengagement, Sharon faces a precarious internal political situation. Those who seek peace must immediately act to ensure that the redeployment from Gaza transitions into a comprehensive withdrawal from all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. International law unequivocally states that the settlements in Gaza have no legitimacy. The settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are held under the same illegal belligerent occupancy and must likewise be dismantled and evacuated.


To become agents of our own destiny, Palestinians must follow three steps. The first is to call for an international peace conference like the one held in Madrid in 1991. This will end the political freeze that Sharon is trying to impose. It will open for discussion critical issues such as the East Jerusalem settlements, final borders and the rights of refugees. It will engage the international community in the negotiations, which Israel has long sought to prevent. And, most important, it will re-establish international law as the basis by which the Palestinian/Israeli conflicts must be solved.


The second step is to take the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel's Wall is contrary to international law to the United Nations and demand that the ruling be enforced by nonviolent means such as sanctions until Israel complies.


Finally, the nonviolent struggle against the Wall and settlements must continue in Palestine and around the world in order to maintain strong grassroots and civil society pressure against Israel's illegal policies.


Today we and all who have stood with us in our struggle for peace and freedom celebrate the removal of illegal settlements from Gaza. But we must remain vigilant in order to harness the momentum of this process and take it to its logical conclusion - a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.


(Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, was a candidate in the Palestinian presidential elections in January. )


IHT Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune |
http://www.iht.com


--------------------------------------


How we left Gaza
Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, August 18, 2005.
Translated from Hebrew by Edeet Ravel


We will never know with certainty what took place in the mind of Ariel Sharon in February 2004, when he first declared, without consulting anyone, that he is ready to evacuate the Jewish settlements in Gaza. But if we try to put together the pieces of the disengagement puzzle, the scenario that makes most sense is that Sharon believed that this time, as before, he would find a way of evading the plan. This would explain, for example, why the Gaza settlers have not yet received compensation money and why, as the Saturday Supplement of Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot revealed on August 5, almost no steps have been taken to prepare for their absorption into Israel. (1)


Sharon had good reason to believe that he would succeed in his avoidance tactics. In the previous round, when confronted with the Bush administration’s road map, he committed himself to a cease fire, during which Israel was to revert to the status quo of pre- September 2000, freeze settlement construction and remove outposts. None of this was carried out. Sharon and the army claimed that Mahmud Abbas (in the previous round) was not trustworthy and had failed to rein in Hamas. The army continued its assassination policy and succeeded in bringing the Occupied Territories to an unprecedented boiling point, followed by the inevitable Palestinian terror attacks that shattered the cease fire. During the entire time, the first-term Bush administration stood by Sharon’s side and dutifully echoed all his complaints against Abbas.


During the current period of calm, the Israeli army also continued with incursions into towns, arrests and targeted assassinations. It seemed as if the next terrorist attack, in the wake of which the calm would explode, was imminent, and the Israeli press was full of details outlining the “Fist of Iron” operation, which was expected this summer in Gaza. But the Bush administration suddenly changed direction. While Israel continued to declare that Abbas was not fulfilling his task, the Bush administration insisted repeatedly that Abbas must be given a chance. What had changed?


Until this turn-around, there was general agreement in Israel that there had never been a U.S. president who was friendlier towards Israel than George W. Bush. Presumably no one thought that a love of Jews on the part of the evangelical Bush was behind this support. But there was a feeling in Israel that with its superior air force, Israel was a huge asset in the global war that Bush had declared in the Middle East. With the euphoria of the power that was felt at the time, it seemed as if Afghanistan and Iraq were already “in our hands” and now we would proceed together towards Iran and maybe even Syria.


But in early 2005, the wheels began to turn the other way. The United States was sinking in the mire of Iraq incurring defeats and casualties. Iran, which after the war with Iraq was ready for any terms of surrender, drew encouragement from Iraq’s resistance and from its ties with the Shiite militia. The oil agreements with China gave a boost to its economy and its status. Suddenly the possibility of an attack on Iran didn’t seem as certain. It turned out that even the most advanced weapons may not suffice to bring to their knees entire regions which the U.S. was eyeing. In the meantime, support for Bush had sunk to under forty percent and after each world terrorist attack, one heard the paired words, Iraq and Palestine. Bush will not give up on Iraq so fast. But the headache of Palestine, he really doesn't need.


Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. steamroller has been moving steadily. First the all-powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S. was quietly neutralized. Two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have been indicted on charges of assisting the transferring of classified information to an Israeli representative. If convicted, this could spell the end of AIPAC and the entire lobby. In the meantime, they will have to sit quietly, regardless of Bush’s actions towards Israel.


The next move was to freeze military support in Israel under cover of the China arms sales crisis. It would have been possible to handle this pesky problem with one small blow, as in the past, but the U.S. imposed real sanctions this time. Contracts for the purchase of military arms were frozen, and the U.S. suspended cooperation on development projects. In Washington, the doors were closed on Israeli military officers.


Under these circumstances, the declared date of the disengagement approached. In light of the open preparations in Israel for a military operation, suspicions grew in the U.S. administration that Sharon would not carry out the plan. According to the New York Times of August 7, the Bush administration exerted pressure to prevent this from happening, and to prohibit the military operation. On July 21, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice arrived in Jerusalem for an unfriendly, hard-line visit. The New York Times reported remarks made by Middle East Security Coordinator General William Ward: "General Ward, a careful man, confirmed that two weeks ago, American pressure helped stay the Israeli military when it was poised to go into Gaza... He predicted that there could be similar pressure should the need arise. 'That scenario is a scenario that none of us would like to see,' he said. 'There is a deep realization on the part of the Israeli leadership, including the military, about the consequences of that type of scenario.' " (2)


Over the years we have become accustomed to the idea that “US. pressure” means declarations that have no muscle behind them. But suddenly the words have acquired new meaning. When the U.S. really does exert pressure, no Israeli leader would dare defy its injunctions (and certainly not Netanyahu). And so we have pulled out of Gaza. If the U.S. continues to lose ground in Iraq, maybe we will be forced to pull out of the West Bank as well.


(1) According to the article, from the very beginning, back in 2004, “the Prime Minister rebuffed the recommendation of [Major General Giora] Eiland, [National Security Advisor and Head of the IDF’s disengagement Planning Branch] and decided that the government will not build temporary housing.”


(2) Steven Erlanger, The New York Times, August 7, 2005

[voltaires_priest]

Originally posted by rocam


I would really hate to believe that the sentence above is a justification for their treason. Let’s make one thing clear, we are talking about traitors here not just lobbyists ok??

As far as I can see, you haven't cited a single case of treason, which is a specific offence and does not refer to all cases of info-selling or even espionage. There's a big difference between AIPAC soliciting info (which may be dodgy, but isn't treason) and someone like Lord Haw-Haw, who actively worked for the destruction of his own nation in a war situation.


V

[rocam]

V,

Those guys from Aipac have not been indicted for selling candy. The indictment( http://www.antiwar.com/rep2/Franklin...Indictment.pdf ) says that they are accused of communicating national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it and of conspiring to communicate classified information to agent of foreign government.

Page 6 of the indictment states that Lawrence A Franklin, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully conspire, confederate and agree together and with others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury to commit the following offenses AGAINST the United States. But hey if that is not treason to you then we obviously look at things differently.

Nice talking to you anyway…

[voltaires_priest]

According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law:

Treason: the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war; specifically : the act of levying war against the United States or adhering to or giving aid and comfort to its enemies by one who owes it allegiance —trea·son·ous /-&s/ adjective


So yes, it's dodgy, no, it's not treason.


V

[rocam]

V,

You’ll have to excuse my French then because I still tend to translate certain words from French to English. If you look up synonyms of trahison you will get words like: crime, duperie, duplicité, déloyauté, forfait, félonie, inconstance, infidélité, lâcheté, tromperie, viol, violation and for the word traitre: dangereux, délateur, déloyal, espion,, infidèle, mouchard to cite a few.

So let’s not get out of the subject by discussing the definition of the words I chose, instead, we should stay focused on the points we were discussing which were the direct and indirect involvement of Israel in American politics.

Without focusing solely on the case I posted (I previously said I can look up others) I would like to know what kind of thoughts go through your mind when you read things like that? What could possibly motivate so called Americans to divulge secret information to an “ally”.

[voltaires_priest]

No worries on the language point. I wish I could write so articulately as you do, in any language other than English

On the main point, I think they all have their own motives. Some will do it through belief in this or that political cause (they may be Likudniks themselves etc), others through some form of self interest (ie they've been offered something).


V

[rocam]

V,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. Nice talking to you