Israeli oppression thrives because of the world's indifference [and US aid]

Israeli oppression thrives
because of the world¹s
indifference

by Greg Felton

"Covenants without the Sword are but Words and of no Strength to
secure a Man at all." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

For those of you who believe that a rational, negotiated solution to the
violence in Occupied Palestine is possible, I have news. It ain't gonna
happen.

There is no "peace" to negotiate, and no amount of wishful thinking,
pacifist sloganeering, earnest protestations or diplomatic niceties can
disguise the cruel absurdity of the "peace process."

David Ben Gurion, Israeli's first prime minister, laid it out with brutal
honesty. "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement
with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God
promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not
theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but
was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we
have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

Why indeed? Why should the victim of theft negotiate with the thief?
All that does is legitimize the crime by making the victim and assailant
moral equals. Yet, absurdly, this is precisely what the civilized nations
of the world expect the Palestinians to do: Sit down with the criminal
Israel and legitimize a decades-long theft of life, land and property.

In that light, what did Foreign Minister John Manley's visit to the region
in mid-May really amount to? Officially, the trip was declared a
success--no verbal blunders, no aggrieved parties, no lost luggage. All
in all a much better show than the foot-in-mouth-plagued performance
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien put on last year.

Realistically, though, it was an example of moral cowardice from a
country that prides itself on its principles but has not the courage to
stand behind them.

During his trip, Manley praised the report of the investigating team led
by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. "I believe the parties should
use the recommendations contained in this document as a basis to
end the senseless cycle of violence," he said later in a ministry press
release. "The path to ending such senseless acts lies not through
escalation of the violence but through a negotiated peace settlement."

No amount of casuistry, dissembling or disinformation can lend
credence to the fiction that Israel wants peace. It won't even define its
borders, lest that hamper its creeping expansionism. What¹s more,
Israel has accepted binding UN Security Council Resolution 242, which
mandates that it give back all the Occupied Territories. What's left to
negotiate? Nothing.

Manley also rightly praised one of the report's key findings: the cause
of the violence is the building and expansion of (illegal) Jewish
settlements on Arab land. At a joint news conference with Manley,
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel has no plans to
expand the settlements, but made it clear that the government did not
rule out their natural [sic] expansion. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (né
Shinerman) has made no such promise.

Did Manley stand up to Peres and declare Israel the aggressor? No,
but he did call upon the Palestinian authority to stop the violence. "I
don't see how an Israeli government could sustain a unilateral
cessation of the hostilities without something reciprocal... It's simply
going to have to happen."

Manley never explains what the Palestinians have to gain by stopping,
At least while the violence is overt, they can force Israel to
demonstrate its cruelty to the whole world. (During the period of the
"peaceful" Oslo agreement, we should remember that Israel quietly
acquired 52 percent of its hold of the Occupied Territories.)

For an oppressed people, an honest war is preferable to an ignoble
peace, and this politically inconvenient fact is what drives Israel and its
American stooges to stop the fighting. They¹re trying to return to the
advice Theodore Herzl gave in 1895 regarding the Zionist tactic for
physically evicting the Arabs from Palestine: "[S]pirit the penniless
population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the
process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried
away discreetly and circumspectly."

Peace will only be possible when the world acts to compel Israel to be
accountable to international law. But countries that are content to
wring their hands in impotent indignation and utter banalities about
"peace" and "negotiations," are abetting Israel's dispossession of the
Palestinians. In short, Canada, by its inaction, is abetting a war crime.

Mr. Greg Felton is a Canadian editorialist on international
politics, especially the Middle East. He can be reached at
gfelton [at] mediamonitors.org