Issue #69
Last Update October 31, 2010
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
International Settlement Corridors by David Katz June 28, 2009 President Obama is pressing Israel to suspend the growth of settlements on the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu is resisting, as almost all previous Israeli governments have resisted such suggestions. New building for natural population growth must be allowed even in the event of a freeze of new settlements. Both Mr. Obama an d Mr. Netenyahu completely miss the point. The problem is not the size of the settlements, or even the number of the settlements; the problem is that the structures put in place to ensure the safety of the settlers make implementation of a two-state solution completely impossible, and serve to create hostility and friction during the occupation.
Palestinians have long complained that the settlements were illegal, and that much of the land on which they stand was expropriated from Palestinians, and thus stolen. Attacks have been made on some settlements, and settlers driving from their hilltop fortresses to Israel proper have been fired upon. (It is also true that settlers have attacked Palestinians, and have fired on them from moving cars.) In order to protect the settlers, Israeli troops have been stationed in the West Bank, Israeli settlers are routinely armed, and special corridors have been established between settlements and Israel. Palestinians are forbidden to travel on these corridors. Like the security wall that Israel is building (often on Palestinian land), the security corridors separate Palestinians from their orchards and fields, and make even the simplest trip to nearby villages or West Bank cities a nightmare of detours, checkpoints and humiliation.
Regardless of the fate of the settlements themselves, there can be no such thing as a Palestinian state unless the security corridors are removed. No citizen will believe that his state is sovereign as long as foreign checkpoints are in place, and as long a dwellers in his land are not subject to local authority. Netenyahu has stated that he would be willing to recognize a Palestinian state (disarmed), but that the Palestinians must first recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Is he willing to recognize Palestine's right to exist as an Arab state? To do that, he must abandon the security corridors, leave the Palestinians with contiguous territory, and inform the settlers that if they remain (and if they can prove legitimate title to their land), they will be subject to Palestinian authority and law.
The West Bank archipelago, where islands of Palestinian land are separated by rivers of security corridors, is not a state and never can be. The willingness to face this fact is the first test of the honesty with which Israel will approach any future negotiations.
The Palestinians themselves have an honesty test. The willingness, after years of defeat, expropriation and humiliation, to nevertheless allow their neighbors to live in peace, is their test.
The mirror images are striking, and not often recognized by either party. Israel was not a state before 1948. The events of the previous decades forged a nationalism within a scattered people. The Israeli claim that there was no Palestinian state prior to their occupation, that what is now considered as the basis of such a state was really parts of Jordan and Egypt that these larger countries refused to accept responsibility for after their defeat, is wrong: just as the disasters of the 1930s and 40s generated Israeli nationalism in European and middle eastern Jews, so the disasters since 1948 have generated nationalism in the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. They are no longer Jordanians and Egyptians, they are Palestinians.
New York Stringer is published by NYStringer.com. For all communications, contact David Katz, Editor and Publisher, at david@nystringer.com