So every once in a while, someone publishes a diary claiming that all Kossacks, and all liberals, should enthusiastically support Israel. In this diary I lay out rather coarsely why I disagree.
In particular, I respond to an article just up on Yahoo, claiming that 40% or so of all the land Israel has recently stolen for settlements was private property owned by Palestinians.
On Yahoo! News:
JERUSALEM - Nearly 40 percent of West Bank settlements are built on private land seized from Palestinians, an Israeli watchdog group said Tuesday — challenging the government's long-standing assertion the communities were built only on unclaimed territory.
Citing leaked Israeli military documents, Peace Now unveiled a report it said showed settlements were built on Palestinian property seized by the army long after Israel's Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1979.
"We are talking about an institutional land grab," Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the group, told reporters in Jerusalem.
So this is a brief diary, inspired by this article, laying out a few thoughts on Israel and her treatment of her neighbors. Please note that I will lay out a pretty one-sided treatment of the issue, and one that is far from comprehensive.
Point #1: it's all about the land. Little else matters. Israel's existential security would matter if it were threatened--it is not (at least not in the near future, and definitely not by Palestine). War and violence take place when they are viewed as in at least one party's interest. Let's have a quick look at Israel's and Palestine's interests.
Israel: bargaining for peace means sacrificing land and authority, while war ensures the ability to gain more land, and maintain ultimate authority. War with Palestine is in Israel's interest.
Palestine: continuation of the status quo guarantees Palestine continued loss of land, continued economic decimation, and bloodshed. The only thing Palestine gains by fighting back is a feeling that they haven't completely submitted, they haven't completely given up. War with Israel is not in Palestine's interest.
Point #2: continued war with Palestine benefits Israel by yielding more land and continued power, and only hurts Palestine's interests.
So when it appears as though Israel will take any opportunity to militarily engage the Palestinians, maybe this is entirely logical. By beating up on Palestine, Israel can get more land and continued absolute power. It is in their interest to keep beating up on the Palestinians--it allows them to cement their grip on, and even add to, all of the land they have stolen in the West Bank, 40% of which was private property owned by the Palestinians per the article quoted above.
How much land has Israel stolen? They govern around 59% of the West Bank. Here is a map (PDF)--the areas in blue are under Israeli jurisdiction.
But what about the unilateral disengagement plan? Why would Israel give up Gaza if not for peace? Because the other issue here is population. Israel is a democratic, Jewish state. That means it's only a Jewish state so long as they can maintain a Jewish majority. I think the current breakdown in both Israel and the occupied territories is something like 60% Jewish/40% Arabic. And the Arabic population is growing much, much faster than the Jewish. Thus Israel seeks to get rid of territory that is densely populated with Arabs and has relatively little value to Israel--i.e. Gaza.
Point 3: Israel only gives up territory when it's in her interests for other reasons. The first two planks in Kadima's platform:
- The Israeli nation has a national and historic right to the whole of Israel. However, in order to maintain a Jewish majority, part of the Land of Israel must be given up to maintain a Jewish and democratic state.
- Israel shall remain a Jewish state and homeland. Jewish majority in Israel will be preserved by territorial concessions to Palestinians.
So Israel gives up land only when it suits her interests--i.e. to perserve her ethnic majority.
So this is why Israel makes me feel ill. She is not-just-figuratively beating up on Palestine so that she can steal from her. Now you might say "yeah, but there was the Holocaust, and 1/3 of all Jewish people were eradicated. The Jewish people are insecure, and so Israel has to take drastic measures to ensure their safety."
To which I have two comments. First, look at the cost of this to the Palestinian people. The death toll among Palestinian children that results from this violence is continuously ten times as big in raw numbers as that for Israeli children. The unemployment rate and poverty rate in Palestine are 60%. The per capita PPP GDP of Gaza is below every country in the world except Malawi, a landlocked country in Africa. Gaza is poorer than Bangladesh and every other country in Africa (note further that under international humanitarian law Israel is responsible for providing for the humanitarian needs of the occupied Palestinian people--thus the 60% poverty rate is just that much more inexcusable).
The second comment is that I don't believe that you should be able to beat up people just because you're feeling insecure and it makes you safer if you steal their stuff. Sorry. There is no immediate threat to the Jewish people, no threat substantial enough to require the destruction of Palestine.
Point 4: Israel is pursuing the deliberate, systematic deconstruction of Palestine to serve her own interests. This I cannot forgive.
I'll give someone else the last word on this:
"Sara Roy's new book slays once and for all the myth that Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank has been, as some Israelis claim, `benevolent' or `benign'. While describing the devastating consequences of this occupation, the author demonstrates in no uncertain terms that the Israelis always had malign intentions towards the Palestinians they occupied in 1967."
"The author ... the daughter of Holocaust survivors ... argues successfully that the relationship between Israel and Gaza `is characterized by an economic process specific to Israeli rule', the process of `de-development' or the `deliberate, systematic deconstruction of an indigenous economy by a dominant power'. Underdevelopment, the situation prevailing in much of the Third World, is distinguished from `de-development' by both the intentions of the occupying power and the consequences of its policies.
"`De-development,' she asserts, `commenced only under Israeli occupation.' In Gaza's long historical experience of occupiers, Israel was unique in that its intention was the complete dispossession of the Palestinian people and the assimilation of their land and resources. As a consequence, Israel's policies have always been designed to deprive the Palestinians of their land, water and labour with the objective of building Israel and not a competing Palestinian entity...."
(...)
"Sara Roy quotes Yitzhak Rabin, who in 1985, while defence minister, said: `There will be no development in the occupied territories initiated by the Israeli government, and no permits given for expanding agriculture and industry which may compete with the state of Israel.'"
(...)
"The reason Israel continues to follow such policies, Dr. Roy [a researcher at Harvard, apparently--Op] asserts, is that it has not yet renounced its claims on or sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank. Until (and if) Israel takes this drastic step, she believes `de-development will continue' because the Oslo Accords have not altered the basic relationship between occupier and occupied."