What fuels the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict? All too often we are told that this conflict is rooted in ancient hatreds that are as impossible to uproot as they are to understand for those not directly involved. In truth, the cause is of much more recent vintage and not at all difficult to understand. the cause of the conflict is the ongoing Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands.
CBS New is reporting that:
Israel has approved a new settlement in the West Bank to house former Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday, breaking a promise to the U.S. to halt home construction in the Palestinian territories.
Construction in the northern West Bank town of Maskiot began months ago, but the project only received final approval from the Defense Ministry last week, said Dubi Tal, head of the Jordan Valley regional council.
This story is presently being framed in terms of Israel "breaking a promise" to the United States. But of course the U.S. has been facilitating the ongoing construction of these colonial outposts on Palestinian lands for decades while making only the most toothless sorts of objections in order to maintain the appearance of respect for internetional law.
There will be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians until there is a recognition of the great initial crime of ethnic cleansing committed against the Palestinians when Israel was founded and the ongoing efforts of Israel to gobble up more and more Palestinian lands.
As I've argued elsewhere, I believe that Israel has already destroyed the possibility of a two-state solution that glimmered briefly at the outset of Oslo. Instead of advancing the spirit of reconciliation of Oslo, Israel used it as an opportunity to double the settler population and to strangle the Palestinian economy by replacing palestinian laborers with foreign workers. The result was a deepening rather than an alleviation of the Palestinian sense of desperation and a conviction that they were collaborating in their own destruction.
The announcement of the construction of a new settlement is really only a further twist of the knife in the heart of the so-called "peace process." The problem for Israel in this is that by making a two-state solution non-viable, they are making a one-state solution of one sort or another inevitable. The question then becomes what kind of single state will exist. The present single-state arrangement of a Jewish supremacist state in which some Palestinians have (second class) citizenship rights, but most don't, will become increasingly unstable as Palestinians come to outnumber Jews in the territory where Israel exercises sovereignty. The creation of a more a more homogenous Jewish state through "transfer" (i.e. more massive ethnic cleansing) advocated by a fraction of the present government is morally repugnant to the whole world. As are the equally lurid, but much less likely Islamist fantasies of "pushing the Jews into the sea." The only humane and just solution is the creation of a single democratic secular bi-national state. But unless more people raise their voices in support of this option we can only expect to see increasing support on each side for one or the other of the more horrifying visions.
Many folks here at DailyKos (including Kos himself) take a "hands off" position on this issue. The problem with this stance is that it completely ignores the active role of the Democratic Party in ensuring the continuous flow of aid to Israel that makes it efefctively immune to otherwise near unanimous international outrage over its treatment of the Palestinians. It is a tempting fallacy to believe that all the injustices committed by the U.S. around the world are the fault of the Republican Party. The truth is that until we confront the underlying dynamics of this conflict and the role of the U.S. in facilitating a process of ongoing colonization that is inflaming the whole Islamic world (and more) against us, electing Democrats will not produce the change in how the world views us that many here believe it will.
