Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: A military ploy, not a step towards peace
On 17 August, to deafening media coverage, the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was begun. Despite the widespread portrayal of distressed settlers being forced to leave, this was generally presented as ‘a step towards peace’.
The plan to withdraw from Gaza is the work of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been praised by all the world’s leaders, from Bush to Schroeder, from Chirac to Blair. And behind their hypocritical sermons in favour of peace, each one of them was hiding their own imperialist interests. And despite all the criticisms of Sharon by the Israeli right – Sharon’s own Likud party as well as the religious parties – the retreat from Gaza serves Israel’s own imperialist interests very well.
The Israeli withdrawal from this tiny strip of land, home to a million and a half Palestinians, involves a mere 7,000 settlers. The Israeli state has paid a very high price, in both economic and military terms, for maintaining its presence in this tiny morsel of territory, which has no particular strategic value. Now the withdrawal will turn the Gaza Strip into an immense prison. In a context of terrible poverty and social chaos, the different armed Palestinian factions, both those of the Palestinian Authority and of Hamas, will vie to impose their rule. Meanwhile the Israeli army will keep the whole territory under close surveillance, intervening as and when necessary. The population of Gaza will continue to live in an atmosphere of instability, violence and despair, providing more and more new recruits to religious radicalism and terrorism
This fake step towards peace is summed up in the scorched earth policy of the Israeli state – destroy everything before you leave: houses, farms, irrigations, etc.
Israel’s imperialist policy
The essential aim of Sharon’s plan is to give an impression of good will, of peaceful intentions, that masks the Israeli state’s real offensive in the West Bank. Over the last 25 years, the Israeli-Jewish population of the occupied territories has more than tripled, and has now reached around 250,000 people. The number of Israelis installed in neighbourhoods built on the annexed municipal territories around East Jerusalem has risen fivefold in the same period, and now stands at around 200,000. Meanwhile the Sharon government has placed a whole series of settlements and towns on the ‘right’ side of the anti-terror Wall, starting with Gush Etzyon and followed by Kafr Abbuch and Nablus in the north, passing by Jerusalem west and east, and going as far as Hebron and Rahiya in the south. The whole West Bank is now carved up by this wall separating Israeli and Palestinian populations. Presented as a means of protection it is in reality a spearhead for the expansionist policy of the Israeli state. While recognising, on the express demand of the Bush administration, the existence of “Israeli population centres” on the West bank, it enables Sharon to put forward the real aims of his policy: “The government will do all it can to strengthen Israeli control over all the territories destined to be integrated into the State of Israel in the eventuality of a diplomatic accord”. Right now, behind the smokescreen of the withdrawal from Gaza, permission has been granted for around 640 housing units to be built, whereas at Gival Tal, a small colony near Alfei Menaske, no less than 1000 units have started to be constructed (Courrier Internationale 28.7.05). The Israeli bourgeoisie needs to control the West Bank to maintain its imperialist offensive; it is a geo-strategic axis of prime importance. This is the frontal zone with Jordan, but also with Lebanon and Syria (along with the Golan Heights). The permanent imperialist conflict between Israel and Syria makes the West Bank a vital stake in the game, and the sharpening of US/Israeli tensions with Iran can only make the situation worse.
For its part the Palestinian bourgeoisie, even though the Palestinian Authority has been weakened and divided after the death of its historic leader Arafat, can only react with increased violence to defend its own interests. Despite the current softening of tone by the most radical elements of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, such as Hamas, these factions will also be pushed into an increasingly warlike stance. The West Bank threatens to become a vast powder-keg, where both the Israeli and Palestinian populations will be subjected to growing violence and desperation. Such is the reality of peace in decomposing capitalism.
Tino, 24.8.05
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Sir Gerald Kaufman call for arms ban on Israel
Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton, Labour)
House of Commons Debate on Gaza
Thursday, 15 January 2009
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2009-01-15a.396.0&s=speaker%3A10218#g445.0
I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.
I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.
I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians葉he total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that
"500 of them were militants."
That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni's father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.
Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah. It is too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah's previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine. Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him. Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat's death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006. Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.
The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:
"You make peace by talking to your enemies."
However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.
It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.