lubna
04-09-2005, 01:49
Excerpt:
> Some argue that
> the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and
> from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that
> Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building
> of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military
> reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the
> insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away.
Yet all these “effective counterterror measures” have destroyed Israel’s once-lovely image as a nice place for a vacation or Bar Mitzvah. The ugly real-world images of Israel, which have been forced into the light by Palestinian counter-attacks, sink deeper in global consciousness than all the propaganda tricks the Zionists use to muddle understanding.
If some Israelis console themselves with their revolting images of “strength,” they only make themselves more repugnant to the world.
The course of events, including the adversary’s reactions, cannot be predicted, but every aspect of Palestinian counter-attacks has been necessary on the face of circumstances, regardless of interpretations and strategy; only now do we begin to see what specific effects it has had – what specific harms have been done to Israel’s realities and its desperately important world image.
The schemes required to quash truth and justice – if resisted – ultimately cost more than they achieve.
Now, if only some viable Palestinian voices – local or international – would begin to make it clear that Palestine is fighting against sheer racism and for nothing more than full human equality (including full redress of grievances), the real victory process could begin.
Dave Kersting
----------------------------
> NY Times
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/weekinreview/14bron.html?
> pagewanted=print
>
> August 14, 2005
>
>
> Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be
>
>
> By ETHAN BRONNER
>
> FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews
> among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
> the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of
> the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had?
> How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?
>
> But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and
> nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something
> very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their
> cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of
> Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of
> them came.
>
> "We have had to come to terms with certain unanticipated realities,"
> acknowledged Arye Mekel, Israeli consul general in New York.
> "Ideologically, we are disappointed. A pure Zionist must be
> disappointed because Zionism meant the Jews of the world would take
> their baggage and move to Israel. Most did not."
>
> David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry
> in the 1980's, noted: "The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was
> a state on 'the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became
> impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to
> the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't
> be able to achieve."
>
> The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations
> of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the
> world's Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the
> world's 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority - 5.26
> million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely
> dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.
>
> Of course, Israel is a remarkably successful state, a democracy with
> a high standard of living and many proud accomplishments. Yet
> the misery that Zionists expected Jews elsewhere to suffer has not
> materialized. More than half a century after the establishment of
> the Jewish state, more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.
>
> The second explanation for the shift in settlement policy is that the
> Palestinian population has grown far more rapidly - and
> Palestinians have proved far more willing to fight - than many on the
> Israeli right had anticipated. On Thursday, the newspaper
> Haaretz reported that the proportion of Jews in the combined
> population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had dropped below 50
> percent for the first time. This means, many Israelis argue, that
> unless they yield territory, they will have to choose a Jewish
> state or a democratic one; they will not be able to have both.
>
> While all acknowledge that Jewish immigration never achieved
> anticipated levels and that the Palestinian population has ballooned,
> the question of the role played by Palestinian violence in Mr.
> Sharon's decision to disengage is hotly contested. Some argue that
> the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and
> from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that
> Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building
> of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military
> reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the
> insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away.
> In fact, both factors seem likely to have played a role.
>
> "Of course terror has a role in the disengagement," said Michael
> Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Institute, a conservative
> Jerusalem research group. "It convinced us that Gaza was not worth
> holding onto and awakened us to the demographic danger. It took
> two intifadas for a majority of Israelis to decide that Gaza is not
> worth it."
>
> A senior Israeli official who spent years closely associated with
> Likud leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the
> sensitivity of the topic, said that Israelis long had little respect
> for Palestinians as fighters, but that had changed.
>
> "The fact that hundreds of them are willing to blow themselves up is
> significant," he said. "We didn't give them any credit before.
> In spite of our being the strongest military power in the Middle
> East, we lost 1,200 people over the last four years. It finally
> sank in to Sharon and the rest of the leadership that these people
> were not giving up."
>
> Some came to a similar conclusion much earlier. The Israeli left has
> been calling for a withdrawal from Gaza for years, and even
> many on the right believed settlement there to be futile and
> counterproductive. Mr. Kimche, the former foreign ministry official,
> recalled that when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the conservative
> Likud party was running against Yitzhak Rabin of Labor in the
> early 1990's, several Shamir advisers told him: "Unless you withdraw
> from Gaza, you're going to lose these elections." He did not
> withdraw; he lost.
>
> Mr. Rabin himself said that he decided to negotiate a withdrawal with
> the Palestinians when he realized how unpopular military
> service in Gaza had become.
>
> "He said privately - I heard him say it - that military reservists
> don't want to serve in the occupied territories and while they
> are not formally refusing they are finding excuses to stay away,"
> Yoel Esteron, managing editor of Yediot Aharonot, recalled. "That
> put a real burden on the army and it meant we couldn't stay there
> forever."
>
> With Gaza soon no longer in their hands, Israelis will face a much
> more complex set of decisions regarding the occupied West Bank.
> Settlements in distant corners of the West Bank are also being
> dismantled in the coming weeks, but no one knows how much more land
> Mr. Sharon and his successors will be willing to yield. What is
> clear, however, is that the internal Israeli logic of what is taking
> place this week - a scaling back of ambition in the face of reality -
> could lead to traumatic withdrawals of larger numbers of
> people on the West Bank.
>
> As Mr. Sharon said in an interview with Yediot published on Friday,
> when asked about other isolated settlements, "Not everything
> will remain."
>
>
>
> Some argue that
> the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and
> from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that
> Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building
> of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military
> reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the
> insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away.
Yet all these “effective counterterror measures” have destroyed Israel’s once-lovely image as a nice place for a vacation or Bar Mitzvah. The ugly real-world images of Israel, which have been forced into the light by Palestinian counter-attacks, sink deeper in global consciousness than all the propaganda tricks the Zionists use to muddle understanding.
If some Israelis console themselves with their revolting images of “strength,” they only make themselves more repugnant to the world.
The course of events, including the adversary’s reactions, cannot be predicted, but every aspect of Palestinian counter-attacks has been necessary on the face of circumstances, regardless of interpretations and strategy; only now do we begin to see what specific effects it has had – what specific harms have been done to Israel’s realities and its desperately important world image.
The schemes required to quash truth and justice – if resisted – ultimately cost more than they achieve.
Now, if only some viable Palestinian voices – local or international – would begin to make it clear that Palestine is fighting against sheer racism and for nothing more than full human equality (including full redress of grievances), the real victory process could begin.
Dave Kersting
----------------------------
> NY Times
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/weekinreview/14bron.html?
> pagewanted=print
>
> August 14, 2005
>
>
> Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be
>
>
> By ETHAN BRONNER
>
> FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews
> among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
> the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of
> the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had?
> How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?
>
> But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and
> nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something
> very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their
> cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of
> Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of
> them came.
>
> "We have had to come to terms with certain unanticipated realities,"
> acknowledged Arye Mekel, Israeli consul general in New York.
> "Ideologically, we are disappointed. A pure Zionist must be
> disappointed because Zionism meant the Jews of the world would take
> their baggage and move to Israel. Most did not."
>
> David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry
> in the 1980's, noted: "The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was
> a state on 'the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became
> impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to
> the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't
> be able to achieve."
>
> The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations
> of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the
> world's Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the
> world's 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority - 5.26
> million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely
> dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.
>
> Of course, Israel is a remarkably successful state, a democracy with
> a high standard of living and many proud accomplishments. Yet
> the misery that Zionists expected Jews elsewhere to suffer has not
> materialized. More than half a century after the establishment of
> the Jewish state, more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.
>
> The second explanation for the shift in settlement policy is that the
> Palestinian population has grown far more rapidly - and
> Palestinians have proved far more willing to fight - than many on the
> Israeli right had anticipated. On Thursday, the newspaper
> Haaretz reported that the proportion of Jews in the combined
> population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had dropped below 50
> percent for the first time. This means, many Israelis argue, that
> unless they yield territory, they will have to choose a Jewish
> state or a democratic one; they will not be able to have both.
>
> While all acknowledge that Jewish immigration never achieved
> anticipated levels and that the Palestinian population has ballooned,
> the question of the role played by Palestinian violence in Mr.
> Sharon's decision to disengage is hotly contested. Some argue that
> the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and
> from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that
> Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building
> of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military
> reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the
> insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away.
> In fact, both factors seem likely to have played a role.
>
> "Of course terror has a role in the disengagement," said Michael
> Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Institute, a conservative
> Jerusalem research group. "It convinced us that Gaza was not worth
> holding onto and awakened us to the demographic danger. It took
> two intifadas for a majority of Israelis to decide that Gaza is not
> worth it."
>
> A senior Israeli official who spent years closely associated with
> Likud leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the
> sensitivity of the topic, said that Israelis long had little respect
> for Palestinians as fighters, but that had changed.
>
> "The fact that hundreds of them are willing to blow themselves up is
> significant," he said. "We didn't give them any credit before.
> In spite of our being the strongest military power in the Middle
> East, we lost 1,200 people over the last four years. It finally
> sank in to Sharon and the rest of the leadership that these people
> were not giving up."
>
> Some came to a similar conclusion much earlier. The Israeli left has
> been calling for a withdrawal from Gaza for years, and even
> many on the right believed settlement there to be futile and
> counterproductive. Mr. Kimche, the former foreign ministry official,
> recalled that when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the conservative
> Likud party was running against Yitzhak Rabin of Labor in the
> early 1990's, several Shamir advisers told him: "Unless you withdraw
> from Gaza, you're going to lose these elections." He did not
> withdraw; he lost.
>
> Mr. Rabin himself said that he decided to negotiate a withdrawal with
> the Palestinians when he realized how unpopular military
> service in Gaza had become.
>
> "He said privately - I heard him say it - that military reservists
> don't want to serve in the occupied territories and while they
> are not formally refusing they are finding excuses to stay away,"
> Yoel Esteron, managing editor of Yediot Aharonot, recalled. "That
> put a real burden on the army and it meant we couldn't stay there
> forever."
>
> With Gaza soon no longer in their hands, Israelis will face a much
> more complex set of decisions regarding the occupied West Bank.
> Settlements in distant corners of the West Bank are also being
> dismantled in the coming weeks, but no one knows how much more land
> Mr. Sharon and his successors will be willing to yield. What is
> clear, however, is that the internal Israeli logic of what is taking
> place this week - a scaling back of ambition in the face of reality -
> could lead to traumatic withdrawals of larger numbers of
> people on the West Bank.
>
> As Mr. Sharon said in an interview with Yediot published on Friday,
> when asked about other isolated settlements, "Not everything
> will remain."
>
>
>