When I visited Bethlehem a year back, I got the view north back to Jerusalem–beyond the all-but-encircling concrete barrier–of a sugarloaf of a hill with a gleaming settlement on it. Har Homa was built in the late ’90s, and its construction is evidence of the Israel lobby at work.
The story is told in an important new book on Israel’s illegal settlements, lately published by Nation Books: Lords of the Land, by Idith Zertal, a historian, and Akiva Eldar, the Haaretz columnist.
In 1997 the Netanyahu government resolved to build Har Homa, under pressure from the right wing, including Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, now the P.M., who was adamant about the need for the development’s 6500 units, for Israeli Jews.
Yasir Arafat was enraged by the plans. Har Homa would serve to cut the southern West Bank off from East Jerusalem, and would violate the Oslo accords, which called on Israel not to establish any more "facts on the ground." Arafat said Har Homa was likely to detonate an "explosion" among Palestinians and he would respond to Har Homa with the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.
Lords of the Land says that the Clinton administration responded to the emergency with "lip service." On March 3, 1997, Arafat met with Clinton in a crisis meeting at the White House to discuss the planned settlement. Clinton told Arafat that Netanyahu’s coalition partners must be taken into account; his government depended on far-right parties. Arafat responded that one settlement could endanger the whole peace process–is that what Clinton wanted? Netanyahu’s two predecessors, Rabin and Peres, had assured Arafat that nothing like this would happen under Oslo.
Arafat felt he had moved Clinton; but when he arrived at Andrews Air Force base to leave the country, he got a call from Dennis Ross. Ross informed him that Netanyahu was refusing to freeze the settlement.
Clinton did send a letter to Netanyahu asking him to postpone construction, the authors report. But Netanyahu blew that off. "I am building at Har Homa this week, and nothing is going to budge me from that."
Work began. Palestinians broke off negotiations under the interim accord. "The United States imposed a veto on a UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements. America lost the last drop of its pretensions to being a fair mediator," Zertal and Elder write.
This is a momentous story. (The late Tanya Reinhart echoes the conclusion, here.) Yes, I know, I should read Dennis Ross’s version of same (his book is packed away right now). Still, there is Har Homa before your eyes, with that hateful fence around it. Lords of the Land must be read here in conjunction with The Israel Lobby, by Walt and Mearsheimer. The settlements have been a disaster, everyone agrees on that. And they arose from political pressures inside Israel. Why was that our problem? Why would an American president cave on such an egregious point? These settlements have been a pox on the peace process, as threatening to international security as Hamas’s rise or Iran’s noises about a bomb. At the time Clinton said, he wished the Israelis wouldn’t build Har Homa. Where is the American spine? Can you imagine an American president deferring to any other head of state in similar circumstances? The spinelessness can only be explained politically: that our government also has rightwing constituents engaged on the issue. It has lost its independence; politicians feel beholden to pro-settlement interests.
Count on Israeli writers to expose this sad tale. Yes, I criticize Israel all the time here; but the civic culture that country has created is an unending marvel!
Related posts:
- Christian community outside Bethlehem to be encircled by Israeli ’security road’
- Before He Gained Power, Khalilzad Said Israel Lobby “Paralyzed” Our Foreign Policy
- Finkelstein, a Victim of the Israel Lobby, Denies That It Has Power
- Kurtzer, Obama’s Surrogate, Issues Coded Assault on Israel Lobby
- ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ Cites Power of Israel Lobby. Who Gave Them Permission?
{ 18 comments }
If Jewish settlements are the product of the "Israel Lobby" at work – Long Live the Israel Lobby!
RE: "If Jewish settlements are the product of the "Israel Lobby" at work – Long Live the Israel Lobby!"
This is really depressing. I have no doubt it comes from a chicken hawk. Please prove me wrong.
Hey Ed
Lebensraum is a great rort.
Tell us where you live and we'll come over and bulldoze your house. Kill your kids while we're at it – we don't like their attitude.
We have some relatives that would like to move onto your site.
In the middle east, only the Arabs target children, but they do it in two ways. First, the way you can learn about from the media with bombs in pizzarias. The second is that they target their own children by using them as shields and by raising them to be martyrs. All Palestinian deaths are on the heads of the Palestinians.
The claim that Jews can't live in certain places is the same apartheid policy that Arabs wrongly accuse Israelis of. Israelis let Arabs live in Israel. But Jews living outside the Green line are forbidden. That's the very definition of apartheid.
When Jews move outside the Green line, do they integrate into the neighborhoods in which they are moving, or do they expropriate the land from the Arabs? How many Arabs are allowed to live in the settlements?
In the Middle East, only the Israelis use airplanes so they do not have to look at who they are about to slaughter. Only the Israelis justify their killing by calling the deaths "collateral damage" as long as they get the one guy they want.
It is unfortunate but true that what we call terrorist tactics are the only tactics available to the Palestinians in this occupation, so they use them. I'm sure the Palestinians would much prefer to have the same firepower as the Israelis in their fight for liberation.
Do you expect the Arabs to respect Israelis they see Israel "zapping" them in the nose, and when they respond by fighting back, the bully Israel beats the crap out of them? Do you expect them to just lay down like dogs and take the disrespect?
It doesn't matter if this is what is really happening. It is perception that matters. Ours is the western perception that blowing yourself up in a pizzeria is the worst thing ever, no matter what the instigation. There's is that it is justified by the utter lack of respect they are given.
I'm not going to get into a discussion about which way to kill and/or terrorize a population is more acceptable, but I will say this one simple thing in response to Ed:
I'll accept your line of reasoning the day a Palestinian family from the West Bank can not only move to Haifa, but can get some government money to help with the transition and the cost, too.
Until then, either find another argument or save your wasted breath.
"It is unfortunate but true that what we call terrorist tactics are the only tactics available to the Palestinians in this occupation, so they use them"
That is only true if destroying Israel is the primary goal. Here is the most productive tactic available to Palestinians: Recognizing the Jewish state and establishing their own. But because they are far more dedicated to destroying an existing state than establishing a new one, the terrorist tactics appear to be the only available.
"It doesn't matter if this is what is really happening. It is perception that matters. "
That is why the lie that Israel was created by "stealing land" was created and is perpetuated. The truth does not matter. That lie continues to kill both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs every day.
"Ours is the western perception that blowing yourself up in a pizzeria is the worst thing ever, no matter what the instigation."
Are you saying that there is an instigation that justifies blowing yourself up in a pizzeria???
Ed and his little Megaphone rangers are keeping busy, but these days the rest of the world is wise to them. And the great majority of them are not Arabs, muslims–much less anti-semites. They just see a manifest injustice that not all the Hollywood agitprop can wash away. In the end, even Danile Pipes can't shut down the Internet*.
The stupid much-publicized bombing of pizzarias does not justify the stolen land. The charts depicting how many have died do not lie.
* Does Ed deny that Pipes would if he could?
I deny that Pipes would shut down the internet if he could, although I'm sure he can speak for himself.
What he (and I) WOULD do is stop the lies about "stolen land." Israel is the only mideast nation NOT created violently or by conquest. Rather it was by legal land purchases and ultimately the consensus of the world community. That consensus included a Palestinian Arab state as well, but the Apartheid view of the Arab world, which continues to this date, leaves no room for a Jewish state. That is the heart of the problem.
Charts depicting the number who have died? Too many on both sides have died, but ALL in an effort to destroy Israel. If Palestinian Arabs cared more for getting a state than for genocidally destroying one, they'd have had one long ago.
As a matter of principle, Mr Ed should not be left with the last word.
Why should a subject people recognise the instrument of their oppression?
Should Jews on their way to the camps and obliteration have been obliged to cast their vote for the Nazi regime?
What sort of legitimation is that?
To repeat, Israel was conceived, born and survives on criminality. End of story.
How can Palestinians create a state of their own when their oppressors prevent this possibility by all means possible?
Mr Ed. is part of the problem.
Arendt's powerful phrase 'the banality of evil' has now become commonplace. It's time to resurrect it for the garden variety day to day process by which the Israel lobby defends the indefensible.
That includes you Ed. It's not too late to repent.
How dare you compare the Palestinian Arabs, whose plight results solely from their determination to kill Israelis, to the victims of the holocaust, who were not engaged in jihad or any other kind of criminal activity. The only similarity between the nazi era and the Israeli-arab conflict is that in both cases the victims are Jewish.
I need not repent, for I am supportive of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Zionism does not trample on the national rights of Palestinian Arabs, as Israel has officially supported a two state solution.
To call the establishment of Israel criminal IS criminal. You would allow all peoples except the Jewish people their own homeland in their place of origin. THAT is criminal.
Israel is the only state in the region created lawfully and peacefully by operation of the United Nations. It has spent its 60 years of existence defending itself from a culture based on violence against others and violence against self. That culture of violence existed before Israel was created. It is a culture of apartheid, anti-semitism and suicide. The violent culture of the Arab world is in part a result of its inheritance from its nazi and Soviet supporters from earlier in the 2oth century.
The Israeli "lobby" is a term that people use when they want to paint a picture. The real picture is Americans, Jewish and otherwise, who, like most Americans, believe that Israel's interests and ours are nearly identical. The phony picture is an attempt to apply old anti-semitic conspiracy images to that good work.works. Only Israel has respected the religious holy places of other religions. Only Israel allows people of other backgrounds, including Arabs and muslims to worship freely and openly and to participate in government. Have you tried being a Christian in Gaza lately???
Israel is fighting the front line battle against Islamic extremism on behalf of the USA and the rest of the democratic world. When Europe, for instance, is too scared to fight its own battles, Israel is designated so it can take the heat.
It is NOT anti-semitic to criticize Israel. It IS anti-semitic to be anti-Zionist.
"It IS anti-semitic to be anti-Zionist."
Then sign me up as "anti-semtic."
Ed
you really are a fruitloop.
The UN partition plan offered 55% of (non-Jordanian) British mandate Palestine for an Israeli state. That in itself was a wholly illegitimate opening bid, but even that granddaddy of a present with the property of others was still not good enough for the maddog Zionist terrorists.
The UN plan did of course retain Jerusalem from Zionist domination, but that idea was completely out of the question.
So on with the terrorism, and the Zionists, courtesy of the Naqba, get 78%, including Jerusalem, and have steadily worked on acquiring most of the rest since that time.
Legitimacy? Hello?
How dare I compare the Palestinian Arabs to the victims of the Holocaust?
Is there a clearer alternative comparison?
The Palestinian Arabs are the new Jews.
Nazi Germany and Apartheid SOuth Africa provide ready comparators.
Thus has Jewry wallowed in the slime to defend this barbarous regime.
Are you suggesting that the reason Israel was bigger in 1949 than called for by the partition plan was because of Israel? And you call me a fruitloop? It was because the apartheid arabs began war. That's how Israel got to be bigger. And that's the only reason there were refugees, 600,000 arabs and 850,000 Jews. Except it was only the Jews who were expelled, not arabs. Anything different is a lie.
And it was not the "property of others." It was almost all Jewish owned property.
The partition plan called for a Jewish state where there was a Jewish majority and an Arab state with an Arab majority. But to the Arab world, palestine had to be judenrein. No one in the history of the world has repeatedly lost wars they started and claimed the right to get "their" land back. They fought, they atempted genocide, they lost. That's how Israel got Jerusalem.
The only naqba is the one perpetrated against both Arabs and Jews by Arabs – their refusal to allow anything but an Islamic country in that part of the world (or the rest of the world if those fascists could pull it off).
The Palestinian Arabs are not the new Jews. The tyrannical leaders of the Arab regimes and the would-be Arab regimes are the new nazis.
No Mr Ed, even a talking horse could do better than this.
Jews were a minority of Palestine, but the population was enhanced by Holocaust refugees.
That the refugees were fleeing barbarism gave them no automatic right to Palestinian Arab property, as recognised at the time.
That Zionism involved the expulsion of indigenous non-Jews was intrinsic to its creed. The non-Jewish population was of course inferior, to be removed for a greater cause. And so it came to pass.
Racism incarnate.
And the Zionists, rather than learning from the Holocaust, have used it cynically for essentially comparable purposes of building a state on ethnic cleansing and racial purity. They just never managed to get rid of all the non-Jewish swine, but they're working on it.
"That the refugees were fleeing barbarism gave them no automatic right to Palestinian Arab property, as recognised at the time."
That's never been the claim. Jews purchased land in palestine as the emigrated there. Check the land records.
"That Zionism involved the expulsion of indigenous non-Jews was intrinsic to its creed."
You are proving my point that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. This is the big Arab lie, that Israel was created by Jewish expulsion of non-Jews. Read Israel's declaration of independence, practically begging Arabs to remain and be a part of Israel, which many did. Israel may not be free of discrimination, but Israeli Arabs have a higher standard of living than most of those under the flag of islam.
The flight of Arabs from the partition area was the result of threats of collaboration and promises of glory from the attacking Arab regimes and from their religious leaders, the same ones that have kept them as refugees and used them as pawns ever since. We see quite frequently what both Fatah and Hamas do to suspected collaborators.
"And the Zionists, rather than learning from the Holocaust, have used it cynically for essentially comparable purposes of building a state on ethnic cleansing and racial purity."
The truth is the exact opposite. Only Israel is tolerant of all religious expression and protects holy sites of all faiths. What happened to Jewish holy sites when Jordan controlled Jerusalem?
The Arab world is using Hitler's lesson of the big lie('stolen land' expulsion', 'ethic cleansing') in its attempt to ethnically clease Jews from the region.
None of your name-calling or vitriol can change that truth.
Personal to Philip Weiss (not intended for posting):
I have not been a blog reader, and discovered yours only after you posted a comment on my IS article. I'm sorry I didn't know of it before, because I think nearly all your comments are terrific, and I will become one of your regular readers.
You mention the Dennis Ross book–you might be interested in my long analysis of it in the May/June 2005 issue of Tikkun.
Do you have an email for personal communication?
Comments on this entry are closed.