A year ago in the New York Review of Books, in “Israel in Peril,” David Shulman was still holding on to the ideal of a Jewish state and seeking to convince American readers that dramatic action was needed to preserve a Palestinian state. But Shulman, who moved to Israel from the U.S. as a young man many years ago, does not live in denial; he goes out often into the occupied territories with Ta’ayush and sees what Israel has created in the West Bank. And in his latest piece, at +972, he states that partition is finished.
On the way back to Jerusalem, Gabi asks me if I still think there’s some possibility for the two-state solution. I shake my head. Guy, who’s in South Hebron all the time, says, “Yes, of course, that’s what Israel wants. They want the Jewish state here, on the ground, all of it, and the Palestinian state can be somewhere else, maybe on the moon.”
I believe Shulman’s movement fulfills Rabbi Hillel’s question, If not now, when? That question is about honoring reality, honoring the moment. Partition and the ideal of a Jewish state are gone forever.
Read Shulman’s piece for a description of his group’s failed efforts to protect a way of life for Palestinian shepherd-based communities in the Hebron Hills, which are filled with settler colonies. The soldiers keep moving Palestinians out of Area C.
[T]here’s been a wave of further annexations. The settlers are paving new roads, which become de facto boundaries, far beyond the settlements’ periphery. Plots of land that the Palestinian owners have worked for some years, or have reclaimed, often with our help, have been declared “in dispute” — which means that settlers have access to them, but the rightful owners don’t. All over South Hebron there are attempts from above and from below to roll back the gains we’ve made in recent years. Probably officers in the Civil Administration have been devising creative schemes. And there have been the usual, routine detentions, harassments, lethal threats, arrests — more, in fact much more, than before. Add to this a wave of pure nit-picking and pestering, for example by handing out tickets to activists, Israeli and Palestinian, for absurd traffic violations; several of our people have recently been fined large amounts for crossing the road while not on a marked pedestrian crossing. Remember we’re talking about the vast open spaces of a desert; the nearest pedestrian crossing is either in Jerusalem or Beersheva, 40 miles away. I myself witnessed the police administering just such a fine the last time I was in the area, some three weeks back.
In short, things are tightening up. Here’s what it looks like on an ordinary day. From Beit ‘Imrah we head down over the terraces to the grazing grounds where the shepherds are clustered with their sheep. An army jeep is waiting for us. A fat, balding officer heaves himself out of it and informs Fadil: “You see this path. It’s the border. You can’t cross it.” The path is an arbitrary line, deep inside the wadi where, in the last months, they’ve been able to graze — after many years during which this wadi was completely out of bounds. We start filming. By now more soldiers, clutching rifles, have clambered out of the jeep. They prod us, driving us over the line and then farther uphill, and they’re jamming our cameras with their cell phones, which they literally thrust in our faces. The commanding officer doesn’t speak again. We protest, we talk of the law, we talk of the crimes he’s committing. He doesn’t reply….
Glad to have a quasi-definition of “disputed territories” — namely, Israel wants them and is prepared to (or has already) made them off limits to Palestinians. What a wonderful thing is de facto sovereignty! Or, conversely, what a dreadful thing is the world’s backing-down, presumably largely at USA’s request, from its undertakings under Geneva Conventions, to “ensure respect” for the Conventions “under all circumstances” which, here, means acting (not merely talk-talk-talking) to compel Israel not to violate G-4 by its settlements program, land confiscation, etc.
The meaning of “2SS is dead” also gains some clarity. In the absence of any power willing (and able, but ability is always in question until an attempt is made to act) to compel Israel to remove the settlers, settlements, wall, and siege, then, YES, 2SS is dead, for, surely — as far as certainty goes in this world — Israel is not about to do any of those things voluntarily.
Two questions for us all to ponder: [1] why do the nations continue to sit on their hands and [2] why did they initially sit on their hands w.r.t. settlements? Is/was it nuclear blackmail by Israel? Is it economic power of USA (such as applied now via sanctions to Iran, and such as our ever-so-clever banks applied to EU’s banks, ruining Europe)? Or do the nations (other than the most-powerful-prisoner-in-the-world/USA) just act in their own interest and see no reason to intervene on Palestine’s behalf — or in the interest of a rule of law they don’t see themselves profiting from?
When the Zionist entity disappears from the pages of history, the only people responsible will be the Zionist. What a bunch of morons.
Professor Walt said there are three possible solutions if the 2 state solution is dead
1/ A one state democracy .. one man one vote.
2/ Ethnic cleansing and a Greater Israel.
3/ Apartheid
These options miss out the solution favored by the Israelis, the “fried chicken” solution or as this article indicates, a Palestinian state on the moon.
Natanyahu rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan river, David Bar-illan, Director of communications and policy planning in the office of the Israeli Prime Minister said that the Palestinians could call whatever fragments of Palestine is left to them a state or “fried chicken”, the Jabotinsky, iron wall separating Israelis and Palestinians in sealed off Bantustans or prisons in a Greater Israel is what is planned, initially, with Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the whole of the “Land of Israel” intact. Some measure of self rule will be offered or some other such exotic arrangement, so that the apartheid model does not quite fit, the Bantustans will be kept viable with continuous aid from EU/US, dependent on how well behaved the prisoners are , Will anyone complain? sure they will, but since Israel has kept up the occupation for over 46 years, and have succeeded in conning the EU/US pay for it, and the Palestinians police it, they could be excused for thinking why not? what’s to stop them ?
i wish palestinians would step up ICC action. what are they waiting for?
Israel and Palestinian officials are expecting an intensive two or three months of US work to prepare for formal talks, [the Washington Post]. The Israeli government know there are many ways to skin a cat, they know Abbas’s weaknesses, oh how they know them, a couple of concessions here and there [confidence building measures] probably on Palestinian Prisoners which would be a feather in Abbas’s cap, and important for the prisoners and families, but not politically significant in the overall scheme of things, they can re arrest them later in any case, and we are back on the peace talks train to nowhere again.