Jewish Settler Attacks = Terrorism

In his monologue with Amos Oz, the Butcher of Beirut [Ariel Sharon] spoke openly, telling Amos Oz:

“I personally don’t want to be any better than Khomeini or Brezhnev or Ghadafi or Assad or Mrs. Thatcher, or even Harry Truman who killed half a million Japanese with two fine bombs. I only want to be smarter than they are, quicker and more efficient, not better or more beautiful than they are. Tell me, do the baddies of this world have a bad time? If anyone tries to touch them, the evil men cut his hands and legs off. They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don’t suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear me instead of feeling sorry for me. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear my madness instead of admiring my nobility. Thank God for that. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy if one of our children is murdered - just one! That we might go wild and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East! If anything would happen to your child, God forbid, you would talk like I do. Let them be aware in Washington, Moscow, Damascus and China that if one of our ambassadors is shot, or even a consul or the most junior embassy official, we might start World War Three just like that!”

“Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. Then you can spruce up your Jewish conscience and enter the respectable club of civilised nations, nations that are large and healthy. What your lot don’t understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”
Amos Oz
Israeli daily Davar, Dec.17, 1982


"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.


"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam
Henry Siegman

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam
'...The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.

Anyone familiar with Israel’s relentless confiscations of Palestinian territory – based on a plan devised, overseen and implemented by Ariel Sharon – knows that the objective of its settlement enterprise in the West Bank has been largely achieved. Gaza, the evacuation of whose settlements was so naively hailed by the international community as the heroic achievement of a man newly committed to an honourable peace with the Palestinians, was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans. Gaza’s situation shows us what these bantustans will look like if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.

Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.'

yosi said:

http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=157893

That doesn't look like Bantustans to me.

That map tells me nothing. When was it produced, and by who?

yosi said:

As to settlement construction, yes, I do not deny that, but you are stating that fact and then implicitly jumping to the conclusion that it proves the bad faith of the Israeli peace offer. In fact, you have absolutely no idea of what would have happened had the Palestinians accepted the offer because they didn't accept it. Your assumption that the offer was made in bad faith does not, therefore, hold water.

Well, if we look at Camp David, then the reason they didn't accept it is because it was unworkable, and because the Israeli's sought to fragment the Palestinians territory into a series of separate enclaves - Apartheid style bantustans. That's why they didn't accept it. The Israeli's proposals had nothing whatsoever to do with what they were entitled to under international law.

In the meantime, the Israeli's have shown how serious they are about peace by stealing more land, and by building more illegal settlements. But according to you we should ignore this reality and concentrate on 'what might have been's instead, and implicitly lay the blame for the continuing occupation at the feet of those being occupied.

yosi said:

As for the vast majority of countries, my understanding is that they reject the legality of the settlements but not of the military occupation per se, so long as it is understood as temporary pending a final peace accord. In other words they reject acts that would tend to make the occupation permanent but otherwise accept the legitimacy of Israel acting as the ruling power until a final peace accord is reached pursuant to which the territories would become an independent Palestinian state.

Except Israel doesn't see the occupation as temporary. It sees it as permanent, as expressed by it's leaders down the years, and as evidenced by the 'facts on the ground'. Israel has had 45 years to show it's commitment to peace and withdraw from the occupied territories, but instead it's done the opposite - more land theft, and more illegal settlements. And what conclusion do you draw from that? You pretend that this ongoing land-grab and ethnic cleansing is a product of Palestinian intransigence at the negotiating table. Again, it's not difficult to understand Michael Neumann's words: "..you blacken our names not only by your acts, but by the lies, the coy evasions, the smirking arrogance and the infantile self-righteousness with which you embroider our history...You will never pay for your crimes and you will continue to preen yourself, to bask in your illusions of moral ascendancy."


http://www.btselem.org/publications/47_year_long_temporary_occupation
Contrary to their express purpose, the Oslo Accords have actually enabled Israel to cement its control over the entire West Bank, use it for its own purposes and influence significant aspects of the daily lives of its Palestinian residents.

How? Control of the West Bank was to be split for an interim period, planned to last five years until a permanent agreement was signed: about 40% of the West Bank were defined as Areas A and B and handed over to the Palestinian Authority for its full or partial control. This land was mostly built-up Palestinian areas and already home to the vast majority of the Palestinian population. Israel retained full control of the remaining 60% of the West Bank, Area C, which included all settlement areas.

Israel treats Area C as if its sole purpose is to serve its needs alone, completely ignoring the temporary nature of the agreement. Israel has used this territory to expand the settlements, and their population has more than tripled since the Accords were signed. At the same time, it does not consider itself obligated in any way to the estimated 200,000-300,000 Palestinians living in this area. Citing a variety of grounds, Israel denies virtually all construction and development by Palestinians in Area C. Israel has declared vast areas in the West Bank military zones and state land, where building is prohibited. In the few remaining areas, the Civil Administration refrains from drafting master plans that reflect the needs of the population. When, having no other option, Palestinians build without permits, the Civil Administration threatens to demolish the homes, and in some cases, delivers on this threat.

One of this policy’s objectives is to drive Palestinians out of Area C, at least in part to facilitate its future annexation to Israel. The policy takes on a particularly violent slant in the way Israel treats dozens of semi-nomadic communities scattered throughout Area C, expelling or attempting to expel residents of these communities from their homes and local setting.

...Israel also continues to exercise individual control over each and every resident of the West Bank, despite their ostensible status as subject to the Palestinian Authority. In order for Palestinians to get from one city to another or from one area to another, they must pass through areas that are under full Israeli control, meaning that they must come into contact with Israeli security forces...

“Provisional military occupation”?

...Over the years, Israel has gradually created two separate regimes in the West Bank, dependent on national identity: one for settlers and the other for Palestinians. The settlers enjoy all the rights granted to citizens of a democratic country. In contrast, Palestinians live under a harsh military rule which primarily serves the interests of Israel and the settlers. Palestinians are subject to military orders that restrict them and impinge on their rights. Likewise, they are unable to participate in the election of the Israeli officials serving in bodies responsible for making decisions applicable to them.