Wednesday, August 14, 2013
The Killers of Peace
By Nicola Nasser*
The Israeli Jewish settlers of the Palestinian territory,
which was occupied by Israel in 1967, are dictating unilaterally the
demarcation of the borders with any future Palestinian state, thus rendering
its creation impossible; holding the Israeli decision-making process hostage,
they have become the real killers of peace, who brought the twenty –year old
Palestinian – Israeli peace process to its current stalemate.
As early as the summer of 1995, the Iraqi born Israeli –
British “new historian” Avi Shlaim wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies:
“The settlers now are the ones who determine Israel
Their numbers then were in the tens of thousands; now there
are three quarters of a million settlers. The
Head of the “Samaria Regional Council” of the Israeli illegal settlements in
the Israeli – occupied Palestinian West Bank (WB) of River Jordan, Gershon
Mesika, on this August 6 boasted there will be one million settlers there “in
just three years time,” telling “Arutz Sheva” online that “the settlement
enterprise in Judea and Samaria (i.e. the Palestinian WB) has passed the point
of no return.”
Writing in the “National Interest” on
September 6, 2012, the President of the U.S./Middle East Project, Henry
Siegman, agreed that “Israel ’s
colonial… settlement project has achieved its intended irreversibility,
not only because of its breadth and depth but also because of the political
clout of the settlers and their supporters within Israel
When Benjamin Netanyahu assumed his second term
as prime minister, with the settler Avigdor Lieberman as his foreign minister,
the German Süddeutsche
Zeitung, quoted by Spiegel on March 17, 2009,
wrote: “He and Lieberman are the
gravediggers of the Middle East peace process.
They want to maintain the occupation and expand the settlements.”
The electoral campaign of Netanyahu for
his first term in 1995 was blamed by Israeli media for creating the right
environment which led to the assassination of the “father’ of the first Oslo
The incumbent government of Netanyahu’s third
premiership is now described as the “settlers’ government” or “a settler –friendly
government,” the survival of which is secured by a Knesset led by Speaker Yuli Edelstein,
himself an illegal settler of the Neve Daniel colony in the WB, who called
recently for the annexation of two thirds of the WB area.
This is a call that was also repeatedly voiced
by the pro - settler Jewish Home party, a partner to Netanyahu’s ruling
coalition, which holds three key ministries, including the housing ministry,
and controls the parliamentary finance committee. Netanyahu declared his
backing for the Jewish Home’s plan. Minister of Economy Naftali
Bennett was the chairman of the council of the illegal settlements in the WB
and Gaza Strip and is still an advocate of imposing Israeli sovereignty
unilaterally on “Area C” in the WB. Uzi Landau, of Lieberman’s Yisraeli Beiteinu party,
has the tourism portfolio. Likud’s ardent supporter of settlements, Moshe
Yaalon, has the ministry of defense. Foreign minister’s deputy, Zeev Elkin, is himself a settler. The education
minister, Shai Piron, of Yair Lapid’s so-called “centrist” Yesh Atid party, is a
settler rabbi; Lapid himself who is the finance minister supports the “growth”
of settlements even during peace talks and rejects
any Palestinian sovereignty under any pact in eastern Jerusalem
Deputy
Minister of Defense, Danny Danon of Likud, was quoted by The Jewish Press on
August 8 as saying that the “views” of Israel U.S.
In Israel
On July 28, 2013, Barak Ravid
wrote in Haaretz that Netanyahu “is acting so weak … like a prisoner … a
hostage” of his pro –settler coalition partners.
During the interval between the first and the second
rounds of the recently resumed negotiations, Israel approved a “new” settlement
and 1700 settlement units in eastern Jerusalem; the government included 90
settlements in a new list of “national priority development areas” eligible for
special benefits; the list included also the three
formerly dubbed by the Israeli government as “illegal outposts,” namely
Bruchin, Rachelim and Sansana.
On August 11, 2013, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reacted by
reiterating from Bogota , Colombia his country’s “unchanged” position
since 1967: The U.S. "views all of the settlements as illegitimate"
and had "communicated that policy very clearly to Israel
Ironically, “Israel’s settlement project”
has evolved “irreversible” nonetheless, mocking the U.S. repeatedly declared
illegitimacy thereof as merely a lip service that has been all throughout a
thinly veiled cover of the U.S. actual protection of the accelerating expansion
ever since of “Israel’s colonial” project.
No surprise then Kerry from Colombia “expected” what Peter
Beinart described in the Daily Beast on August 12 as the “Opening of settlement
floodgates” just two days ahead of the second round of the U.S. – sponsored Palestinian – Israeli
negotiations, which were resumed in Washington
D.C.
Worse still, Kerry
pragmatically defended the new “opening of settlement floodgates” as an
incentive which “underscores
the importance of getting to the table … quickly,” ignoring insensitively the
Palestinian reaction.
On May 18 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said
Netanyahu must choose between settlements and peace. Secretary General of the
Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation organization (PLO), Yasser Abed
Rabbo, and the PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said they were considering not
to participate in the second round of the talks, scheduled in Jerusalem Israel Israel
However, the PLO is too weak to translate its words into
deeds and challenge kerry’s statement that the issue of settlements should not
derail the resumed peace talks.
Israelis without Compass
Americans for Peace Now, in a report titled “Settlements
& the Netanyahu Government: A Deliberate Policy of Undermining the
Two-State Solution,” said that in “its policies and actions” this government “disclose a clear intention to use settlements to
systematically undermine and render impossible a realistic, viable two-state
solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.”
In a roundtable on the sidelines of the
Clinton Global Initiative in New York on September 22, 2011, former U.S.
President Bill Clinton blamed the “Netanyahu administration” and what he
called a “demographic shift in Israel
In “A Message from a Longstanding Zionist to the Israeli
People,” Robert K. Lifton, a former president of The American Jewish Congress,
on this August 8 urged Israelis that they “must make
clear the direction they want their country to pursue,” “separate Israel
However, Lifton’s appeal sounds like a cry in the
settlers’ wilderness. Israelis have yet to liberate themselves from being
hostage to these killers of peace. Until then, Israelis will continue to
navigate without compass, rejecting the one – state solution, the two – state
solution, the bi – national state solution and every other proposed solution
for peace, except their peace – killing colonial settlement project, which Henry Siegman, referred to by The Forward on October 5, 2012 as a “Jewish elder
statesman,” believes is “suicidal.”
Most likely, the settlers are drawing on
the fact that Israel itself
is the product of a “colonial settlement project,” which so far has proved
successful; they are expectedly betting also on the “unbreakable” support of
the other successful colonial settlement project that has become the United States of America
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
