Friday, March 26, 2004
Who owns Palestine ?

To whom did god give Britain? The Romans, the Saxons or maybe the Celts? Britain, is pretty much like anywhere else: it has been subject to waves of successive migrants. Some have been some conquerors, some civilisers and some conquerors and civilisers. Some were even invited in. Others have been economic migrants resulting from state policy, others have slipped clandestinely in.

No god (if there was any such thing) has given the land that is now Britain to anybody. Just as no god has given anybody an exclusive right to the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. To reduce the occupation of Samara/West Bank to the status of some divine right is deterministic, fatalistic and downright dangerous.

Zionism understood that the land of Israel was given to the Jews, forever: on a global scale, a fairly small and insignificant ethic group, when compared to say, Mandarin Chinese, Anglo-Saxon, Japanese, Arab, Malay or Black African. Surely no one can begrudge a small part of the Middle East to small ethic group?

But this discounts any concept of flux in how humanity has now spread to every part of the globe. And then how once settled, warring tribes, exploration, conquest, slavery and migration have all generated an even far more complicated picture. Every piece of Earth has been subject to this flux. The Polynesians are now outnumbered in the Pacific (taking account of NZ and Hawaii), few Mayan people now survive, Tasmanian Aboriginals have been wiped out and emancipated slaves have created a hugely different ethic mix in the West Indies and USA.

People have long migrated from their homelands voluntarily. For perhaps the best example of this we need not look any further than the Jews. But now there are more Irish descendants living in north east USA than there are in the nation of Eire. Should this relinquish their right to return? In most cases it has. Most have taken on citizenship of their new found homes. The Norman Conquest of Britain was so complete that it become modern Britain. Britons may the right now to visit Denmark and Sweden – by both being members of the European Union, but there is now no general right of Britons to claim ownership over Norway, though they may claim a Norse (Norman) heritage.

But we have seen the spread of settlements across the West Bank and into Gaza. Settlers, not all of them Uzi toting ‘crazies’ living in caravans on a desert hillside. Some have formed whole cities in the occupied territories – whitewashed Mediterranean villas, boulevards of street cafes, air-conditioned gymnasiums and bowling alleys – to house returning Jews. As is their right, as god has said so: this is non-negotiable. Arab residents, representing generations living there for many hundreds of years, which have not chosen to migrate, to whom the land has been given by divine right have been pushed aside to the marginal lands not required by the settlers.

But at least they get a good view of these gleaming cities from their refugee camp. Envy plays its part in the struggle for reconciliation. While economic activity has effectively been shut down in Occupied Territories (and lets face it, who would invest in a factory when you could not guarantee that your work force could make it to work each day, or for that matter, that it would not be arbitrarily razed to the ground, alongside your house) Palestinians have been shunted into a life of poverty, poor health and a plummeting life expectancy.

Basic social services - police, water supply, education, medical treatment - have all but but closed down.

And now a wall¹ has been built to keep out the suicide bombers and to physically divide the land like never before. For this Sharon will pay a price. There will be many of settlements behind this wall; although all the best ones, the most whitewashed and sprinklered ones - have been incorporated onto the Israeli side). The building of the wall has incorporated huge tracts of the West Bank, illegally annexing land, cutting communities in half, putting agricultural land beyond reach, displacing 200,000 Palestinians caught ‘outside’ the wall and evacuating Jewish settlers out of pockets of hope such as Qalqilya.

This has occurred despite widespread international condemnation (with 2 notable exceptions²) and 44 nations filing papers at the International Court of Justice.

This will kill any two-state solution. Suicide bombers will still operate and still spread their terror and hatred and seek to drive out the nation that occupies them, Palestinians will be forever locked into their own cesspool of poverty ‘until they can learn their lesson!’, settlements will continue to spread into the Israeli occupied West Bank in front of the wall and when construction reaches Jerusalem, greater amounts of blood will be spilled. No viable state can exist behind such a convoluted and oppressive wall; no economic activity can flourish to bring an end to the desperation and IDF personnel will be able to control the movements of the occupied people like no other occupation before – Soviet Union, Nazi Germany included.

This nihilistic future will happen. The conflict is now so entrenched into ceaseless and more bloody retaliation that no side is now willing to compromise. Sharon’s admittance that ‘some’ settlements in the Occupied Territories will have to go is not going to convince moderate Arabs who have reconciled the existence of Israel, let alone the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – both groups now contemplating how best to recruit into active service the 200,000 men, women and children that lined the streets at the funeral service of Yassin.

A divided Israel and a divided Palestine simply will not earn peace and will not thrive economically or culturally. Roadmaps are dead, peace processes are defunct – now is the time to turn the looking glass the other way. Start with the finished product – a single state – and work back from there. Take that as given and establish the mechanisms to get there and get the international observers in too. The rest of the world has already opened up to realise that division of humanity behind borders and walls is the not the final state of human organisation, but just a passing phase.

1. The American Administration called it a ‘security fence’. Please go away and come back when you have something useful to say.
2. Both the USA and Australia have failed to condemn it. Oh yes, and Ethiopia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau.
   

From

nicholsoncartoons.com.au who comments in the Australian:

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