Israel and the Settlements:The Message to the World

Obama’s weakness allows Israel to continue its old policies that prevent dialogue for peace with the Palestinians. Despite opposition in Washington, according to an interview at the White House 15 days ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the construction of 1,500 homes in Arab Jerusalem. This is liturgy that does not change over the years: families deported by the police, old homes destroyed to build new buildings where new settlers will live, violence synchronized with the release of a Palestinian prisoner. It just happened in August, on the eve of the first meeting for peace. The combination is repeated to calm the intransigence of the extreme religious right and wave the hypocritical olive branch. This complicates the meetings scheduled by Secretary of State John Kerry, who repeats ad infinitum, “Two states for two people.”

From a distance, it has the air of a somersault over a Middle East in flames: Syria, now Afghanistan at the edge of the Mediterranean, Lebanon on the brink, Iraq with 30 deaths per day and Egypt almost becoming Somalia. And close up? Replying via email is Zeev Sternhell, from a Polish family swallowed by the camps: He led the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include, “The Founding Myths of Israel.” He conveys the degradation of a disappointed pacifist: “The Labor Party has abandoned the basic function of the democratic left, and in the eyes of the voters does not represent a credible alternative to the right and ultra-right for power.”

So what?

“The labor program predicts two states: Authorize withdrawal from the settlements — not all the settlements — and the Palestinians agree. But the government refuses to uproot a single settler and cannot contain its expansionist fever. The objective is clear: to remain in the West Bank and permanently reduce the occupied to a dominated populace and prepare an apartheid state. The minority of settlers determines the fate of our society. It can, because of the ideological impotence of the left, which lacks determination and credible leaders.”

The professor longs for the Oslo Accords, signed 20 years ago in Washington by Perez, Rabin, Arafat and President Clinton: [He calls it] “a great opportunity lost.” His analyses, published by Haaretz, provoke the rabid response of extremists: A bomb blows through his front door, [he spends] a few days at the hospital and then goes back to his books. Flyers are circulating that promise around $300,000 to anyone who eliminates any Peace Now activist. Netanyahu cannot govern without the right-wing hawks, spokespeople for the settlers.

In the January elections, he lost the majority, while the Labor Party fell to third place, a whisker above the Jewish Home, the flag of fanaticism. He rejects the decisions of the United Nations Security Council that do not recognize the military occupation and invites a return to the borders of 1967. He wants to tear up the rulings of the international tribunals, especially those of the Israeli Supreme Court, which declares annexations of territories and possessions to be illegal. And so the conquest continues. This is not only a tragedy for a peace that is becoming impossible, but also for the image that Israel is gaining in Europe — the deformed image of a racist country, from the jackals who deny the Holocaust to the arrogance of intellectuals who feel more alive besmirching the dead. This simply is not so, and Sternhall, along with every writer as well as the bourgeoisie, repeatedly continue to invoke common sense. But the minority of settlers in league support the government of the heirs of Gen. Sharon. Over 1,000 more homes are to be built under the program.