It's the occupation, stupid!

[Violet_Crumble]

Israel's reoccupation of the entire West Bank in Spring 2002 (Operation Defensive Shield) ended many of the limited powers exercised by the Palestinian Authority. Subsequent measures championed by Israel have deconstructed nominally Palestinian territories into an ever-more complex, almost indecipherable maze of administrative, territorial, legal, and security spaces, lacking territorial coherence and administrative transparency.

These physical divisions throughout the West Bank are caused by settlements, their infrastructure, and transportation links. Palestinians and the international community have not effectively challenged Israeli demands to assure the security of settlements and their inhabitants, expansively defined by Israel - even though these demands make the effective exercise and expansion of Palestinian authority across the rump of isolated, disjointed territories which Israel desires neither for settlement or security all but impossible.

The points at which these myriad spaces meet - checkpoints, crossing points, and the separation barrier winding its way through the West Bank and East Jerusalem - highlight the conflicts, inefficiencies, and suffering produced by Israeli policy. These hardships are not the unintended by-product of policies carelessly planned or implemented. Rather, they are the inevitable consequence of an arbitrary and lawless regime of occupation.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intended to solidify the physical separation of Palestinians from settler communities within the West Bank and also between the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Israel in security, territorial, and economic dimensions. The creation of the physical infrastructure to support this policy is well advanced. Should he choose, Sharon's successor will not easily be able to reverse it.

The physical separation of settlers from their Palestinian environment relies on the creation of settlement blocs linked territorially to Israel. This continuity is contrasted by a patchwork of Palestinian areas whose territorial and administrative coherence has been sacrificed to Israeli settlement requirements, and whose linkages to other Palestinian areas, when available, are often limited to narrow corridors of "transportation contiguity."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/672644.html

[Tom Joad]

1. Why aren't more people listening to sane voices like this?

Especially for those who want a decent future for all the people in Palestine/Israel, this is a breath of fresh air.

I wish we could recommend posts, this needs to be read.

[barb162]

2. It's the violence, stupid!

"...checkpoints, crossing points, and the separation barrier..." arise because of security from violence

[Tom Joad]

3. Right, it is about violence!

However, the violence is also the nature of the occupation, not only resistance to it.

Many Palestinians are now walled into the "Israeli side" of the barrier, separating them from their communities in the West Bank. How does this provide security for Israelis?? How does the building of Jewish-only settlements, in land taken by military force, provide security for Israeli Jews?

It does, however, create "facts on the ground" that define the future borders of Israel. It does make Palestinian life miserable. It is also a great violence.

"The conceptual framework adopted by the international community - whether in its policy towards settlements, security, or border management - reflects the misplaced notion that a hostile occupation dedicated to the large-scale theft of land for civilian settlement and thus lawless by nature, can be run according to standards that are above all fair."

"Internationally-led efforts to encourage a regime of law are a misconceived and ultimately unrealizable substitute for a principled demand to dismantle settlements and to end occupation. For example, a recent World Bank report, "The Palestinian Economy and the Prospects for its Recovery," is guardedly hopeful that the November 15, 2005 agreement on the operation of crossing points from Gaza "has the potential to transform border management - from a unilateral, security-based model to one which is cooperatively managed and seeks a sustainable balance between security and economics." Such a system, if it could be created, would not be an occupation of the kind Israel operates in the occupied territories. But occupation - brutal, arbitrary, and opaque - with settlement at its heart, continues to define relations between Israel and Palestinians today."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/672644.html

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Very good questions, Tom...

Many Palestinians are now walled into the "Israeli side" of the barrier, separating them from their communities in the West Bank. How does this provide security for Israelis?? How does the building of Jewish-only settlements, in land taken by military force, provide security for Israeli Jews?

The security 'argument' is imo a very weak and lazy thing that has been used to justify each and every war or conflict since time immemorial. It's always used to justify violence and aggression towards another party, and the magic word 'security' is supposed to be enough for anyone it's thrown at to go 'Security? Gotcha! Why didn't you say that before! No need to say any more!'. Which is what happens when it's thrown at populations who might otherwise oppose their leaders aggression...

Violet...