The End of Their Dreams

[Violet_Crumble]

by Nick Dearden
War on Want
May 04, 2004


"The Palestinians understand that this plan is to a large extent the end of their dreams, a very heavy blow to them... In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state."

These words, uttered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon just a week before obtaining Washington's backing for his 'disengagement' plan, suggest that there is more to his proposals than the "historic and courageous actions" hailed by George W Bush or the welcome "opportunity" Tony Blair describes it. Incredibly Bush and Blair, in their White House press conference, claimed not to have heard Sharon's comments - broadcast on the front page of every Israeli newspaper only the previous week. But they cannot claim to be unaware of the reality of the disengagement: the creation of an over-populated prison in the Gaza Strip to mirror the prison being created by the West Bank Wall, where the fear is that the impoverished Palestinian population, their humanitarian aid suspended and the leaders facing coordinated assassination campaigns, will turn to ever more extreme means to resist their desperate situation.

Despite defeat by his own party - who have no more interest in Palestinian welfare than Sharon, but perhaps a less sophisticated way of achieving their ends - Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan pushes on. It will exacerbate poverty in Palestine and in so doing fuel the seemingly endless downward spiral of violence in which almost everyone loses.

The Palestinians are suffering, in the words of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the "effect of a terrible natural disaster", but one that has been created by people and politics. A manmade catastrophe where a power imbalance, maintained and exaggerated by Western governments lies at the heart of mass impoverishment and dehumanisation of an entire people. Palestine is a microcosm of everything going on in the world today. One Palestinian partner of War on Want wrote that we have an "inner feeling that we are a expendable people", a feeling replicated by millions across the developing world living in a global system of Apartheid where birthplace and race dictates whether you live with adequate means of survival or in conditions of modern slavery.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5461