Commentary

The Peace of the Grave

September 29 marks the second anniversary of the current intifada. In the last two years, the Palestinian people have seen whatever small gains they made under the Oslo Accords vanish into thin air. Their cities have been occupied. They live under continuous curfew, enforced by one of the most technologically advanced and powerful armies on earth, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). And despite the claim that the occupation of Palestinian cities, villages and refugees camps is to prevent suicide bombings in Israel or against settlers, the bombings have continued, as has the collective punishment of the 3.15 million Palestinians living under occupation.

While its allies gravely condemn all acts of terrorism committed against Israeli civilians, Israel continues to openly violate international law. In the past year, Israel has engaged in the killing of civilians during supposedly targeted extra-judicial assassinations of alleged terrorist leaders, the demolition of thousands of houses and businesses in the occupied territories and the detention of thousands as suspected terrorists without any due process simply because they are Palestinian men or youth.

Earlier this year, Yasser Arafat, the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people, was surrounded by Israeli tanks, while IDF generals bickered over whether or not to assassinate him and Israel's political leaders tried to broker a deal to have him permanently exiled. When Arafat refused exile, the president of the United States informed the Palestinian people they will have to elect a new leader in upcoming elections, or they will loose desperately needed financial aid.

While the last two years of occupation have not been able to break the Palestinian spirit, the Palestinian economy has been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who work in Israel have not been able to get to their jobs; tens of thousands more have not been able to get to their jobs in other Palestinian cities. UNICEF, in a report published last year, found that in a two-month period, Palestinians lost an estimated $505 million in employment and commercial income.

The World Bank recently concluded that the percentage of Palestinians living below the poverty line now stands at almost 50 per cent, double what it was in late 2000, while the unemployment rate has tripled to 30 per cent of the labour force. The World Bank also found that Gross National Income loss amounted to at least $2.4 billion U.S. since the second intifada began.

However, despite every Israeli attempt to make life unbearable, very few Palestinians have left the occupied territories to migrate elsewhere. Now, faced with a "Palestinian situation" that won't go away, as one IDF general put it recently, what is slowly emerging from the failed Oslo peace process and the smoking ruins of Palestinian cities and villages is a different plan for "peace". This peace, though, is not based on the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops and settlers. Rather, as is becoming clear by the frequency with which the idea is being discussed in mainstream Israeli society, it is a peace based on the removal of all Palestinians from the occupied territories - in other words, a peace of the grave.

Those in Israel and in the United States who support the plan call it the "transfer" of Palestinians, instead of identifying what it actually is - ethnic cleansing. In the United States, Dick Armey, the most senior Republican in the U.S. Congress, has openly advocated "transfer" on television.

In Israel, this has long been the option favoured by the right-wing Moledet party, founded by the former Israeli minister of tourism Rehavam Zeevi, who was assassinated last year. Moledet members remain critical in Sharon's coalition government, and their idea of transfer has been gaining popularity amongst members of Sharon's Likud party, who some months ago passed a resolution refusing to recognize a Palestinian state.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Likud prime minister who speaks in Winnipeg on September 9, has been quietly advocating this idea for months. On his official web site, he links to several sites dedicated to promoting the expulsion of all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza strip.

In one article posted on his site, a "noted Israeli scholar" argues that the existence of a Palestinian people is a "myth - which never existed in history". Another site Netanyahu links to, run by former Israeli military officers, recently published an article entitled "The logistics of transfer", in which the author argues transfer is the "only possible solution" to the conflict in the Middle East.

It is quite possible that the Israelis, who have deliberately undermined every possibility for peace, have been planning ethnic cleansing for some time. Certainly, they are now bringing the idea into the open. This "final solution" of the Israelis to the Palestinian problem, quite apart from the fact that it represents a crime against humanity, as defined by the United Nations, can never bring peace and security to the Middle East. It would further exacerbate the problems of the Palestinians, who will never agree to the loss of their ancestral homes. It would also not satisfy the expansionist appetite of the Zionists, because even with the incorporation of the occupied territories, Israel would still lack reliable supplies of water and energy, precious commodities which Israel's neighbours possess in greater abundance. It is inconceivable that Zionist expansionism would stop at Israel's biblical borders.