Israel's 'Peace' Plan is a Grand Illusion

Israel’s current policies are at odds with American national interests and certain core American values.

(DUBLIN) - The portrayal of Israel as primed for peace and Palestine hell bent on war was debunked at the United Nations. Until now the official version of the story had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The original Zionist dream of establishing a state where none had existed for nearly two millennia has been painful for Palestinians. Responsibility for the continued conflict rests with Israel.

Netanyahu is but the latest in a line of Israeli prime ministers who seek ‘peace’ through the crosshairs of a gun. For sixty three years Israel has pursued a policy of aggression and human extermination in Palestine. Successive Israeli prime minister have chosen war above peace.

Israel has shown once again that it neither wants peace nor a Palestinian state. With enormous potential leverage at its disposal the United States could put pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to reach a final peace agreement.

Renowned for its use of various tools to coerce the outcome of events and make sure that other states behave in America’s interests, the United States chose to pussy foot around Israel. America could threaten to cut off economic and diplomatic support for Israel.

Israel’s current policies are at odds with American national interests and certain core American values. Israel’s supporters in the United States are pressing Washington to continue subsidizing the occupation to the tune of $3 billion per year.

After 9/11 Israel referred to Yasser Arafat as ‘our Bin Laden’ in a drive to align Israel’s fight against its colonised Arabs as part of the same war on ‘terror’ that Bush was fighting. How long can we afford to let Israel pretend it is fighting in the ‘war’ against terror? How can we remain so gutlessly silent?

The Palestinian—Israeli conflict has produced a unique crop of words. The Israeli siege of a city has become a ‘closure,’ the legal border between Israel and the occupied territories has become the ‘seam line,’ collaborators for the Israelis are ‘co-operators,’ Israeli occupied land has become ‘disputed.’ Jewish settlements built illegally on Arab land have become ‘neighbourhoods’ – nice places which are invariably attacked by Palestinian ‘militants’.

When suicide bombers strike –‘terrorists’ to the Israelis, of course – the Palestinians call them ‘martyrs’. The word Israelis like to use for their murders: ‘targeted killings.’ Editors tell their reporters to use ‘targeted killings’, and so are perpetrating not only a journalistic error but a factual inaccuracy. We should use the word ‘terrorist’, but it should be used for both sides.

Israel barred journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, on the alleged pretext of security, when it launched a major military strike there. The journalists, barred despite a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that called on the government to allow international reporters into the territory, reported from hilltops two miles away from the zone of conflict.

Robert Fisk writes in his book, The Great War for Civilization, that ‘After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the people within those borders burn!’