Israeli repression in the West Bank, Jerusalem and inside Israel’s 1948 borders is at the highest level in more than a decade. So, too, is Palestinian resistance to Israel’s onslaught. Several Palestinian organizations and prominent leaders have called for transforming the growing resistance into a new intifada (mass uprising).
The Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu followed its murderous 50-day assault on Gaza in July and August that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians—more than 30 times the Israeli deaths in that war—with a series of extraordinary measures and actions clearly aimed at driving the Palestinian population out of Jerusalem and beyond.
It would be hard to know this from the statements of U.S. capitalist politicians and coverage by corporate mass media. The day-in, day-out beating, imprisonment, torture and murder of Palestinians by the Israeli military and fascist Zionist vigilantes is hardly spoken of or reported on here. Nor is the systematic theft of Palestinian lands for new settlements, demolition of Palestinian homes or destruction of hundred-year-old olive trees. The extreme discrimination suffered by the 1.8 million Palestinians living inside the 1948 borders of Israel is likewise rarely mentioned.
Except on rare occasions, what gets the attention of the politicians and mainstream media here are Israeli casualties, despite the fact that they are far fewer in number than what Palestinians suffer. And when U.S. officials do criticize Israel’s illegal settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, there is no actual action taken—no sanctions, no cut-off or reduction in the $3 billion-plus in annual U.S. aid. So, the Israelis simply continue on their course.
In the last two months, the Israeli government has announced massive new seizures of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem for additional settlement building. Already, there are over 750,000 Israeli settlers in those areas. At the same time, attacks by the Israeli army and fascist settler vigilantes—often working in tandem—on Palestinian cities, towns, villages and farms have sharply escalated. Fascist settler elements in Israel, including members of the Knesset (parliament) have been staging “visits” to the Al-Aqsa mosque, considered the third holiest site of Islam. The real goal of the fascist settlers is to demolish the mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple, supposedly on the site where two temples existed over 2,000 years ago. The settler “visits” have been accompanied by Israeli security forces without which they would not be possible in the face of Palestinian anger.
Growing support for the most extreme right-wing, racist and fascist views has manifested itself in Israeli street demonstrations, where common chants include “Death to the Arabs,” and “Death to the leftists.”
Across the West Bank, from Nablus to Hebron, Israeli fascist vigilantes—as always protected by the so-called Israeli Defense Forces—have cut down hundreds of Palestinian-owned olive trees and prevented harvesting, attacked villages, staged violent marches in Palestinian cities, and viciously harassed Palestinian school children. Since June, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been imprisoned in addition to the more than 5,000 political prisoners already illegally held in Israeli jail.
In retaliation to the intensified repression, there have been several attacks by Palestinian individuals on Israelis in Jerusalem, including an attack on a synagogue that left seven dead including three rabbis who were U.S. citizens and the two Palestinians who carried out the attack. Several Palestinians have also been attacked and killed, including a bus driver who was lynched inside his bus.
Statements by top Israeli officials in recent days and weeks have helped to deepen the growing tension.
“For Israel, two-state is no solution”
For anyone believing otherwise, the myth that the Netanyahu government supports the creation of any kind of Palestinian state has been completely dispelled.
On Nov. 5, 2014, Naftali Bennett, minister of the economy and a key figure in Netanyahu’s coalition government, published an op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled “For Israel, two-state is no solution.”
“For its security, Israel cannot withdraw from more territory and cannot allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank,” wrote Bennett. Under his substitute “peace plan,” Israel would annex outright more than 61 percent of the West Bank.
But the Palestinians would not actually gain control over the remaining 39 percent.
“This Palestinian entity will be short of a state. It will not control its own borders and will not be allowed to have a military.” In other words, it would be a bantustan, the kind of “homeland” the apartheid rulers of South Africa tried to foist on the Black population when they were in control.
Gaza “cannot be a party to any agreement.” In Bennett’s fascistic “vision,” there would be two separated Palestinian “entities” on a land area comprising just 7 percent of Palestine, with neither in control of their borders.
They would in reality be tiny, densely populated and impoverished colonies of Israel, sources of cheap labor and markets for Israeli goods.
Bennett well understands how outrageous a proposal he is floating: “I am aware that the world will not immediately accept this proposal. It seems to go against everything Israel, the Palestinians and the international community have worked toward over the last 20 years.”
That does not mean that Bennett, who clearly aspires to become Israel’s next prime minister, isn’t serious: “I will work to make this plan government policy because there is a new reality in the Middle East, which has brought an end to the viability of the Oslo peace process.”
In fact, the Oslo “peace process” has served Israel’s interests very well and Palestinians very badly. It has now been dispensed with by the leaders in Tel Aviv, not just Bennett but Netanyahu as well.
The Oslo Accord, presided over in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat as the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, never actually provided for the creation of a Palestinian state. Many of its provisions were highly colonialist in character, including hundreds of pages regulating, often in minute detail, Palestinian import and export of fruits, vegetables and other products under Israeli control.
Since Oslo, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has increased from about 280,000 to more than 750,000. While Israeli troops and settlers are out of Gaza, its 1.7 million inhabitants are today subjected to a suffocating blockade that affects every facet of life, and frequent Israeli military assaults.
Another aspirant to be Israel’s next leader is foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman is a notorious anti-Arab racist. In 1998, Lieberman proposed bombing Egypt’s Aswan Dam, because of Egypt’s alleged support for the Palestine Liberation Organization, an action that would have, if carried out, wiped out millions of Egyptians residing in the Nile Valley.
In 2003, he suggested drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, offering to “provide the buses” to transport them. In 2004, he said of the Palestinians living inside the 1948 borders: “They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.” In 2006, he stated that Palestinian members of the Knesset should be killed if they met with leaders of the Hamas organization.
That such an openly fascist individual could become its second-most powerful political figure is a telling commentary on the state of Israel today.
On Nov. 7, in another provocation, Lieberman told a press conference, “We will never accept the definition of building in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem as settlement activity.” By “Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” Lieberman made clear, he meant all of Jerusalem including Palestinian districts.
While for diplomatic purposes Netanyahu has so far refrained from being quite as open as Bennett and Lieberman, there can be no doubt that he shares their aims.
In a speech commemorating the 18th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, who negotiated the Oslo agreement on behalf of Israel, Netanyahu stated: “Our strength is the guarantee for our existence and peace. … This requires a security border in the Jordan Valley, as Rabin said in his last speech.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Netanyahu stated bluntly: “I have said it before and I repeat it today: I’m not going to evict a single community, I am not going to uproot any Israeli from his home.”
In other words, the settlers will stay in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel will retain control of all borders, and the Palestinians will not be allowed anything but colonial dependency on broken up pieces of territory.
All the official and unofficial policies of the Israeli rulers are directed to making life miserable as a means of “encouraging” as many Palestinians as possible to give up and leave.
Instead, as they have for so many decades against seemingly overwhelming odds, the Palestinians continue to heroically struggle for self-determination and an end to colonial occupation.
