Bush and Hillary: "Willing Collaborators"
"Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.
"It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators."-Jeff Halper, American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a Noble Peace Prize Nominee for 2006.
During one of my three interviews with Jeff at his ICAHD office on Ben Yehuda Street, West Jerusalem, he informed this reporter that the reason he moved to Israel from Hibbing, Minnesota in 1973 was because there was something about Israel that spoke to him, and why in 1997, he founded ICAHD:
“It was at the time when the Oslo peace plan collapsed and the occupation reasserted itself. Many Israeli peace activists began asking Palestinians what the best way to engage with each other was and the answer was blowing in the wind: ‘STOP the home demolitions!’
In the 40 years of occupation, 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished.
Jeff informed this reporter that, "95% of the cases have nothing to do with security. All these homes are on Palestinian private property. The Israeli government will not grant permits for them to build on their own land, and in reality are quietly transferring the Palestinians administratively from the land. They make conditions so intolerable that the Palestinians give up and leave and this is exactly what they are after. Not only do the Palestinians receive no warning when their homes are to be destroyed they are fined $1, 500.00!
"I'll get a call at 5 AM from a Palestinian telling me the bulldozers have arrived and we activists go out and engage in civil disobedience by standing up to the bulldozers. We also raise funds to rebuild these homes right where they had been before. The reasons for the demolitions are: for The Wall, to establish illegal settlements, build roads and because the Israeli government wants to keep Palestinians confined to the islands [areas A and B] in the West Bank, and so Palestinian land remain under the control of the Israeli government."
Jeff can no longer count how many times he had been arrested and sentenced to community service. His eyes sparkled as he told me, "When I tell the judge I am serving the community they just don't get it! The Israeli government simply does not want to take responsibility and the USA government ignores the situation. Do you know why Israel does not want to become America's 51st state? Because then they would only have two senators!
"Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence...One out of three Israeli children lives below the poverty line. It's probably about 80% for Palestinians. Jews are like everyone else, those who have been abused grow up to be abusers. Things here have been turned on their head: its victim mentality and denial about the occupation. Once Israelis accept the fact that they are occupiers they will have to admit their State Terrorism."
Prior to 1948, 70% of West Jerusalem was Palestinian. From '48 to '67, Jerusalem was divided into Israeli West Jerusalem and Palestinian East under Jordan's control. When Israel captured and occupied the West Bank in 1967, the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem were also redefined. Israel annexed the greater Jerusalem area but did not 'adopt' the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem as Israeli citizens.
Today, Palestinians living in Jerusalem are classified differently from those in the West Bank. They are called permanent residents, they can vote in local elections but not in Israeli national elections. Most do not bother to vote as a statement against the occupation.
West Jerusalem in nearly 100% Jewish. The Palestinians in East Jerusalem pay the same taxes as those on the West side, but receive only 8% of the total municipal budget. Orthodox Jews pay no taxes. Palestinians make up 1/3 of the total Jerusalem population, but pay over 40% of the taxes. One is immediately aware when one walks from the East to the West that one is truly in two different worlds. On the West side of town there are many parks, the roads and streets are well maintained and sanitation pick up is predictable. Twenty-six of the thirty-one City Council members of Jerusalem are Orthodox Jews. The East side of Jerusalem is more like the lower east side of New York.
While the Israeli government considers Jerusalem the capitol of Israel no foreign country does. There are no international embassies in Jerusalem, except for the fundamentalist International Christian Zionist one, which espouses an inherently anti-Semitic theology and neo-con political ideology.
On March 17, 2006, the 7th day of my third journey to Israel Palestine, Jeff Halper, greeted my group of nearly one hundred Internationals attending a Sabeel [Arabic for THE WAY] reality tour through the West Bank, in the East Jerusalem YMCA conference room with, "I don't want to depress you too much but the issue of the occupation is a global issue that transcends boundaries and Israel Palestine impacts all global realities...We have a country created by the UN and supported by the USA that has a brutal occupation while International Law defines occupation as a temporary situation.
"The USA is complicit in starving the Palestinians and it is going to get worse. We have a situation in which America and Israeli actions are illegal. Three weeks ago in the USA the Pentagon issued the QDR: Quadrennial Defense Review which is a twenty year plan to contain China and commit to a long war with the Islamic Empire. The USA sees Iran as the center of its war against Islam and wants to make the entire world safe for the USA and wants to contain any power who will rise and challenge America...The USA will shield itself so it can continue to extract 35% of the earths resources. The American lifestyle is not sustainable.
"When you incorporate occupied territories, highways, settlements and use resources it is all illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention which states the status quo must be retained so that negotiations can happen. Unilateral actions are illegal. The occupying power is responsible for those under its control.
"Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. What gives us hope is that as this conflict worsens maybe Europe will figure out that American policies are against their interests and intervene...This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA.
"If we do fix this conflict it would be a tremendous step forward in global reconciliation...This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention. …Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians."
There are currently forty-two illegal settlements in the Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem. The only green area for children to play will soon have a high rise for the settlers which will be 7 meters taller than the walls of the Old City.
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, Action Advocacy Officer for Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions informed this reporter, "Out of site of most Israelis is the Hebronization of east Jerusalem. The Wall has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice but America continues to allow it to grow. The wall is way over the Green Line proving it is not about security but about grabbing Palestinian land. Israel's policy of Quiet Transfer: getting rid of the Palestinians is a huge humanitarian crisis.
"There is an advertisement that runs in the USA that reads: "Have a Holiday Home in Jerusalem." The ad does not mention this home is 100% ILLEGAL! It is clear how the wall zig zags that it is not about security but about grabbing the maximum land with minimal Palestinian occupation. The settlers have taken over the Holy Basin."
When I returned to Israel Palestine in October 2006, during an ICAHD tour Jeff acknowledged, "It has been said that the Israeli's do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli's and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators."
Yesterday, I received an email from Jeff, from which I excerpt:
The very first act of the Israeli Occupation in 1967 was home demolitions.
On June 11th, as the Six Day War was drawing to its close, more than 135 Palestinian families in the historic Muslim Mughrabi Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City – the vast majority refugees from 1948 – were roused from their beds in the dead of night to watch in horror as Israeli bulldozers summarily destroyed their homes and the quarter's two mosques, all in order to create an open plaza in front of the Western (Wailing) Wall. It was an operation that had nothing to do with either the war or security, but to create the first of thousands of "facts on the ground" intended to make Israel's control of the Occupied Territories permanent.
This June 11th, ICAHD will return to this site where the Occupation began in order to announce its rebuilding campaign.
The Campaign to Rebuild All Palestinian Homes Demolished Over the Next Year, a partnership with ICAHD-USA and ICAHD-UK, will rebuild each and every Palestinian home demolished by Israel in the Occupied Territories in the coming year – about 300 homes, batei sumud, "houses of steadfastness" against policies of transfer and dispossession. With funding coming mainly from Jewish donors appalled by the Israeli governments house demolition policy, ICAHD is able to mount this major challenge to the legality, morality and even self-interest of the monstrosity that is the Israeli Occupation. This represents a timely and appropriate intensification of ICAHD's ten year struggle against the Occupation and its most cruel expression, the demolition of Palestinian homes – 18,000 since 1967.
ICAHD will launch the campaign with help from you, our supporters in Israel and abroad. But monitoring its progress is equally important. This opposition to Israeli government policy will not go unanswered. We will only succeed in challenging the Occupation if public attention is focused on our nonviolent resistance and, at every turn, our supporters throughout the world mobilize public opinion and their governments. Together we can cause the unjust structure of Occupation to collapse, thereby releasing the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to find a just and sustainable resolution to their more than century-old conflict – and the world as a whole to move on to address the grievances of the wider Middle East, thus bringing a measure of hope, stability and reconciliation.
In Solidarity,
Jeff Halper (ICAHD Coordinator) and Lucia Pizarro (International Coordinator)
Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
PO Box Jerusalem , Israel
www.icahd.org
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
The above published June 2, 2007
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_eileen_f_070601_bush_and_hillary...
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/06/02/p17247
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your are so one sided...
You really don't have any type of balanced view of the situation. The Israelis have had their share of burdens as well. Let us not forget that the state was created as result of the Holocaust. Let us not forget that Israel has been attacked on multiple occasions by its neighbors. Let us not forget that Israel daily deals with the daily threat of random violence from terrorism. Israel is not always correct, but Israel has also carried its share of the burden. As Israel pulled out of Gaza, it has descended into chaos and violence...not Israeli - Palestinian violence, but Hamas -Fatah violence. Your complete inability to see the situation from a more balanced view is sickening.
A negotiation means you don't get everything you want today...but some sort of compromise would have been a hell of a lot better than the last 7 years of violence and chaos, most of it self-inflicted from the Palestinians on themselves.
All of this outlandish talk and name-calling Barak a zionist has got most of us saying enough is enough.
You really have no understanding in the art of persuasion. You choose a mountain of gall over the drop of honey.
And you are have no clue as to life under OCCUPATION
By virtue of your tax dollars going to continue occupation and oppression of human beings, you are culpable in the suffering that innocent Palestinians have endured for 60 years.
Your complete inability to see that when ever HUMAN BEINGS are denied inalienable human rights they will rise up and demand them.
International Law affirms that occupied people have every right to rise up against their oppressors and the Jewish Holocaust is NO EXCUSE for them being oppressors!
I have denounced VIOLENCE on all sides and support International Law and the UN Declaration of Human Rights and so do the Churches for Middle East Peace and I offer you this statement from a Bishop in Jerusalem with hope to break your wall of denial:
Statement by Bishop Dr. Munib Younan June 15, 2007
We have been warning for some time now that the situation here in the Occupied Palestinian territories – especially Gaza - is untenable and explosive. I fear that unless we take drastic action, we will sink into all-out, protracted civil war that will dramatically fuel the fires of extremism, violence and chaos in the Middle East . This could further radicalize the whole Middle East and perhaps tip us over a turning point toward religious fanaticism that would be hard to change. So I speak today to urge leaders, combatants, ordinary people and the international community: for God's sake and the sake of all those suffering here from violence and oppression, stop the internal violence, end the international aid boycott and implement a serious plan to end the illegal, 40-year occupation of the Palestinian people.
The heads of local churches in Jerusalem issued a statement Wednesday, June 13, 2007, calling on all Palestinian brothers to put down their arms against one another and stop the violence immediately. There is no justification for this violence, and it only damages the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people for self-determination, our own state and an end to occupation.
Sisters and brothers of Palestine , accept your responsibility to end all violence and return to the higher ground and aim of non-violent struggle to this illegal occupation. People of the Arab League, please step in and help us regain our balance.
Although a resolution to this conflict seems so unreachable, we already know the solutions: follow international law, UN resolutions and basic human rights law. Implement the two-state solution, based on the 1948 armistice line (the Green Line), which would lead to two equal, viable, sovereign states, each with Jerusalem as its capital, just resolution to the refugee problem, shared resources and ending the policy of settlements.
So as I sit in Jerusalem trying to analyze what is happening and why, I can't help but wonder. Why, instead of implementing the many relevant UN resolutions supporting these concepts (66 in all), has the international community ignored them all these years and continued to allow the confiscation of Palestinian land and building up almost 500,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Why, if the West wants to foster democracy, did they reject the outcome of democratic elections held under occupation with little violence and boycott the new government? Why has the international community sat by and watched the longest occupation in history – 40 years – and then placed an unprecedented boycott on them, which amounts to sanctions against a captive people. How is this possible? Maybe it is time for deep self-evaluation for Palestinians, Israelis and the international community.
For this reason, from Jerusalem I call on international leaders of the world to wake up and see that some of their policies have had devastating negative effects on this conflict and, in fact, the whole Middle East. Realistically, what can one expect in Gaza when you lock 1.5 million people into a tiny patch of land 20 miles long by 5-10 miles wide, virtually seal the borders except for a small fraction of trade and then completely stop the already meager salaries? A recent OxFam study of families in Gaza showed that the average family in Gaza has an average debt of $1750, in a land where a school principle only earns about $6000 per year. And in the West Bank , what can we expect when you herd people into tiny enclaves, take away freedom of movement and allow continued violations of human rights to go on behind walls of concrete and barbed wire fences?
Leaders of the world, your complicity in allowing and supporting the illegal occupation and your unprecedented action in boycotting this occupied people have created a humanitarian, political and economic crisis that now threatens not only the people of Palestine , but also Israel and the whole region. The Arab and Muslim world see this conflict as the litmus test for how the West treats them, and until some justice and improvement on the ground occurs for Palestinians, it will continue to fuel the fires of fanaticism in the whole Middle East .
If you want to bring an end to the horrific violence in the Middle East and if you are concerned as I am by the rampant growth of religious extremism: please, I urge your from Jerusalem, get serious about implementing the two-state solution, begin immediate serious talks about these issues with all sides and end the illegal and immoral boycott and occupation.
If we truly want to end this deadly stalemate and build a modern, democratic civil society in Palestine living side by side in a just peace with Israel , let us use our resources to educate our children and not to buy weapons to oppress them. We in the ELCJHL continue to be committed to a just solution based on international law and to see education as the key in preparing the future leaders who can lead us from occupation to freedom, from fear to mutual trust and from violence to peace/salaam/shalom
I add that EDUCATING USA Christians to the reality of the Holy Land has been most frustrating and only by the grace of God and the burning fire in my belly, which was ignited by a little boy of Bethlehem [photo on the banner of http://www.wearewideawake.org/ ] am I able to endure and persist as the widow who demanded JUSTICE!
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
You missed the point
Jeff Halper was speaking to the APARTHEID situation and the politicians SILENCE about it.
Perhaps because you have not witnessed with your own eyes to the truth that the 13 bantustans in the West Bank-none of which are connected to the other, is what is known as Palestine and they are all open air prisons. Israeli's decide who gets in and who gets out.
Very soon, Palestinians will have to have visas to travel to an another canton, and they are DENIED to right to drive on Jewish only roadways, built courtesy of many USA TAX DOLLARS.
Also, soon to come, internationals will be required to obtain a visa at Ben Gurion, if they want to worship at the Church of The Nativity, in the Little Town of Bethlehem: OCCUPIED TERRITORY.
e
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
One Question Eileen
Why on this issue is everything broken down into an "Enemy/Friend" paradigm? Can't you ever imagine that the Palestinians and their Arab "allies" share some responsibility for this mess? The parents and grandparents of many of those Palestinians now living in the West Bank were in no hurry to end their occupation of the Old Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem after they seized it in 1948.
You have missed my point again, maybe this will enlighten you?
My first book, KEEP HOPE ALIVE details the corruption and apathy of the Arab states regarding Palestinians.
My point in this article is USA complicity, apathy and silence!
"It's not a question of who's going to throw the first stone: It's a question of who's going to start building with it." Sloan Wilson
There is more than enough blame to go around, but the Nabka/Disaster is a story we the people of the USA are most ignorant of when 750,000 innocent Palestinians were forced off their land.
“On March 10, 1948, in Tel Aviv, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.”-Dr. Ilan Pappe.
Dr. Ilan Pappe is Israeli born and Jewish. A graduate of Hebrew University and Oxford who teaches at Haifa University. He is a well known revisionist or “post-Zionist” Israeli historian who has been both acclaimed and demonized. His most recent work is "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" which documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing.
On Nov. 8, 2006, on the seventh day of Sabeel’s 6th International Conference; The Forgotten Faithful: PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS
Dr. Pappe spoke to over 330 International ecumenical Christians in the Ramallah Cultural Palace. His topic was the “Dynamics of Forgetting” and because of the “fierce urgency of now” [Rev. MLK, Jr.] the world is beginning to remember that once there was a Red House, where a most diabolical plan was hatched.
Dr. Pappe informed the crowd, “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ‘20’s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.”
Haganah is Hebrew for “The Defense” and was a Jewish paramilitary organization formed in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948. It began as a small group of “Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did the group have more than 100 members until after the Arab riots of 1920 and 1921. The Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, whom the League of Nations had given the Mandate of Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront the Arabs about attacks on the Palestinian Jews, and thus created the Haganah to protect their farmers and settlements. The initial role of the Haganah was to guard the Jewish Kibbutzim and farms, and to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs.
In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah “units” were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment. It went from being an untrained militia to a capable army.”
The British did not officially recognize the Haganah,but the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. By 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi (the National Military Organization), better known as “Irgun” (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced “HaEtsel”). The members were discontented with the policy of restraint when faced with British and Arab pressure and “terrorists” in their own right. Irgun later split in 1940, and their off-shoot became known as the “Lehi” (Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, standing for Freedom Fighters of Israel, and also known by the British as the “Stern Gang” after its leader, Abraham Stern. Because the British severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, in 1939 the Haganah created the Palmach - the Haganah’s strike force, which also organized illegal Jewish immigration of over 100,000 Jews to Palestine.
In 1944, in response to the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East, by members of the Jewish Lehi underground, the Haganah worked with the British to round up, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action was called the Saison (or hunting season), and seriously demoralized the Irgun and reduced its activities.
But, the Saison could not stop the Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Group from working together. The three groups had different functions, which served to move the British out of Palestine and to make Palestine a Jewish state rather than create a Jewish home in Palestine.
Menachem Begin, an Irgun commander, stated in a 1944 meeting: “In fact, there is a division of roles; one organization advocates individual terrorism (the Lehi), the other conducts sporadic military operations (the Irgun) and there is a third organization which prepares itself to throw its final weight in the decisive war.”
Dr. Pappe’s opening remark on November 8, 2006, still sends chills though me, “On March 10, 1948, eleven men had a fateful meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns.
“The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened.
“From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine.
“Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media.
“To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship.
“In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals! But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology.
“Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this.
“The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say “ENOUGH is ENOUGH!” The way to challenge and change the ethnic cleansing is to pursue true democracy and the use of sanctions and divestment, for money talks.”
Since 1948, USA taxpayers have provided nearly 100 Billion dollars to Israel. However, America’s $84.8 billion in aid to Israel just from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation.
[Excerpted from my second book: MEMOIRS of a Nice Irish-American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
We the people of the USA are culpable in the oppression, occupation and denial of inalienable human rights by virtue of how our government spends our tax dollars.
e
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Completely agree
Comparing Bush with Clinton on the Middle East is outlandish indeed. No one appreciates such absolutism. There's a lot of blame all around and Arafat got 95% of what he was looking for back 2000 and didn't take the deal. Things have gotten worse ever since.
Arafat
The issue of a shared Jerusalem, the issue of the inalienable human rights of refugees to return home, were NOT apart of the Oslo Agreement.
These are the bottom line issues, and until Palestinians are dealt with as equal human beings who receive JUSTICE, International Law, there will be no peace or security in the Holy Land.
Sow Justice; Reap Peace and Security will flourish.
e
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Arafat
The issue of a shared Jerusalem, the issue of the inalienable human rights of refugees to return home, were NOT apart of the Oslo Agreement.
These are the bottom line issues, and until Palestinians are dealt with as equal human beings who receive JUSTICE, International Law, there will be no peace or security in the Holy Land.
Sow Justice; Reap Peace and Security will flourish.
e
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Willing Collaborators?
Just remember that Hillary's husband in the waning days of his administration had presented both the Israelis and Palestinians with a very fair peace plan that Arafat foolishly rejected.
A little balance would be nice instead of all this Enemy/Friend, Black and White presentation of the issue.
More Balance and TRUTH: Clinton, Arafat and Barak
July 2000: Pres. Clinton convened the Camp David II Peace Summit following the hard work Norway had secretly begun between Israel and the PLO.
It was Clinton-not Barak-who offered Arafat the withdrawal of 40,000 Jewish settlers, leaving 180,000 and 209 settlements: ALL considered ILLEGAL under International Law.
This 'generous' offer retained the bantustan model of disconnected fragments of Palestinian villages and the continuation of apartheid Jewish only roads.
Palestinians were NOT offered any control over their borders, the air space above them or the aquifers below.
While Barak can be given a pass that he did offer the Palestinians more than any other Zionist had, the truth is that any serious Diplomatic offer made by a country ILLEGALLY OCCUPYING another –should not to be judged on past offers-but against International Law!
From the Gold standard of International Law, Barak's "generous offer" was NOT generous at all and it was Clinton's plan!
The bottom line of the "Generous Offer" was:
The Palestinians were offered a disconnected land area that equaled 80% of the REMAINING 22% of historic Palestine.
A network of APARTEID by-pass roads, bridges and tunnels for Jews only built through and on legally owned Palestinian property and permanently occupied by the IDF; which translates into permanent loss of water and resources.
NO SHARED Jerusalem; the right of return for refugees was not even addressed; while 80% of the ILLEGAL settlers were to remain in place.
LEARN MORE:
Americans for Middle East Understanding
www.ameu.org
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"