Eyeless in Israel
By Gideon Levy
A foreigner who happened to find himself here wouldn't believe his eyes: A few weeks before the general elections - a period that is supposed to be marked by an airing and sharpening of views - Israel continues to close its eyes, not to see, not to hear and not to know what it is doing to three million people who live less than an hour from our homes. If this crass disregard is hard to accept in normal times - the approach being that what doesn't interest me doesn't exist - on the eve of elections that are considered (as always) critical, it is nothing short of criminal.
Here are a few updates from the past few days: Five unarmed Palestinians, probably desperate workers who were using a ladder to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip to find work, were shelled by a tank and killed on Thursday. On Monday, soldiers killed a Palestinian who was mentally handicapped. On Sunday, soldiers shot two women and three children in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. One of the women, a mother, was killed along with her two children, aged four and 15, and the other woman suffered serious injuries. The soldiers said they thought the women and children were terrorists.
A week ago Friday, 10 people were killed, including one woman and two employees of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, in a failed liquidation operation in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Earlier that week, a 95-year-old woman who was traveling in a taxicab near Ramallah was shot to death by a soldier. And a couple of days before that, soldiers demolished a building, burying under the rubble a 70-year-man who was inside. All told, more than 30 Palestinians were killed in the first 10 days of December, at least half of them innocent civilians. What was once an "anomaly" has become a daily event, and what the army used to investigate, it no longer even reviews.
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Still drunk with power
The War of Independence ended in April 1949. Israel signed armistice agreements with each of the countries that fought against it, and the borders were set. The last to sign was Jordan, and the Green Line was set as the border. In the wake of the agreement, the right-wing parties in the Knesset assailed the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, for ordering the Israel Defense Forces to stop and not "letting the IDF win" and conquer more territory.
In his reply in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion stated that bringing an end to the war was the most important thing for the victor. Without compromise and concession there is no peace and no end to wars, however victorious. Criticism notwithstanding, there were of course achievements. Those who want proof need only compare the United Nations map of November 29, 1947 - the date of the vote on the plan to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews - with the map of Israel after the agreement.
In the wake of the great victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, we were drunk with power and intoxicated with the territories we had conquered. If we had succeeded in reaching peace agreements at that time based on the good conditions that accrued to the victorious side, we would have been spared wars and reaped very hefty fruits, even had it entailed returning most of the occupied territories.
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Zionism Unbound
Mideast Violence Moves to the Home Front
For Israelis and Palestinians alike, conflict spills over into other circles of life.
Israel Silent on Food Warehouse Razing
Israeli Government, Military Silent on Army Destruction of U.N. Food Warehouse in Gaza
Even the liberal Israeli paper Ha'aretz keeps two sets of books, so to speak. Not all the articles in the Hebrew edition make it to the English edition. Here are a couple that have been translated.
Converted to Islam?
The Government Will Send You To A Psychiatrist
thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog
Who Inspires Whom?
IDF Reports in English Lack Parts Of Hebrew Versions, Reports Haaretz - In Its Hebrew Version Only
thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog |
