“The United States has been a terrible ‘sponsor’ of the peace process. It has succumbed to Israeli pressure on everything, abandoning the principle of land for peace (no U.N. Resolution says anything about returning a tiny percentage, as opposed to all of the land Israel seized in 1967), pushing the lifeless Palestinian leadership into deeper and deeper holes to suit Netanyahu’s preposterous demands.

“The fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they were before the Oslo process began. Their annual income is less than half of what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place; more of their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist; and Jerusalem is practically lost...

“Every house demolishment, every expropriated dunum, every arrest and torture, every barricade, every closure, every gesture of arrogance and intended humiliation simply revives the past and reenacts Israel’s offenses against the Palestinian spirit, land, body politic. To speak about peace in such a context is to try to reconcile the irreconcilable.” Edward Said in “The Progressive”, March 1998

 

“The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end to the charade begun at Oslo seven years ago and labelled the ‘peace process.’ In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of people around the world, were led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an independent state. Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel’s withdrawal and come to an agreement on the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.

“Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere and the Palestinians’ hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless of which government was in power, quibbled over wording, demanded revisions of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide by the new agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing, and seizing Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway network built after 1993 on confiscated Palestinian land isolates Palestinian towns and villages from one another and from Jerusalem, forcing many Palestinians to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next town...

“According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting Barak’s offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed by Clinton, wanted assurance of Israel’s continued strategic control over the West Bank and Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel retain permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem, including Haram Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.

“As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods in several Palestinian cities, destroying entire city blocks and causing scores of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns with their guns turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the Green Line rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting “Death of Arabs’...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against Palestinian stone throwers failed to restrain the Israelis and instead fired at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs were killed.

“The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by years of daily abuse and humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September 6, a group of Israeli border police stopped three Palestinian workers as they were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all, subjected them to 40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 19 that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their heads against a stone wall, forced them to swallow their own blood, and cursed their mothers and sisters. The incident only came to light because the policemen took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by the hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers said such beatings are a common occurance, but they are seldom reported.” Rachelle Marshall, “The Peace Process Ends in Protests and Blood”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000.

 

“The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end to the charade begun at Oslo seven years ago and labelled the ‘peace process.’ In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of people around the world, were led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an independent state. Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel’s withdrawal and come to an agreement on the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.

“Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere and the Palestinians’ hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless of which government was in power, quibbled over wording, demanded revisions of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide by the new agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing, and seizing Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway network built after 1993 on confiscated Palestinian land isolates Palestinian towns and villages from one another and from Jerusalem, forcing many Palestinians to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next town...

“According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting Barak’s offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed by Clinton, wanted assurance of Israel’s continued strategic control over the West Bank and Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel retain permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem, including Haram Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.

“As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods in several Palestinian cities, destroying entire city blocks and causing scores of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns with their guns turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the Green Line rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting “Death of Arabs’...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against Palestinian stone throwers failed to restrain the Israelis and instead fired at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs were killed.

“The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by years of daily abuse and humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September 6, a group of Israeli border police stopped three Palestinian workers as they were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all, subjected them to 40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 19 that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their heads against a stone wall, forced them to swallow their own blood, and cursed their mothers and sisters. The incident only came to light because the policemen took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by the hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers said such beatings are a common occurance, but they are seldom reported.” Rachelle Marshall, “The Peace Process Ends in Protests and Blood”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000.

 

“An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to ‘create facts’ by building settlements in occupied territory...

“At Camp David in September 1978...the bilateral provisions led to a comprehensive and lasting treaty between Egypt and Israel, made possible at the last minute by Israel’s agreement to remove its settlers from the Sinai. But similar constraints concerning the status of the West Bank and Gaza have not been honored, and have led to continuing confrontation and violence...

“[Concerning UN Resolution 242] Our government’s legal commitment to support this well-balanced resolution has not changed...It was clear that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were a direct violation of this agreement and were, according to the long-stated American position, both ‘illegal and an obstacle to peace.’ Accordingly, Prime Minister Begin pledged that there would be no establishment of new settlements until after the final peace negotiations were completed. But later, under Likud pressure, he declined to honor this commitment...

“It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that are supported by the United States and all other nations.

“There are many questions as we contine to seek an end to violence in the Middle East, but there is no way to escape the vital one: Land or peace?” Former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November 26, 2000.

 

“After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30 children, often by ‘excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which neither the lives of security forces nor others were in immminent danger, resulting in unlawful killings,’ Amnesty International concluded in a detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US.

“Barak’s plan...ensure(s) that useable land and resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South Africa’s Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious analagoue...

“It is important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the support of the U.S. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the ‘Oslo process.’ Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the US., it takles a little work to discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded,” Noam Chomsky, “Al-Aqsa Intifada”, October 2000, on Znet, www.lbbs.org/meastwatch.

 

“America’s credibility as mediator had long been questioned by Palestinians, and with reason. ‘The Palestinians always complain that we know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do,’ one Israeli government source told The Independent recently. ‘There’s good reason for that: we write them.’” Phil Reeves in “The Independent” (U.K.), 10/9/2000

 

“Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor, in the first half of October, was there much media analysis of the fact that the violence overwhelmingly struck at the Palestinian people.

“Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed by heavily armed men in uniform — often described by CNN and other news outlets as ‘Israeli security forces’. Under the circumstances, it’s a notably benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors.

“As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard a single American news account describing them as ‘pro democracy demonstrators.’ Yet that would be an appropriate way to refer to people who — after more than three decades of living under occupation — are in the streets to demand self determination.

“While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior firepower, do most of the killing...American news stories highlighted the specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak as he demanded that Palestinians end the violence — while uniformed Israelis under his authority continue to kill them...

“Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I’m apalled by what Israel is doing with U.S. Tax dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get along, they diminish the humanity of us all.” Norman Solomon, “Media Spin Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation,” from FAIR’s Media Beat, October 14, 2000.

 

“There is, in the final analysis, only one way to ‘stop the violence,’ and that is to end the occupation. The desire for liberation will, eventually, always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death than live in bondage. This is not extreme nation.0 racism or religious fervor. It is the need to be free...

“[Occupation] means a reality of unending violence. It means being surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked by roads that non-Jewish residents of the West Bank (whose land was confiscated for these roads) are prohibited from using; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down on a regular basis. It means living in a massive prison...

“Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict. The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets up a two-part ‘land for peace’ solution. Part one holds that Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Part two calls for all states in the region to live in peace and security in those borders. The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly unfulfilled.” Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, in the Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2000.