When Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu had to finally accept, and with evident and torturous recalcitrance, the vague idea of a Palestinian state – due to pressure from the Obama administration – the far-right premier spoke about the Jewish people as a “people” with deserving rights on the land while he dismissed the Palestinians as a “population” that inexplicably finds itself transplanted in the midst of the Jewish people on ‘Jewish land’ and that the Palestinians have no national or even civil rights but by simply virtue of acknowledgment by Israelis that there is this “population” in ‘their land’ some arrangement should be made for the Palestinians, from the generous hearts of Israelis, of course.
This is the core ideal of Zionism: that the native people, the Palestinians, are dispensable to the ambitions of Zionist interlopers. That Palestinians do not possess any rights (Israeli’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion referred to the Palestinians as “children”) and can be pushed aside in order to establish a Jewish, Zionist state. It is not the Palestinians do not exist in the minds of Zionists. When Golda Meir infamously said that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” she did not mean that the Palestinians do not literally exist. No. If anything she still obsessed with their existence writing in her memoir that Palestinian procreation kept her up at night (that is how racist Israeli “liberals” are). What she meant is that they do not exist in “peoplehood”, they do not have rights as a “people”, only the Jewish immigrants taking over the land of Palestine have those rights and the Palestinians must be incessantly subdued to Zionism. So the natural rights of the Palestinians are demoted to satisfy the privileges, never the rights, of Zionism and Jewish interlopers.
Netanyahu, thus, spoke about a state but quickly negated that with his qualifications that “a Palestinian state must be demilitarized, without control over its air space and electro-magnetic field, and without the power to enter into treaties or control its borders.” In other words no state at all, but a quasi-autonomous region still under Israeli occupation and domination by any other name. No different, then, than the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa which the white regime also sought to present as a sovereign and tenable solution to the negation of the native rights of the blacks and allowing for the privileges of the arbitrary, usurping and colonial power of the white minority no different than the position Israeli Jews now hold over Palestinians. It is quite fitting that Israel was Apartheid South Africa’s closest ally.
But do not believe that Netanyahu’s ideas are solely the prerogative of the Israeli right. No faction in Israel has ever accepted the idea of an equitable and sovereign Palestinian state. There concept of a “peace” is one of continued Israeli occupation over a quasi-autonomous Palestinian region answering to Israeli control and hegemony.
Even the claimed Israeli “dove” Yatzhik Rabin never uttered the word Palestine, never accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, and resisted efforts by his foreign minister (current Israeli president Shimon Peres) to grant Palestinian even marginally more autonomy and freedom for fear that it would set a precedent which would make it harder for Israel to force itself and its demands upon the Palestinians. The last part says it all. The Israelis were ostensibly working for a Palestinian state only to seek to confine the Palestinians so that Israel continues to maintain its occupation redefined as “peace”.
When Rabin’s closest advisor was asked what would be the end result of the peace negotiations during the Oslo years, he responded: Arafat can either be a Lahad or a super-Lahad. This was a reference to the head of Israel’s surrogate army in Lebanon during the years of Israeli occupation, Antonie Lahad. Israel maintained its occupation of south Lebanon through a collaboration force which maned the checkpoints for Israel and ran the cities while leacing the Lebanese away from direct contact with Israelis within the framework of Israeli occupation.
Israel has always viewed the “peace process” as a continuation of its war and occupation under the guise of peace and international favor, although the latter is drying up fast. Whereby it could continue control of the 1967 occupied territories but cease day to day interaction of Palestinians and checkpoints, and the like, but establish a Palestinian government under Israeli control and a different framework of Israeli occupation but occupation no different nor no less.
When the closest advisor to Israel’s biggest idea of a dove states that the Israeli government’s, “liberal” government, idea of a final peace is one resembling Israeli occupation of Lebanon and a puppet Palestinian leader still answering to Israel – that the occupation will continue – is says it all and requires no further comment.
This is Israel’s intention and idea of “peace”. So ask yourself: Is this nation truly committed to peace? And if not, why do you grant it legitimacy and chose to purchase its goods?
