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Editor's Note:
In the US, we live in a country with an amazing ability to
create a version of history that makes us feel good.
Remember the notion of "Manifest Destiny"? This was a nice
phrase to justify conquering the Wild West...and of course the
inhabitants, Native Americans, could be rounded up and thrown
onto reservations. It was "destiny"...
The creation of Israel has similar fictions and niceties to
cover the facts that it was a colonial implant. Today we revisit
the record and try to dispel some of the myths.
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The Rise and Fall of the Zionist- By Hasan Abu Nimah
The creation of Israel in 1948 was a source of great relief For
the Western world. Palestine was presented by Zionist propaganda
to a sympathetic West, at the time, as "a country without
people": a perfect place for "a people without a country". Many
people in the West also believed that Palestine was a desert and
"Israel" would, and in fact did, make it bloom.
The Palestinians who had to leave their historic land to make
room for the incoming Jews had alternatives. The vast Arab world
was large enough to accommodate them. The Jews, on the other
hand, had only that narrow strip of land, Palestine, to settle
in.
There was no Arab presence in the West to correct a Distorted
view of the state and the history of the region, and the Arabs
had few means of making their voices heard in the West. Their
reliance on the justice of their cause was an additional factor
contributing to their passiveness.
They were then, as they are still now, neither united behind
their cause nor able to plan their future. They always waited
for others to rescue them from the "catastrophe"
which visited them.
Their failure to stand up for their rights, as well as their
inability to defend their land, strengthened the view that
prevailed in many parts of the West that the Arabs were no more
than backward nomads and probably did not deserve the same
consideration as their adversaries.
While the creation of Israel as a national home for the Jews was
seen in the West as a great historic achievement, a fulfillment,
an expansion of civilization into a culturally barren land and,
most importantly, an absolution, for the West, of the guilt
complex of the Holocaust, the plight of the Palestinians was
seen merely as a humanitarian problem.
The UN was mobilized to provide the needed charity. All measures
by the UN were no more than soothing words, with no effort to
enforce international law. Indeed, the only parts of UN
resolutions that were implemented were the ones that helped
solidify and legitimize the Zionist project in the region. The
rest remained dead letters.
Israeli leaders realized right from the beginning that the
convenient circumstances that existed in the late 1940s might
not last forever. Specifically, the Arab states could not remain
endlessly weak and divided.
The answer was to build in Israel enough military power to cope
with any eventuality. Israel's only guarantee for survival
amidst an ocean of "Arab hostility", its leaders believed, was
military superiority, and this superiority was further enhanced,
at a very early stage in Israel's life, by acquiring nuclear
capability with the help of Western powers.
Consequently, Israel won all its military wars with the Arabs.
Even before Israel was formally created, and before it had its
"defense forces", Jewish fighters managed to occupy 78 per cent
of the historic land of Palestine and to ethnically cleanse most
of it.
Most of the armies of the Arab League member states, except The
Jordanian Arab legion, which was able to defend its portion in
the West Bank and East Jerusalem, were defeated.
That was the first Israeli military victory against the
Palestinian and other Arab irregular defenders and the Arab
states armies.
In 1956, France and the UK conspired with Israel to seize The
Sinai Peninsula and retake the Suez Canal. Israel served this
purpose faithfully, marking the second major Israeli military
victory against the largest Arab state.
In June 1967, Israel, in response to minor provocations and
border incidents but much political rhetoric from
"revolutionary" Arab regimes, attacked again, on three fronts --
Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
The victory of the Israeli army was even more spectacular this
time, with the occupation of Sinai up to the shores of the Suez
Canal for the second time. (Israel had to evacuate Sinai, except
for the Tiran straights, under American and Soviet pressure,
following the 1956 invasion). The Israeli invaders also occupied
all that was left of Palestine (the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem and Gaza) and the Syrian Golan Heights.
The 1973 war, although it was an Egyptian-Syrian initiative to
liberate occupied Arab lands, turned from a near Arab victory
into defeat when Israel managed once more to overcome the
initial surprise and overrun the attackers on both fronts.
Up to that point, Israel had successfully used its military
superiority as a tool for political achievement. Easy Israeli
military victories prepared the ground for easy Israeli
political gains.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, marked the end of
the era of political advantage through military conquest. From
another stunning military victory against the Palestinian
guerrillas who dominated the south and a non-belligerent
Lebanon, Israel failed to extract any political advantage. On
the contrary, the invasion was actually counter-productive from
Israel's perspective.
Although initially welcomed by some Lebanese factions, the
invasion killed tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians
and destroyed much of the country.
With the occupation of the capital, Beirut, with mounting
atrocities culminating in the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla,
and with the humiliating imposition on the Lebanese government
of the May 17, 1983, "Peace treaty", the Lebanese resistance
turned against the enemy, forcing them to cut their losses and
run. The May agreement was abrogated and Israel retreated to its
so-called "Security Zone" in the south, from which it was
eventually driven in 2000 by relentless resistance.
Many factors contributed to the failure of the Israeli adventure
in Lebanon. The most relevant here is that while strong armies
are good for formal wars, they are more often totally
ineffective against popular resistance, as the case was in
Lebanon. The fragmented Lebanese army was neither the target of
the invaders nor was it the force which forced their departure.
This, precisely, was the problem of the powerful Israeli army
against the first Intifada (1987-1993), which was only ended by
the failed Oslo accords, and the second Intifada, which is still
active.
When powerful armies fight civilian populations, their strength
becomes instantly their weakness. They lose legitimacy as their
actions -- firing missiles at residential quarters and killing
innocent people - become war crimes and atrocities.
That is what an occupation army is doing in Iraq and an
occupation army is doing in Palestine. The more crimes they
commit the more moral power they lose, and that gradually blunts
their military strength as well.
Both processes are evident in Iraq and Palestine, though the
situation in Palestine demonstrates that an occupier can remain
in place for decades, causing untold suffering and misery in the
meantime. But eventually the crimes catch up with the wrongdoer.
The Israeli dilemma nowadays is that there is no Palestinian
army to defeat. Israel is fighting millions of civilians, whose
crimes, it seems, is, first, that they exist, and, second, that
they unanimously reject being dispossessed or subjugated, a fate
that Zionism envisages for them.
All that this can achieve is more murder, further deepening the
wounds and further widening the gulf of hatred.
Obviously, Israel wants the land without the people. Neither
with its conventional military power nor with its nuclear can
Israel defeat the Palestinians. The options, therefore, are
either to eliminate five million Palestinians, as some Israelis
still fantasize, or make them Israeli citizens.
Either way means the end of the Zionist project for Palestine,
and each passing day brings that end palpably closer.
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The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative Of
Jordan at the UN.
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Additional Selected Readings on the Middle East
Iraq War-Hawks Turn On Each Other
http://www.iht.com/articles/535483.htm
A Pretext For War- Interview With James Bamford
http://www.antiwar.com/av/?articleid=3440
Neo-Cons Seek Vindication In Escalation- Pat Buchanan
http://antiwar.com/pat/
Poland Joins List of Countries Wanting To Pull Out of Iraq
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=38359
Nader Decries 'Anybody But Bush' Mindset
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=554080
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