Black Box Recorder

Israeli army dismantles a few tents as part of "road map"

In the West Bank, the Israeli army began dismantling some tents at a "settlement", hours after a suicide bombing killed 2 in northern Israel. Hooray. You can just feel the energy returning to the "peace process". This "proves", I guess the White House will say, that Sharon is committed to the "road map" and that he really is a "man of peace".

Meanwhile, Meron Benvenisti, an ex-deputy mayor of Jerusalem, wrote a column in Ha'aretz consigning the "two-state solution" to the garbage bin of history. Essentially, according to Benvenisti, the "road map" aims at perpetuating the status quo, which is clearly unsustainable.

Seemingly, the principle of "two states for two peoples" and the principle of national sovereignty won. But, in effect, what's being proposed is a regime of ethnic cantons inside a geopolitical unit comparable to the old south Africa, in which the connection between land and nationalism is only safeguarded for the dominant Jewish nationality.
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The outposts are not a political demonstration against the government and the checkpoints are not derived from the security reality. They are symbols of control, and between them, if there's room, a provisional Palestinian state is supposed to be established. There's no connection between that state and sovereign, national Palestinian territory. The prime minister declares, to the cheers of the left, that the occupation must be ended, but immediately announces that he meant the occupation of people, not territory. The people, cut off from the land, will win national liberation in cantons designated for them beyond the "separation fence," and their "territorial contiguity" will be accomplished with bridges and tunnels.
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The road map won't lead anywhere because a solution based on the connection between territory and ethnic identity - which was applicable up to about 20 years ago - cannot be implemented and any attempt to implement it will only complicate the problem instead of solving it. The key is now to be found elsewhere; in an area that does not regard the geopolitical division as a national ideal. The road map will apparently be the last plan to refer to partition - or the need for a connection between identity and territory - as the only solution. Ignorant people on the right and blind people on the left will regard this as preaching for the "greater land of Israel" and will treat alternative proposals according to their traditional attitudes. But the only choice left is between a regime of a Jewish minority over an Arab majority without civil rights, or a multi-cultural governmental framework, usually referred to as a "binational state." The road map and the rest of the plans based on "separation" are simply dreams perpetuating the status quo.

In other news of interest, two British MPs, recently returned from Israel/Palestine, have compared the general situation in Gaza with that in the Warsaw ghetto. Their comparison was carefully qualified. MP Oona King said there is a

"very, very big difference" between Gaza and the infamous ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland's capital.

"Palestinians are not being rounded up and put in gas chambers," she said.

But the MP said: "What makes it similar is what happened to the Jewish people in that time which was the seizing of land, being forced from property, torture and bureaucracy - control used in a demeaning way over the smallest task.

"On top of that building a wall around them - and that is precisely what the Israeli government is doing. In doing so it is building a political ghetto. I don't think it can escape that conclusion."

The Israeli embassy responded by saying that such statements displayed "ignorance" and encouraged militant attacks.