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June 1, 2002
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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June 1, 2002
Incarceration
or Transfer:
Sharon's Post-Incursion Plan
by Jeff Halper
Like Sharon's 1982 war in Lebanon, which was also
minimized as simply an "operation" (Operation Peace
for the Galilee), Operation Defensive Shield had political goals
far beyond that indicated by its modest "defensive"
name. Under the guise of destroying the "infrastructure
of terrorism," Sharon (and his willing partner Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer, the elected head of the Labor Party) believe they
have accomplished two major goals that fundamentally alter the
political situation. In Jenin they destroyed the Palestinians'
ability to resist the ever-expanding Occupation. And in Ramallah
they destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society,
rendering the Palestinians unable to govern themselves. To be
sure, terrorist "incidents" will still occur occasionally,
but the Israeli army is today engaged in mopping up exercises.
It enters Palestinian areas with absolute impunity, with nary
a whiff of opposition from the international community.
The Israeli government believes it has
defeated the Palestinians once and for all. What is left is mopping
up operations what we are witnessing these days in towns and
cities throughout the West Bank and construction of a type of
rule that leaves Israel firmly in control of Jerusalem and the
West Bank (and its settlement network intact), yet relieves it
of direct rule over the Territories' three million Palestinians.
It is no coincidence that Israeli and American insistence on
"reforms" within the Palestinian Authority begin with
the security services and that Washington has "discovered"
in Muhammad Dahlan a "leader" it can deal with. So,
too, can the vilification campaign being waged against Arafat
be interpreted as trying to get beyond him to a leader who will
sign off on a mini-state that ensures Israel's continued control.
In order to make this all palatable to
the international community, however, Israel and the US must
also offer a sop to the notion of Palestinian self-determination.
The outlines of Sharon's grand scheme are already taking shape
on the ground. Israel's emerging post-incursion strategy has
three main components:
(1) "Separation." On the surface the notion of "separation"
seems to be an innocent security measure. It involves the construction
of a massive "buffer zone" extending along the "Green
Line" some 10-20 kilometers into Palestinian territory,
where Israel is currently erecting a formidable maze of concrete
walls and barricades, trenches, canals, electrified and barbed-wire
fences, bunkers, guard towers, surveillance cameras, security
crossings and platforms. While it has its security side, the
policy of separation is intended to delineate the areas of the
West Bank that Israel wishes to claim. In eliminates forever
the possibility that the thick corridor between the Ariel settlement
bloc and Greater Jerusalem will be relinquished to the Palestinians,
as Clinton's plan envisioned. It places the large settlements
in the western part of the West Bank squarely (and irreversibly)
within the de facto border created by the security installations
including East Jerusalem, which is today being "isolated"
from the wider West Bank. "Separation" is, in the end,
a mechanism for annexation of about 15% of the West Bank under
the guise of "security," effectively removing it as
a subject of negotiation. The militarized "buffer zone"
is only one component of a wider system of incorporation that
includes the construction of the Trans-Israel Highway and the
"by-pass" highways that link it to the settlements.
(2) Cantonization. One of the most dramatic outcomes of the Israeli
incursions is the effective nullification of Areas A, B and C,
fundamental components of the Oslo process. Instead a new, more
rational form of control is emerging, one that institutionalizes
the siege on the Palestinian cities and turns it into a permanent
administrative arrangement. The extra-territorial status of Areas
A and B, supposedly under the civil jurisdiction the Palestinian
Authority, has been effectively ended. Areas A and B will be
replaced by an even more constricting system of cantons (called
euphemistically and misleadingly "security zones" in
Israeli parlance). The West Bank, it was announced this week,
will be carved into eight zones organized around the major cities:
Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tul Karm, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem
and Hebron. Gaza will be divided into three such zones. Besides
restrictions on movement of people, Palestinian cargoes will
have to be transferred "back-to-back" to Israeli trucks
at platforms strategically located between Palestinian cities,
then re-transferred back to Palestinian vehicles for transport
to their Palestinian destinations. Cargo travelling between Hebron
and Jenin, for example, will have to be loaded and unloaded some
five or six times. Not only does this policy violate international
law guaranteeing freedom of movement in occupied territories,
it also deals a devastating blow to Palestinian commerce, already
virtually moribund.
Cantonization also requires restrictions
on Palestinian movement reminiscent of South Africa's notorious
"pass laws." Palestinian residents will need permits
issued by the Civil Administration, Israel's military government,
for travel between cities and cantons within the West Bank and
Gaza. These permits will be valid for specified hours only (5
AM-7 PM), and will have to be renewed each month. Like the South
African "passbooks," these internal permits imprison
Palestinian residents within their tiny cantons. The Civil Administration
has also announced that West Bank residents of Areas A and B
will be denied all entry to Israel (including East Jerusalem),
thus tightening the already strangling "closure."
(3) Settlement
and Israel-Only Highway Expansion.
Besides military and administrative measures, Israel has always
relied on "creating facts on the ground" to make its
presence in the Occupied Territories irreversible and neutralize
any attempt to wrest control from it. Simultaneous to presenting
its cantonization plan, the government publicly announced its
intention to build 957 housing units in the West Bank settlements,
most in the "Greater Jerusalem" area. Both its timing
and the casual, almost contemptuous way it was announced at a
time when the international community is working to freeze settlement
construction under the US Tenet Plan indicates the degree to
which Israel feels its activities are beyond international control.
And the construction of the 480 kilometer system of "by-pass"
highways that link the settlements into Israel while creating
additional barriers to Palestinian movement continues unabated.
Since the Palestinians have been roundly
and, in Sharon's view, permanently defeated, there is no longer
any need to give even lip-service to the limited independence
envisioned for the Palestinians in the Oslo "peace process."
The ongoing incursions begun in late March have destroyed Oslo
once and for all a key goal of Sharon and his predecessor/successor
Netanyahu. We have returned to the notion of "autonomy"
formulated by Sharon's mentor Menachem Begin, and for which the
Civil Administration was established in 1981 and for which the
war in Lebanon was fought in 1982. The Palestinians' choice,
to put it starkly but precisely, is between incarceration and
transfer.
Sharon's grand scheme (until such a time
that transfer is made possible, i.e. when a Palestinian state
emerges in Jordan) is today emerging "on the ground"
as follows:
The West Bank will be divided into three
or four separate cantons according to settlement blocs and Israeli
highways already in place. A northern canton would be created
around the city of Nablus, a central one around Ramallah and
a southern one in the area of Hebron, with a possible separation
of Qalkilya and Tul Karm from the rest. Each would be disconnected
from the other and connected independently to Israel. A road
or two might connect the different cantons, but checkpoints and
cargo docks would ensure completely Israeli control. Each canton
would be granted local autonomy under the supervision of the
Civil Authority.
Since the international community would
demand a sop (no more) to Palestinian self-determination, Gaza
will become the Palestinian state, probably when Arafat leaves
the scene and a more compliant leader can be found to sign off
on such an arrangement. If Israel was hard-pressed to concede
more, it could upgrade the status of the Palestinians in the
West Bank from "residents of autonomous cantons" to
Palestinian "citizens without endangering its control.
Does Israel really believe this scenario
is possible, that the Palestinians will submit to a truncated
set of autonomous islands instead of a viable and truly sovereign
state? The answer is "yes." Given the state of international
response for the foreseeable future, Israel sees little effective
opposition to this arrangement provided that it can maintain
a kind of "industrial quiet" that will allow the US,
Europe and the Arab states to get on with their particular agendas.
Besides some discordant noises coming from NGOs and some churches
(as well as the Muslim community abroad, whose influence has
been largely neutralized since 9-11), the international community
has proven extremely compliant. Incarceration, and eventually
transfer, seems eminently plausible to Sharon and his colleagues.
Despite protestations by Sharon, the May 12th vote by acclamation
of the Likud Central Committee against the establishment of any
Palestinian state flowed logically and smoothly from "Operation
Defensive Shield."
Jeff Halper
is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
He can be reached at: icahd@zahav.net.il.
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