www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, October-November 2006Our Life and Timesby Kevin A. Barry and Mitch Weerth Palestine and IsraelIsrael’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon has overshadowed its ongoing attacks on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Ever since June, when Hamas militants humiliated the Israeli army at a Gaza checkpoint, killing two soldiers and capturing another (who has still not been found), Israel has hit Gaza with bombs, missiles, and ground incursions. These attacks, which amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and thus a clear war crime, have resulted in dozens of deaths, many of them of children. As we wrote in the August-September N&L, the disproportionality of Israel’s actions cannot be explained by the single attack they suffered in June. Their larger goal is to derail the compromise being worked out between the more secular Fateh and the Islamist Hamas, which won the last Palestinian election. In June, and now more recently, the two factions have come close to an agreement that would involve Hamas tacitly recognizing Israel’s right to exist and agreeing to a Palestinian state comprised of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, in other words only the lands seized by Israel in 1967. This is unacceptable to the present Israeli government, which wants illegally to hold onto East Jerusalem and major parts of the West Bank. Moreover, Israel fears that such an agreement among the Palestinians would make it impossible to continue to deny that the Palestinians are ready to negotiate. This is why, just as Fateh and Hamas again seemed to reach an agreement in September, Israel announced that it would build 700 more homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Will it go on, as in the past, to provoke the Palestinians with a new series of armed attacks? Perhaps. But Israel has been chastened by the Lebanon fiasco, and may now be in a position where it too is forced to negotiate seriously, not only over its captured soldier, but also over Jerusalem and the West Bank. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
