During the last 8 years, the Israeli military has killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian civilians who took no part in hostilities and during the December-January war alone, nearly 1,200 Palestinian non-combatants were killed.
America’s economic, military and political ties to Israel make Americans complicit in the occupation of Palestine and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
We do carry part of the blame, but we also have power to influence the situation and thus the responsibility to ACT. Click on the icon to tell Congress to end Arms Support to Israel!
On Tuesday President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met in Washington. It sounds like Obama pushed Netanyahu to halt all settlement operations in Palestine and to pursue a peaceful, two-state solution, while Netanyahu demanded the US be hard-line with Iran on its nuclear policy (while refusing to depleat its own nuclear weapons collection of 150) and said he would be willing to discuss the possiblity of an independnet Israeli State existing peacefully “side by side” with the Palestinians.
Peace talk is of course great, but we have to pay attention to the specifics. “Side by side” is not a substitute for “state by state.” Simply talking peace is not enough. It is the lack of Palestinian statehood that is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Palestinians must be allowed to govern and defend themselves free from Israeli military brutality AND political and economic control if the situation is to improve.
As Juan Cole writes:
Netanyahu said he did not want to rule the Palestinians. That is an evasion. If he won’t give them a state, then they remain citizens of no state and inevitably Israel “rules” them in the sense of making the important decisions about how they live their lives. The Likud Party doesn’t want the Palestinians, just their land and resources.
Still, statehood alone will not completely deliver justice to the Palestinians if that statehood is merely a veiled attempt to pacify the people without granting them the ability to defend themselves. David Ignatius says that there are talks that Netanyahu will agree to discuss details of a Palestinian state only if it is guaranteed that it will be a non-military state – meaning no army and no control over its air-space.
But this approach would be devastating to the entire peace process. If a nation of people wants to decide on their own to not have a military, that is certainly within their rights to do so. But to condition soverignty with the mandate that they must not be armed to defend themselves is ludacris and inhumane.
If these reports are true, like Matt Yglesias says,
What Netanyahu is doing is essentially holding millions of Palestinian civilians’ basic rights hostage hoping to force them into a situation of such utter desperation that they’re willing to accept an infringement on their sovereignty that no other country accepts.”
So, we must not only support the end of the occupation, but also the development of an autonomous Palestinian state that has the power to defend itself.
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