Peaceful Protest in Al-Walaja

Al-Walaja, population 2,000 is located just south of Jerusalem and west of Bethlehem. After the 1967 Six Day War, half the town was annexed to Israel and included the Jerusalem municipal area. The citizens though did not receive Israeli citizenship or residency, thus they are considered illegal within their own homes.

The Wall has come to Al-Walaja and when completed it will completely isolate the residents from everyone, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and their land. Israel has confiscated half of the land planning to utilize it to build Har Gilo and Gilo settlements. Their fruit orchards have been cut down, their homes demolished and the areas to south and west have been closed off. When the wall is complete it will separate 3,200 Dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square metres) of which 3,000 are olive groves, the only recreational forest, a monastery and winery from the town.

The citizens of Al-Walaja, international activists and other human rights organizations have been demonstrating peacefully against this outrage. In one day alone, they stopped the bulldozers from proceeding leading to several arrests. In the end, the IDF successfully managed to drag the protesters out of the way and allowing the construction to proceed.

When is it legal to arrest citizens protecting their land from the construction of an illegal wall on an illegally occupied land? Where are the citizens of Al-Walaja, whose homes have been demolished to go? This barrier wall, allegedly constructed to ensure Israel's security, will cut off these people from the entire world. Who really needs security, the all powerful Israeli armed to the teeth or the citizens of Al-Walaja whose only crime is to peacefully protest the contraction of an illegal wall?

Does Israel Really Want Peace? - Comparison between 1982 Lebanon War and 2009 Gaza

Déjà vu? The similarity between Israel’s war on Lebanon of 1982 and the 2008-2009 Gaza war is uncanny. Coincidence? Is it Groundhog Day again?

If one looks back to 1977, the PLO formally agreed to negotiate a two-state solution, based on the 1967 borders and declared their willingness to take part in the peace process. The PLO agreed to a ceasefire which was maintained for almost a year. The Arab League with the “Fayyad Peace Plan” which also was based on a two-state solution, based on the 1967 borders was on board. With the PLO’s willingness and the “international recognition and legitimacy” growing, “coupled with a declining inclination to resort to force, even when intensely provoked by Israel,”¹ made the possibility of a peaceful solution even greater than a military threat to Israel. Israel knowingly knew that if they resisted a two-state solution they would be subject diplomatic pressures. Israel needed to manipulate the PLA in order to sabotage the two-state settlement. Prior to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, a ceasefire with the PLO was maintained for more than a year, ”but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty.”² Israel embarked on punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion” against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and guarantees the PLO’s “inflexibility.”³ Avner Yanif, former Israeli Military Analyst “who was highly supportive of his government policies, wrote “To escape this trap without running the risk that a political settlement in what the PLO would entail, Israel could only do one thing - go to war"⁴. He went on to say “raison d’être of the entire operation” was “destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank”.⁵

What happened with Gaza follows the above script so exacting all the news report needed to do was changed the name of the players and the year of the conflict. April 5, 2006 Hamas is willing to negotiate peace in a two state settlement based on the 1967 borders. More so, Israel is completely aware that once a two-state settlement is agreed upon, Hamas’s original ideology will have to change. “A former Mossad head, Ephraim Halevy recently observed “they have recognized this ideological goal is not attainable, and will not be in the foreseeable future. Instead, they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967. They are aware this means they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" - and towards a long-term peace based on compromise. The rejectionists on both sides - from Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh to Bibi Netanyahu - would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace - but it is the Israeli government who refused to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."⁶

Israel was bound to a ceasefire and needed to goad the Palestinians into action. Israel killed six Hamas militants on the premise that they were excavating a tunnel in order to abduct IDF soldiers. This conveniently occurred while the United States and most of the world were fixed on the polls from the American Election. The IDF knew full well Hamas would retaliate. In mid November, Haaretz reported that the tunnel “was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “in retaliation” (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center) and Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive”.⁷

A reasonable enemy? This is always the problem for Israel. Whenever peace seems within its’ reach, Israel undermine it. They cannot have an agreeable Hamas or PLO; they need the wild, unreasonable terrorist, not someone willing to negotiate a two-state solution. This way, Israel can always throw up their arms, and say they cannot negotiate with these crazy terrorists. It’s starting to sound all too familiar.

1 Yanif, Avner, Dilemnas of Security: Politics, Strategy and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon, New York, Oxford University Press, 1987

2 Finkelstein, Norman, Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/docs/PalestinianPeaceOffensive.doc., New York, 2009

3 Finkelstein, Norman, Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/docs/PalestinianPeaceOffensive.doc., New York, 2009

4 Yanif, Avner, Dilemnas of Security: Politics, Strategy and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon, New York, Oxford University Press, 1987

5 . Rubenberg , Cheryl A., Review, American Academy of Political and Social Science, pp 186, JSTOR, 1988

6 Hari, Johann, “The True Story Behind This War is Not the One Israel is Telling”, Huffington Post, December 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-true-story-behind-thi_b_153825.html

7 Finkelstein, Norman, Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/docs/PalestinianPeaceOffensive.doc., New York, 2009