Date: Friday, 12 August 2005, 6:58 p.m.
THE GAZA PULLOUT:
AN ISRAELI FARCE IN TWO ACTS
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is a dangerous farce which starts with U.S. taxpayers being asked to pay billions of dollars for Israeli war crimes. Designed to obstruct the peace process and hopes for a Palestinian state, the second act may be even worse.
As the drama of Israeli settlers being forcibly evicted from the Gaza Strip unfolds in the coming days, television screens and newspapers will be filled with images of Israeli soldiers removing die-hard religious Zionists from their homes and settlements. Conspicuously absent from the mainstream media coverage, however, are several salient facts that need to be kept in mind.
First, it must be remembered that the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Indeed, Thomas Buergenthal, the American judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, wrote in July 2004 that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the Israeli occupied territories.
In the court's advisory opinion on the legality of the barrier wall being built by Israel, Buergenthal wrote:
"I share the Court’s conclusion that international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international human rights law are applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and must there be faithfully complied with by Israel."
"It provides that 'the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,'" Buergenthal wrote. "I agree that this provision applies to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and that their existence violates Article 49, paragraph 6."
Because the International Court of Justice was focused on the legality of the barrier wall being built in the West Bank, Buergenthal did not mention the settlements in the Gaza Strip. The Gaza settlements, however, have the same status as those in the West Bank and are just as illegal.
"The World Court found that all these settlements are illegal," Francis A. Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois told American Free Press. "The court has rejected every argument ever made by the Israelis about these settlements."
"U.S. policy has consistently been that the Israeli settlements are illegal," Boyle said. "These are crimes by Israel – war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention."
"Why should we pay for undoing Israeli war crimes?" Boyle asked. "They should be paying reparations to the Palestinians for all the damage they have caused."
President George W. Bush has, however, compromised on long-standing U.S. policy concerning Israeli settlements. "George W. Bush has indicated a willingness to accept settlements on the West Bank," Boyle said. "What right does Bush have to ratify Israeli war crimes?"
U.S. TAXPAYERS ROBBED
The Israeli government has reportedly presented the U.S. government with a request for $2.2 billion to cover the cost of relocating some 1,600 Israeli households from the Gaza Strip. This means that U.S. taxpayers are being asked to pay more than $1 million to remove each illegally settled household in Gaza. The vacated homes will be bulldozed by the Israeli army and left in piles of rubble for the Palestinians to clean up.
The $2.2 billion request represents one of the largest one-time aid requests Israel has made to the U.S. Asked about the request, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said, "We have to develop the Negev and the Galilee."
"The U.S. is still studying the presentation the Israelis made," Noel Clay, a State Dept. spokesman told AFP. Asked why U.S. taxpayers should be asked to pay for the removal of Israeli settlements and if this wouldn't be seen as rewarding illegal activity, Clay simply repeated that the U.S. is studying the presentation.
"Where is it written, on stone or parchment or paper, that the head of a foreign government can decide to do something unilaterally and automatically send the bill to American taxpayers?" the syndicated columnist Charley Reese asks.
"If Washington gives in," Reese said, "we taxpayers will be spending about $227,000 per Jewish settler."
"The American people are going to have to teach their congressional representatives and senators to fear them more than they fear the Israeli lobby," Reese wrote, "or the American people will continue to be not only taxed unjustly but dragged into Israel's quarrels in the Middle East."
The Israeli pullback from Gaza was first proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in December 2003 as an alternative to the "road map" proposed by President Bush in 2002. Sharon's plan, however, calls only for the removal of settlements and army from the Gaza Strip, the much larger settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank will remain in place.
In October 2004, Dov Weisglass, a top adviser to Sharon and his "point man with the Bush administration" said the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is meant to delay the establishment of a Palestinian state indefinitely. Weisglass also claimed the United States supports the policy.
FREEZING THE PEACE PROCESS
"The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process," Weisglass said. "Effectively, the whole package called the Palestinian state with all that entails has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission – all this with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."
Furthermore, the Israeli government refuses to negotiate any of the "final-status" issues: the status of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank or the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees.
A week before the pullout, the hard-line Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dramatically walked out of the government because he said Sharon's Gaza pullout plan could put Israel in mortal danger. Netanyahu said a port in Gaza could act as a "terrorist base" and pose a threat to Israel.
Netanyahu and others warn that the Gaza Strip could devolve into open warfare between Palestinian factions once Israel pulls out. When the Israeli army leaves, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) will administer Gaza while Israel will retain complete control of its borders, coastline and airspace.
Because Netanyahu is the leading Israeli politician from the extreme right and an architect of the "war on terror," his comments forebode trouble and terrorism for the people of the Gaza Strip after the much ballyhooed Israeli "pullout."
The comments of Weisglass and Netanyahu suggest a sinister strategy is lurking in the wings.
Synthetic terrorism and so-called sectarian violence, like the unclaimed terror bombings of which have taken so many lives in Iraq, may be part of Netanyahu's plans for the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal. A strategy of fomenting chaos and violence would relieve Israel of international pressure to advance the peace process and show the world that the Palestinians are not capable of self rule. Violence in the Gaza Strip would be seen as an excuse for military intervention and allow Israel to maintain control of Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Stay behind agents and Israeli control of the airspace, coastline, and borders of the Gaza Strip will give Israel's military intelligence the tools they need to create whatever terror scenarios might be required to advance their strategic goals.
The only way to advance the peace process and provide a realistic alternative to this dire prediction is for Israel to completely leave both the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank and give the Palestinians the space they need for their own sovereign state. This is, after all, what international law requires of Israel and what the United States demanded of the Syrians when they pulled out of Lebanon. Nothing more should be given and nothing less should be demanded of the Israelis.
Finis
Photo: Former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross with Binyamin Netanyahu, a chief architect of the "war on terror" says the Gaza Strip will become a place of terror. Does Netanyahu have a reign of terror planned for the people of Gaza to prevent the development of a Palestinian state?
We now know the answer to this question.
