Israel Does Not Want a Palestinian State

Randa Takieddine      Al-Hayat      - 31/12/08//

Israel's war against the Gaza Strip takes us not very far back in time to its war against Lebanon, in 2006. The Jewish state commits heinous massacres in Gaza on the pretext that it wants to protect its people from the rockets of Hamas. Israel has shelled civilians and partly destroyed the Strip of misery and poverty, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, while the Hamas rockets continue to be fired at Sderot. The logic of the Jewish state, based on finding a solution by force, has failed from the standpoint of halting violence and protecting Israelis. But this logic is successful in making it more unlikely that we will see a two-state solution, i.e. two Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side. Will the destruction of a university, a mosque, or port protect Israelis from the rockets of Hamas? Did Israel's random bombing of roads and bridges in Lebanon, and the Beirut Airport, protect Israelis from Hezbollah? On the contrary, all of the Israeli destruction, shelling and terrorizing strengthened Hezbollah and highlighted the fragility of the Israeli regime in depending on force as a way to protect its residents.

In its wars against civilians, Israel has turned the Palestinian people into a people that it is resisting it. What does the Jewish state really want? Ending Hamas in the way that it wanted to end Hezbollah? In 2006, Israel wore down Lebanon and destroyed it, but it boosted the strength of Hezbollah. Israel was aware that Hezbollah's supplies of weapons were coming through Syria. However, it kept Syria neutral and destroyed the bridges, roads and airport of Lebanon. Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran, became stronger than they were before the war. Today, Israeli planes are bombing the Palestinian people in Gaza; the Jewish state is doing everything that it can to generate violence and hatred. It is creating human time bombs among the Palestinian civilians, who are suffering from occupation, violence, poverty and a siege, and now shelling and massacres. Israel's policies are showing that it is doing everything that it can to dispel the possibility that a Palestinian state will arise alongside Israel.

It is clear that Israel's policies reject everything supported by the international community, led by its biggest ally the US and the European Union, its biggest economic partner; these policies have little to do with a strategy that aspires to the establishment of a Palestinian state next to it.

Unfortunately, the EU only considers punishing Hamas and putting it on a terror list, while elevating its relationship with Israel to one of special partnership. The question is: Why is this gift being given to Israel? Has it implemented the recommendations of the EU? Has it lifted the siege against the Palestinian people? Has it removed settlements? Has it allowed humanitarian assistance into Gaza? No. Even the representative of the UN Refugees Agency said the other day that during the truce, Israel did not allow humanitarian assistance to enter through the crossing points to Gaza, so what has prompted the EU to offer Israel this gift?

EU foreign ministers met this week under the chairmanship of France, which called for a halt to killing and violence, but this is not enough. How many European heads of state and foreign ministers have visited Israel and the Palestinian territories and beheld the suffering of the Palestinian people due to the closing of crossing points, deprivation, siege and racist treatment? French President Nicholas Sarkozy made some encouraging comments before the Israeli Knesset about Jerusalem as the capital of two states and two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli, and spoke about removing settlements. However, the brave words and stances were followed only by a gift to Israel, under France's presidency of the EU: a gift in the form of privileged partnership, even though Israel has done nothing that France has requested. Sarkozy, and even US President George Bush, have spoken about a Palestinian state by 2009. Where is this state now? It is a figment of the imagination, because Israel does not want a Palestinian state on its borders. It wants to boost extremist forces in the Arab world to weaken it, because it fears for the future of a Jewish state amid hundreds of millions of Muslim Arabs. But it has miscalculated in its policy of driving the Christians out of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories. The late Palestinian official Faisal al-Husseini warned about this, when he told the bishops of France about the threat of seeing the Christians of Jerusalem emigrate because of Israeli policies; the Israelis want to be alone with a Muslim people that they divert toward extremism and violence, to dispel the possibility of a Palestinian state! God rest the late Palestinian writer and thinker Edward Said, who warned the world about the danger of Israel's long-standing strategy, which will not lead to a Palestinian state.

All eyes are riveted today on the new US president, Barack Obama. Will he work for a true and just solution that is in the interest of both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as all of the Arabs?

This is the hope for 2009.