Who will save Palestine?

by Sonja Karkar

Global Research, July 1, 2007

".......It would be nice to think that Israel is simply weary of occupying 4 million people after 40 years, but Israel’s economy is booming and there is a chilling reason for the rapid growth in what Israel calls the homeland security sector. Writing in the Guardian (16/6), Naomi Klein says that “Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror’.” How that will marry with the new political developments that should see Israel ease the punishing restrictions in the West Bank and opening the way for a Palestinian state, is anyone’s guess. Chaos in the occupied territories has been extremely lucrative for Israel, enabling it to experiment with ever-more rigorous methods of population control using hi-tech surveillance systems. And a majority in Israel are not in the least perturbed by the mess of humanity squirming under Israel’s formidable “security” matrix, as long as the demographic threat is controlled, even eliminated.......

The danger in cooperating with Israel when it is continuing to violate international law and ignore the ICJ advisory opinion is that it actually “normalises” Israel’s colonial efforts and may also prejudice any final status negotiations. Israel has been repeatedly told by the UN and the US to freeze all settlement activity, but it has not done so and has not been pressed to do so. Neither is Israel admonished nor held to account. The attempts to treat the Wall as a humanitarian rather than a political issue by the UN, also takes the pressure off Israel. There has been little talk of bringing the Wall down as advised by the ICJ, but plenty of talk about its path; without anyone realising it, the Wall becomes “normalised”. Every official discourse has edged away from insisting that the Wall violates international law: it has become expedient to ignore the rule of law, especially amongst those who should be upholding it. Without checks and balances in place and adhered to by everyone, Israel will always do what it wants and it is very evident from Israel’s unresponsive past that waiting for Israel’s cooperation alone will not be enough gain its compliance........"