The Goldstone report cited Eli Yishai, Israeli interior minister, as saying, “We should bombard thousands of houses in Gaza, destroy Gaza. As simple as that.”
Noam Chomsky says that in the case of Gaza, it's just savage torture. They are keeping the population barely alive because they don't want to be accused of genocide, but that's it. It's limited to survival. It's not the worst atrocity in the world, but it is one of the most savage. Egypt is cooperating fully by building a wall and refusing to allow concrete to go in and things like that, so it's an Israeli-Egyptian operation that is literally torturing the people of Gaza in a way that one can't think of a precedent, and it's getting worse.
In the West Bank, first of all it's not Israel: it's the United States and Israel. The United States sets the bounds of what they can do and cooperates with them. It's a joint operation, just as the attack on Gaza was. But they're continuing to impose their stranglehold, and they're taking what they want. The land inside the separation wall, which is in fact an annexation wall, they'll take that. They'll take the Jordan Valley, and they'll take what's called Jerusalem, which is far larger than Jerusalem ever was, as it's a huge area expanding into the West Bank.
In the West Bank they moved, in their phrase, from 'colonialism' to 'neo- colonialism'. They construct neo-colonial structures on the West Bank. Typically, they have a sector of extreme wealth and privilege that collaborates with the former colonial power, and then a mass of misery and horror surrounding it. That's what's being done. So if you go to Ramallah, it's kind of like Paris, you live a nice life, there are elegant restaurants, and so on, but of course if you go into the countryside, it's quite different, and there are checkpoints and life's impossible. There's only totally dependent development, and they will not allow independent development, and they're trying to impose a permanent arrangement of this kind.
An advocate of economic peace, Salam Fayyad is trying to arrange for Palestinians to have forms of employment other than working in the settlements and doing whatever construction they can manage to do within the Israeli framework, maybe even in Area C, the Israeli- controlled area, and just taking small steps towards trying to lay the basis for a future independent Palestinian entity. Israel might very well accept it. The Israeli deputy prime, Silvan Shalom said it's fine, if they want to call the cantons they'll leave to them a state, then that's fine, but it'll be a state without borders.
There's another element to it, which is the military force. There is an army run by an American general, Keith Dayton, which is trained by Jordan with Canadian and Israeli cooperation, and has caused a lot of enthusiasm in the United States. John Kerry, who is head of the Senate foreign relations committee, said that for the first time Israel has a legitimate negotiating partner because during the Gaza attack or Operation Cast Lead, the Dayton army was able to prevent any protests. They were so effective during the Gaza attack that Israel was able to shift forces from the West Bank to Gaza to extend the attack with para-military forces controlled by the colonial power that keep the population under control.
The largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is known for its corruption, passivity and its ridiculed belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products. PA officials are virtual hostages albeit quite appreciative and cooperative collaborators. The resistance has apparently been crushed by General Dayton's army. All the militias and fighters in the West Bank have been effectively subdued especially Hamas.
The Fatah-heavy West Bank government headed by president Mahmoud Abbas receives considerable support, financial and otherwise, from the United States and Europe, so Hamas is persona non grata in this part of the Palestinian territories. Palestinian soldiers say the drop in terror attacks across the West Bank have little to do with Israeli actions - like checkpoints and the "security barrier" - and much to do with the National Security Force. Now, Palestinian and Israeli military commanders sometimes share information with each other have "some small degree of co-operation," . Also the degree of collaboration is such Israel insists the National Security Force not patrol between midnight and 6am, to not interfere with Israeli night raids in the West Bank villages.
In early 2006, immediately following the election of Hamas, Canada was the first country in the world to boycott the new government, ahead even of Israel. "Not a red cent to Hamas," said Peter MacKay, the then Canadian foreign minister, setting the tone for a crippling blockade that the United Nations has called "possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times". In 2005, immediately following Israel's 'disengagement' from Gaza, Canada dispatched a top official from the Canada Border Services Agency, Denis Lefebvre, to advise Israel and the Palestinian Authority during the earlier stages of the blockade of Gaza.
It was at this juncture that Canada began funding and training Palestinian forces to monitor the sealed borders of the Gaza Strip, under the auspices of General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator. Known at the time as the Karni Project, named after the principle commercial crossing into Gaza, the initiative was a covert - though not clandestine - effort to train a pliable security force to work with Israel.
A Jerusalem Post analysis tabbed the project as "a prototype for the running of Palestine". Provocations by Dahlan's security forces were seen by Hamas and many others as precipitating the Hamas takeover in Gaza. The Karni project saw the US and its Canadian allies "engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt PA dictatorship with victory".
On the heels of the Hamas takeover, Canada re-instituted its funding for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and redoubled its efforts to back Dayton's security forces training initiative to back appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and to prevent the Hamas government from taking power in the West Bank. In many crucial ways, Canada is the heart of the Dayton project - 18 of the training officers are Canadian and 10 are American.
Fayyad lauded US and Canada's efforts in not only the security sector but also governance and working to create legitimacy for Fayyad's impending unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Canada recently removed longstanding funding for UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugee affairs, and reallocated it to Fayyad's security project. "Our paramount concern is the security of Israel," said Canada's minister of public safety.
General Dayton is in charge of equipping and training the new Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank. While the PA says its forces are trained to impose law and order, they have also clamped down on political opposition, including Hamas. Under the Oslo peace agreements the West bank is divided into three zones, Area A - full PA control, Area B - Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C - complete Israeli military control. However, Israeli forces have freedom to operate wherever they choose in the West Bank.
Israeli security officials said despite recent U.S. training, they were also concerned Abbas is not strong enough in the West Bank to impose law and order without the help of the Israeli army. According to the officials, Fatah's intelligence apparatus routinely hands the Israel Defense Forces lists of Hamas militants that threaten Fatah rule, requesting that Israel make arrests.
A supporter of economic peace says that If the Palestinians were to form a state while the people were poor, uneducated, unemployed, and angry — then that would be a recipe for further disaster and war. If they were to have stable lives, then they would be less likely to throw that away by pursuing further war and terrorism against Israel. After all, people in the comfortable middle-class — in any country — are the least likely to rock the boat. If given a choice, most people would prefer not to starve — even if it means accepting a political arrangement that they might not necessarily like.
In the meantime, for those who still resist this grand US-Israeli project on pliant Palestinian governance, there is Gaza as a living showcase as the most deplorable and miserable state whom any Palestinian would dread with the latest fear of forced deportation out of the West Bank.
(various news sources)
