"The Middle East peace process" -- snore. Is there an emptier phrase?

There hasn't been peace in the Middle East since the Zionists (backed by Western imperialism and its pal Stalin) ran the native population out of Palestine, took their lands and set up a Chosen-People-only state they called Israel. A country lovingly portrayed by Western propaganda as a democratic David holding off an Arab Goliath whose forces breed like flies in filthy encampments while sharpening their blades and plotting a new Holocaust.

As ever, the truth is closer to opposite --in fact, the ones closer to Hitler are the Zionists. Not just that brown-shirted followers of Zionist leader Jabotinsky marched in Palestine in the 30's chanting "Germany for Hitler, Palestine for the Jews!" Not just that Zionists shared Hitler's vision of a Judenrein (Jew-free) Germany.

More that they created a permanently-militarized Master Race nation, complete with the world's fourth-largest army. After all, Israel offers any Jew in the world the right to move there, own land, and enjoy all the other benefits of citizenship. Meanwhile it forces some five million natives to live outside Israel as exiles, barring them from returning to their property.

Stripped of life and property

Those Palestinians left inside Israel are denied equal rights. They have to carry passes and contend with frequent harassment by Israeli authorities.

And the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza live under harsh military rule, enduring round-the-clock curfews and prevention of travel in or out of villages. Tanks and helicopter gun ships attack those who dare protest, while assassination squads target individual leaders.

So how come we've been hearing "the Middle Peace process" for so long? Well, about ten years ago the Palestinians couldn't stand it any more and launched a series of mass public protests ...which brought out the Israeli gunmen ...which brought out a whole lot more Palestinians,

Meet the first Intifada (uprising). Think the U.S. South in the 60's, Northern Ireland in the early 70's, South Africa in the 80's. A vast civil rights movement up against a deeply-entrenched racist way of life.

The Zionist state was forced to retreat.

Meet the first "Middle East peace process" and the promise it once held. The resulting Oslo Peace Accords were supposed to ease crushing Israeli pressure on Palestinians and pave the way for normalized relations and the emergence of an independent Palestinian state.

Betrayal

Except when the uprising subsided, Israel violated the accords in every possible way, implanting some 200,000 new settlers on Palestinian land and cutting it into isolated and unlivable remnants. At the same time, Israel and the U.S. tried to corrupt the Palestinian leadership, even to draw them into repressing Palestinian nationalists.

So "the Middle East peace process" turned into putting Palestinians on reservations --with shiny uniforms for 'their own' corrupt police as their only reward.

"The Middle East peace process" became the name for escalating the Palestinians' dispossession.

Of course the phrase disappeared this past October when mounting frustration finally exploded again. Blame ultra-right Israeli general Ariel Sharon --infamously responsible for the extermination of everybody in two Palestinian refugee camps-- for marching into Islam’s holiest site in Jerusalem with 2000 soldiers.

This flagrant attempt at final humiliation --rubbing Palestinian faces in what "the Middle East peace process" had actually become-- instead ignited a new Intifada. Palestinians surged into the streets in massive demonstrations ... and were quickly met with brutal Israeli military force. But the ensuing repression --and the mounting death toll-- has only hardened Palestinian resistance to the hopeless prospect of life on reservations.

Unyielding

And now comes the current "Middle East peace process" -- the latest attempt to get Palestinians to give up, announced in Washington this January. Just agree that no Palestinian be allowed to return to Israel (not even to buy land), the "peace offer" goes, and get a weaponless 'statelet' controlled by Israel, stripped of most of Jerusalem and riddled with Zionist settlements.

Of course Western propaganda machines quickly trumpeted this U.S./Israeli proposal as "95%" of what Palestinians want, portraying them as hopeless fanatics for not signing on. But caught between death and living death, the Palestinian people have refused to bow. And now (6 February) the murderous General Sharon has assumed the Israeli Prime Ministership.

And so the empty words "Middle East peace process" drone on.

But don't blame the phrase for meaning nothing, blame Israel and its sponsor in Washington. They need only recognize Palestinians' rights to live and own land. Then a real Middle East peace process can begin.

_____________

    home     |     subscribe     |     talk     |     help-about     |     back issues     |     resources