The Palestinians are already downtrodden and disillusioned

Submitted by Joseph Clogstoun (Australia), Apr 9, 2018 at 22:44

I refer to your article in the Australian newspaper of 24-25 March regarding co-existence with the Jewish state. You asked that people with an interest in the topic write to you.

Your premise that the Palestinians must be crushed before they are forced to the negotiating table is essentially flawed. Contrary to your premise, the Palestinians have been essentially crushed, humiliated and rendered stateless after 50 years of brutal and harsh military occupation. Menachim Begin (a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto) must be turning in his grave with Israeli running the largest concentration camp in the world - Gaza. The state of the Palestinians who live in areas A and B are no better, rogue settlers protected by the IDF, embedded in the West bank are harassing the Palestinians by occupying illegal settlement, destroying their houses, olive trees and the other crops of the Palestinians. Israeli has the 5th most powerful army in the world, provided with the latest technology by the US. This is no match for Palestinians fighting back with stones.

I think we both essentially agree that under the oleaginous Nethanyahu the two state solution is essentially dead and buried. Yet every other country, including Australia but not the US, naively insists that this be the basis for any conclusion of an agreement. The international community, who along with the UN are seen as anti-Israel, quite rightly insists that Israeli freeze all settlement activity (which is incidentally a violation of the Geneva Convention) and that the formal borders of the two states be based on 1967 lines. Nethanyahu has rejected both these protocols. He is not interested in peace, only maintaining the status quo and grimly holding on to his position. Nethanyahu's government is the most right wing in history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements of Israeli society, including the rabid settlers led by Nafthali Bennett and Liberman.

I served in Saudi Arabia as an Australian diplomat, and I have always wondered why the Saudis were never pro-active about the plight of the Palestinian people. The subtle message i received was "the demographic time bomb". I see their point. The status quo is unsustainable. In another decade or so a third of Israeli society will comprise of Heradim, a group that contributes little or nothing to the national economy. On the West Bank the Palestinian population will outnumber the half a million settlers and will remain poor and impoverished. Nethanyahu, instead of trying to address long term problems, is busy trying to quash the remaining bastions of dissent within Israel and the West Bank. I must point out that contrary to popular opinion in the US, Israel is not a democracy. It is a theocracy and this penetrates to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The central contradiction of the State of Israel is "democracy for some and dispossession for others". Under this so called democracy the 1.6 million Arab-Israelis are poor than its Jewish citizens and face discrimination in housing, land allocation, employment, education and services. How can the Palestinian leadership recognise "Jewish state" a demand sprung by Nethanyahu at Annapolis.

As the Israel economy grows, the economic disparity between the the respective populations increases dramatically. For instance, if this is not an indication that the Palestinian population is not crushed, GDP per capita in Israel in 2015 was $37,700, the West Bank $3,700 and Gaza $1,700. As a privileged white academic living in the US, you don't have put up with the daily tribulations of getting through Israel military check points to seek employment and a whole range of services not available on the West Bank, including medical treatment. The more the Palestinian people are alienated and disposed by the State of Israel, including the jailing of children as young as 7, the more they are prone to violence and the scope for more radical solutions. I agree that as Abba Eban said,"the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity", it is time for new Palestinian leadership to take over.

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