Talking is not enough to halt the colonisation of the West Bank.
ZIONIST colonisation, wrote the Zionist thinker Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923, can develop only "under the protection of a force independent of the local population — an iron wall which the native population cannot break through".
Before its "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army decided to implement Jabotinsky's idea literally by erecting a six-metre-high concrete and steel wall across the Gaza's border with Egypt.
To prevent Palestinians from tunnelling under the wall, about 1800 houses in the Palestinian refugee camps alongside the wall were demolished. When American peace activist Rachel Corrie tried to save one such house, she was crushed under the blade of an Israeli bulldozer.
For the people of Rafah, the wall has been an ever-present reminder of Israeli power and the futility of resistance — a 21st century Berlin Wall amid the rubble of their ruined homes.
For Israel, the wall is the means by which it maintained control over Gaza Strip without having to garrison troops inside it. Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, Israel has used this control to place Gaza under siege. Imports and exports have been suspended.
The supply of food, medicine and fuel for cooking, transport and electricity generation has been alternately reduced to a trickle or cut off altogether.
According to the UN, 80% of Gaza's population now lives in a state of extreme poverty — 72 Gazans have died because they were unable to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
While cautiously criticising the more draconian aspects of the siege, the West has lent its consent to its underlying premise: that the people of the Gaza Strip would rid themselves of Hamas when they realised how much worse off they were than their compatriots in other parts the occupied territories.
Over the past weeks this premise has collapsed. The Palestinian militants' success in puncturing Israel's blockade of Gaza has underscored the value of armed resistance as a way to improve Palestinian welfare, and contrasts sharply with the Annapolis peace summit's failure to halt Israel's deepening colonisation of the West Bank.
This month the UN reported that, despite its promises, Israel had increased the number of checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the West Bank to 563. Last week Israel announced that it would build 2461 new housing units for Jewish settlers on confiscated Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem.
The collapse of its iron wall in Gaza presents Israel with an embarrassing dilemma. Invading Rafah again to rebuild the wall would belie its claim that it no longer occupies Gaza, and probably prove ineffective unless it leaves behind a permanent garrison. Now it is insisting that the Egyptians close the border, but the Egyptian Government's willingness to abet the collective punishment of Gaza's people is doubtful, to say the least.
Accepting Hamas' offer of a ceasefire to end Palestinian missile attacks on Sderot would seem its most promising alternative, but this is unlikely for a number of reasons.
First, having spent the past two years insisting that Hamas is a terrorist organisation with which it cannot negotiate, Israel's Government would find it difficult to explain the sudden change of policy. Second, the illusion that the intelligent application of punitive measures is the only lasting solution to Arab resistance is so prevalent among both Israel's leadership and public that it is unlikely to be dislodged by the mundane reality of failure.
Finally, diplomatic pressure to moderate its actions in the occupied territories is almost non-existent.
After hesitantly voicing their "concern" over Israel's post-Annapolis decision to expand Jewish settlements throughout East Jerusalem, both the United States and the European Union have lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
All the frontrunners in this year's US presidential campaign — Clinton, Obama, McCain, Giuliani — have expressed their uncritical support for Israel as they compete for Jewish campaign funding.
And Australia? In December 2006, Melbourne mining magnate Rabbi Joe Gutnick declared that members of Australia's Jewish community could not help but support John Howard unless they saw "something amazing from Kevin Rudd".
Over the following months, Rudd ran four pro-Israeli Labor candidates in the federal election, and declared to a private function of Melbourne's Jewish leaders that his support for Israel was "in his DNA".
This month, the Australian Government voted against funding the 2009 Durban Conference to review the UN's progress in combating racism, discrimination and xenophobia. No official reason was given, but the vote follows an Israeli campaign to de-fund the conference, which it expects will criticise what Noble laureates Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu have described as its regime of apartheid in the occupied territories.
"Israel," Henry Kissinger once quipped, "has no foreign policy, only domestic policy." In this respect, as in many others, it is certainly not alone.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/27/1201368941248.html
Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine
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