Speedkill

Israel’s started pulling out of the Gaza Strip, leading to some pretty ugly clashes.

It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about this. People are being forcefully removed from their homes, which is hardly a happy event to witness. On the other hand, the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is wrong and this has to be done if there is any hope of ending the violence in that region.

And of course, who can forget that this conflict is essentially a struggle over religious homeland. These two groups are killing each other over ridiculous myths involving child-raping prophets and genocidal gods. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching two groups sacrifice rational thought to kill each other because they think some invisible sky fairy gave them some barren piece of dirt first.

I don’t have much to say in general, so go read this article from Salon on Arafat’s death. Pretty interesting.

On a lighter note, there is something seriously wrong with Ron Artest.

Ten die as Israeli tanks fire on peaceful protest

Israeli forces fired tank shells into a peaceful Palestinian protest during the ongoing assault on Rafah refugee camp yesterday, killing at least 10 people – mostly children – and critically wounding many others.

The army described the incident as “very grave”, claimed it had only fired “warning shots” and said there was no intention to harm civilians. But it attempted to shift responsibility for the carnage to the several thousand demonstrators by saying some were armed.

We didn’t fire at them but if we had it would be perfectly fine because they were armed. So, if it is OK to fire on them if armed, and they were armed, why didn’t they shoot at them? It’s all so confusing.

Via Altercation:
A Wall as a Weapon
by Noam Chomsky

Well that’s new.

Sheesh, two posts in a row on Chomsky. I think you go to hell for things like that.

That is, if hell exists.

Which, it doesn’t.

Sharon Says He Plans to Remove 17 Settlements From Gaza

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel said today that he had given an order to plan for the removal of all 17 Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip, causing consternation among settlers and politicians.

Zvi Hendel, an Israeli lawmaker and Gaza settler, accused Mr. Sharon of trying to deflect attention from various corruption investigations against the prime minister and his two sons.

First off, he’s going to “relocate” them? To where? And while doubling settlements in the Golan Heights? And gee, how convenient. Let’s make grand plans for the settlements now, while I’m being investigated. But will he actually do it?

Israel announces Golan expansion

Israel announced plans today to double the number of Jewish settlers living in the Golan Heights, a disputed region captured from Syria in 1967.

About 17,000 Jewish settlers now live in the Golan Heights, which has high strategic value to Israel because it overlooks the sea of Galilee and has important water reserves.

Ok, I don’t see the point here. Would this make Israel safer? I don’t see how; it will likely create even more hate and lead to more recruitment for extremist groups. Would it contribute to peace? That’s laughable. So why the huge expansion plans? A means of collective punishment? More settlers that will soak up the resources of the area, denying Palestinians? Strengthening the hold on the area, with the goal of annexing it in the future? Those are the reasons I can think of, and they are all quite distasteful. Does this not matter to people who take the “Israeli side”? I doubt all of them believe Israel has some right to territorial expansion.

The Geneva Accord has become an interesting part of the Israel/Palestine debate recently. The Sharon government has rebuked Powell for his fairly warm attitude to it, and the accord seem to be accepted by many on the center-left. A recent article on ZNet interested me because of this statement:

Under the accord, Israel is allowed to legalize and retain settlements in the occupied West Bank that house roughly 300,000 settlers, including all the post-1967 Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem; in exchange, the Palestinians receive equivalent territorial compensation from Israel. The Palestinians are granted sovereignty in the territory gained by the land swap and in the remaining parts of the West Bank and Gaza, including the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. This sovereign Palestinian entity remains non-militarized. Security for the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, the holy places in Jerusalem, is overseen by a permanent international force while the site’s non-security aspects fall under Palestinian control; full Jewish access to the site is granted. While Palestinians made refugees in 1948 are to receive some compensation, it is up to the sole discretion of Israel to decide how many refugees — out of a total of over 4.1 million registered with the UN — will be allowed to return to their homes in Israel.

The settlements are allowed to stay? That doesn’t seem like something the left would support, though I haven’t seen a lot of support (or mention, really) for it on the farther left, where a pro-Palestinian position is standard. I’m not surprised that the right on return would be quashed; it doesn’t seem like something Israel would ever agree to fully. But I did find the text of the accord, and upon an admittedly shallow read of it, I don’t really see it the same way as the authors do:

Article 4 – Territory

(f) The state of Palestine shall have exclusive title to all land and any buildings, facilities, infrastructure or other property remaining in any of the settlements on the date prescribed in the timetable for the completion of the evacuation of this settlement.

Sadly, the maps on the page are in Hebrew, so I can’t tell exactly what they mean. But the text does seem to say a complete removal of settlements from Palestinian territory. Of course, until I see a map that I can read that shows the land swap from the 1967 borders, I don’t know if this is most of the settlements or not.

They do seem to be correct about the right of return, it’s soley up to Israel how many return, though it does appear all are at least going to be compensated. This has never been something I thought the Palestinians could get, and it’s not something I’ve ever been gung-ho about, but I’m not Palestinian.

The rest of the plan seems acceptable. Palestine has full sovereignty, except for a few Israeli outposts for security purposes, and that may aggravate extremists, but I think it’s an acceptable compromise. Overall, it’s at least a good start, but unlikely to ever be implemented.

UPDATE: From Diane in the comments:

I think it means a complete removal of settlements from what is Palestinian territory AFTER the agreed land swap has taken place. This would account for what ZNet said about 300,000 settlers staying put. There are about 400,000 settlers all together, but the vast majority are in settlements bordering Israel proper. I think that by swapping only about 3% of the heavily-settled border territory of the West Bank over to Israel, you would in effect be “repatriating” about 80% of the settlers. The remaining 100,000 settlers, in the two settlement blocs that basically cut the WB in three (Ariel in the north and Ma’ale Adunim in the center), would presumably be repatriated and their settlements dissolved, in order to give the Palestinians a contiguous state.

That makes it clearer.

From Salon. Clever name, I think.

Pretty interesting article. There aren’t any groups I know of that operate around here. Well, probably in Missoula. But the only political group I know of on campus (from a quick scan of the ones listed on the MSU website) is College Democrats. I think some of the kids they talk about are taking it a bit far. For crying out loud, the suicide bombings should be condmened. They aren’t getting anywhere, and you’re hurting innocents. I’m well aware that what Israel does is worse, but they can both be condemned. It doesn’t change the fact that Palestinians have a right to self-determination. If you’re going to damn them for unsavory resistance methods, you’re going to have to damn quite a few countries, Israel included. The people that want the dissolution of Israel are really opening the whole movement up for even more anti-Semitism charges, even if they aren’t proposing it’s forceful destruction, just a neutral state emcompassing the region. I can’t speak for the article’s accurate portrayal of what’s going on, but this whole thing does make me a little uncomfortable.

Hammerdown gives us the articles we need to realize that was a stupid idea.

And this article comes from Maxpeak, a blog I should have started reading earlier.

Israel said the airstrike target, which it identified as the Ain Saheb camp, is about 10 miles northwest of Damascus, and had served as a training ground for several Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the groups behind most of the suicide bombings in Israel.

The Israeli military demolished her family home on Sunday, a practice that Israel calls a deterrent to other would-be attackers.

Main quote of note (I’ll ignore the silliness of that phrase):

Israeli officials described the air raid as a limited operation and acknowledged it would not diminish Islamic Jihad’s overall ability to carry out attacks.

I see. Point then? Just to fuck with brown people? And from a part I didn’t quote:

“Israel had to send the message it cannot be repeatedly struck with impunity,” said Dore Gold, an adviser to Mr. Sharon.

So, what you’re saying is, we hit them just to scare them? To coerce people into not defending the Palestinians? Sounds curiously like the definition of terrorism.

And demolishing someone’s home after the fact? The hell? What does that solve? Pissing more people off?

U.S. Uses Its Veto to Block Anti-Israel Measure in U.N.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 16 � The United States today vetoed a Security Council resolution, backed by Islamic and nonaligned nations, demanding that Israel back off its threat to deport the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. Eleven Council members voted in favor of the measure, while Britain, Germany and Bulgaria abstained

Explain to me how it’s liberal to call that “anti-Israel.”