[News] Eating Palestine for Breakfast

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01112006.html

January 11, 2006


How Quickly They Forget the Real Sharon


"Eating Palestine for Breakfast"

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

On the morning of the day Ariel Sharon had his stroke last week, 
Ha'aretz ran an analysis -- aptly titled "Eating Palestine for 
Breakfast" -- that captured the real Ariel Sharon. It may be the last 
honest analysis ever to see the light of day in the mainstream media, 
now that Sharon is being lionized so widely as a heroic peacemaker, a 
man "who could deliver real peace," and other such absurdities. The 
Ha'aretz article, elaborating on a prediction by a leading political 
commentator and an Israeli think tank, laid out a scenario said to be 
Sharon's vision for Palestine following his expected electoral 
victory in March. According to the scenario, Sharon would set 
Israel's borders and reshape the West Bank by formally annexing the 
major Israeli colonies there (colonies in Palestinian East Jerusalem 
have already been annexed) and establishing the separation wall as 
the official Israeli border.

The major West Bank settlement blocs outside Jerusalem house 
approximately 80 percent, or about 190,000, of the West Bank settlers 
and are rapidly expanding. In addition, the nearly 200,000 Israeli 
settlers in East Jerusalem, whom no one in Israel intends to remove, 
would also remain in their colonies, under full and permanent Israeli 
control. Sharon would also annex a strip of land in the eastern West 
Bank along the Jordan River and would then dismantle the colonies 
remaining in between the two annexed areas, evacuating their 
40,000-50,000 settlers. This scenario would incorporate into Israel 
90 percent of the total of approximately 425,000 Israelis now living 
in occupied territories on confiscated Palestinian land.

The result of this maneuvering would of course be the permanent end 
of any hope for true Palestinian independence in any kind of decent, 
defensible state. The areas left to the Palestinians would constitute 
perhaps 50 or 60 percent of the West Bank, plus Gaza -- something 
between ten and twelve percent of the Palestinians' original 
Palestine homeland -- and that small area would be surrounded on all 
sides by Israeli territory and broken up by Israeli fingers of land 
jabbing deep in to the West Bank. Other astute analysts have seen a 
similar scenario unfolding, most particularly Israeli activist Jeff 
Halper, whose article 
"<http://www.counterpunch.org/halper10082005.html>Setting Up Abbas: 
Yet Another 'Generous Offer' from Sharon," appeared on CounterPunch 
October 8-9, 2005.

According to the scenario, Sharon would have sought massive 
additional aid from the United States to pay for the costs of 
establishing a border and compensating the evacuated settlers. The 
scenario-writers, recognizing the Bush administration as a willing 
accomplice and paymaster in this naked expansionism and as the most 
supportive administration ever likely to come along, were operating 
on the assumption that, while Bush remained in office, Sharon would 
have a three-year window of opportunity to accomplish his plan to 
devour Palestine.

Although Sharon will almost certainly either not be around, or will 
not have the faculties, to implement his vision, the major 
commentators and editorialists of the U.S. and Israel have already 
decreed that this plan to break Palestine, or something very like it, 
is the future for Palestine-Israel -- and either explicitly or by 
implication have pronounced their approval, bestowing on Sharon the 
mantle of peacemaker and savior of Israel. The adulation has been 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520217187/counterpunchmaga>
[]
overwhelming: Sharon the warrior turned peacemaker, Sharon the war 
hero who dedicated his life to Israel's preservation, Sharon the bold 
pragmatist, Sharon the sensible compromiser, Sharon the man who 
sought reconciliation with the Palestinians and preserved Israeli 
security at the same time, Sharon the seeker after truth and justice.

Never mind that Sharon has a history of quite literally massacring 
Palestinians, in numerous instances dating from the 1950s up at least 
through the refugee camp massacres in Beirut in 1982; that his 
military forces kill and steal from Palestinians daily; that he was 
until his last conscious thought planning a land theft in Palestine 
on a scale not previously seen; that he and his henchmen openly 
touted the small Gaza withdrawal as a means of facilitating the 
near-total absorption of the West Bank and the permanent demise of 
any prospect of genuine Palestinian independence. Never mind that, as 
he was eating his last actual meal, he was contemplating the prospect 
of eating Palestine for breakfast the next day.

Most Israelis loved this, because Sharon made them feel secure. He 
was brutal and strong enough to keep them safe. He hated Arabs, as 
most Israelis basically do, and he wanted them gone -- out of sight, 
out of mind, out of Palestine -- as most Israelis essentially do. He 
had a voracious appetite that they knew would not be sated until he 
had packed away all of Palestine. This was fine with Israelis.

Israeli novelist David Grossman, who usually comes from a leftist 
perspective, recently wrote describing Sharon as "much loved by his 
people," for whom he had become "a kind of big, powerful father 
figure whom [they] are willing to follow, with their eyes closed, to 
wherever he may lead them." Grossman himself, writing with no small 
measure of approval, seems to have fallen for the Sharon myth. 
Asserting that "we cannot but admire his courage and determination," 
Grossman contends that Sharon "set Israel on the road to the end of 
the occupation." Others, of varying political stripes, have similarly 
labeled Sharon "the best hope for peace" (Israeli historian Benny 
Morris); "the man who could deliver real peace" (Palestinian-American 
leader Ziad Asali); "a great statesman and leader [who] has brought 
new hope to the region" (leftist Israeli analyst Gershon Baskin); and 
the man who appeared to be pursuing "the one viable way" to bring 
peace "to Israel" (Tikkun's Michael Lerner).

It all depends, of course, on what the definition of "is" is. What 
does Grossman mean by "occupation," a word Sharon used only sparingly 
and a concept he never truly recognized; as a matter of fact, what 
precisely does "end" mean -- complete, partial, half-hearted? And 
what does "peace" mean, or "real peace"? The kind of peace that 
Sharon and most Israelis and Americans imagine is quite different 
from the kind of peace Palestinians envision. Does it come with 
justice, and for whom? Will it give the Palestinians freedom, or only 
give the Israelis the safety from which to continue oppressing 
Palestinians? Would "peace" be a peace of conquest for Israel but of 
subjugation for Palestinians -- like the peace imposed on American 
Indians? Or would peace, in the Sharon conception, come with a real 
state for the Palestinians -- a genuinely independent, viable, 
defensible state with borders and an economy and a polity the 
Palestinians themselves could control?

Not likely. You can call a sow's ear a silk purse, but it will always 
remain a sow's ear. There was no silk purse for the Palestinians on 
Ariel Sharon's political horizon.

Aaron David Miller, a leading member of Bill Clinton's peace team, 
recently wrote that Sharon had abandoned the dream of Greater Israel, 
of ultimately extending Israel's writ over all of Palestine from the 
sea to the river. David Grossman claims that finally, in his eighth 
decade, Sharon came to realize that force is not a solution, that 
concessions and compromises are necessary. But this is all nonsense, 
the silly blather of otherwise sensible commentators who desperately 
wish it were true. In fact, like the pragmatist he was, Sharon had 
simply stopped talking about Greater Israel, stopped actively 
planning for it, in the hope that people like Miller and Grossman 
would be fooled. And he succeeded. None of the Indian reservations 
Sharon was in the process of creating, in either Gaza or the West 
Bank, would give the Palestinians any assurance of permanence or 
freedom from future interference.

Ariel Sharon had become a comfort station for those who positioned 
themselves squarely in the middle on Palestinian-Israeli issues, 
those who tried to strike some kind of artificial "balance" between 
the two unbalanced sides -- people like Tikkun's Michael Lerner, who 
has espoused a "progressive middle path" as the best way to achieve 
Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, as if moral right lies anywhere 
near the middle in this conflict. Sharon the pragmatist allowed these 
people in the middle to think he had joined them, to think that he 
wanted genuine peace for Palestinians as well as Israelis, and to 
think that they therefore did not need to press any further for 
justice or equity in Palestine-Israel.

Because Sharon recognized that, at least for now, Israel had to trim 
its vision of exerting sovereignty and control over all of Palestine 
and therefore decided to shuck responsibility for administering Gaza 
and squeeze West Bank Palestinians into multiple small enclaves where 
Israel would have no responsibility for their daily needs, the 
Michael Lerners and others of the so-called progressive center have 
declared victory and shucked their own responsibility. Unable to see 
the utter futility, to say nothing of the immorality, of their effort 
to achieve "balance" between one helpless party with no power 
whatsoever and one all-powerful party holding all the cards and 
controlling all the territory, and unable therefore to achieve 
anything toward true peace and justice, Lerner had already turned 
away from activism on behalf of peace in Palestine-Israel and is 
concentrating his efforts on domestic politics in the U.S.

His latest word on Sharon is a typical up-the-hill, down-the-hill 
Lerner effort: Sharon "has systematically ignored the humanity of the 
Palestinian people, violated their basic human rights," etc., etc. 
"Yet the loss of Sharon will be mourned by many of us in the peace 
movement because his current moves, insensitive as they were to the 
needs of Palestinians, seemed to be the one viable way to build an 
Israeli majority for concessions that might eventually create the 
conditions for a more respectful and mutual reconciliation with the 
Palestinians, thereby bringing peace to Israel." (Emphasis added.) In 
other words, Sharon was a bastard, but there is no one better in 
Israel, and because he was a pragmatist, he might, just might, 
someday have done something to satisfy the Palestinians, which we in 
the peace movement hope for because we so desperately want peace for Israel.

Another centrist peace organization, Brit Tzedek, which espouses a 
position on what it calls the "moderate left," issued a statement 
after Sharon's stroke that is almost identical to Lerner's in tone 
and import. The overweening concern for Israel put forth in this 
position demonstrates clearly why, despite what the organization 
calls "deep disagreement" with Sharon's tactics, so many so-called 
leftists have embraced his overall strategy -- because ultimately it 
is, they think, good for Israel. Applauding Sharon for his 
"unwavering commitment to safeguarding the future of the Jewish 
homeland," Brit Tzedek accepts the myth that Sharon and his new 
political party intended "to bring the necessity of further 
withdrawals from the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian 
state to the front and, more importantly, the center in Israel's 
political landscape." No one else in Israel "could have galvanized 
Israeli popular opinion" as Sharon did.

And so the myth grows: Sharon may be a bastard but he is our bastard 
-- our American, our Israeli bastard -- and if he wants to eat 
Palestine for breakfast, so be it. As long as he preserves Israel's 
security, devouring Palestine is fine. We'll simply call it a silk 
purse. And if we're lucky, Mahmoud Abbas will go along, will 
capitulate to Sharon's kind of peace. He has little choice, after 
all. The United States, the EU, Israel, and now most of the U.S. 
peace movement are marching in unison, carrying out Ariel Sharon's 
legacy. Only Abbas' own Palestinian people object, but what power do they have?

Ariel Sharon, at least at this emotional moment of his political 
incapacitation, when the myths about him are at their strongest, has 
come to be the standard bearer for the hypocrisy of much of the 
American peace movement, which is interested not in peace or justice 
for Palestinians in any objective sense, but only in peace and 
security for Israel. There are objective measurements of what 
constitutes justice for both Palestinians and Israelis, but the peace 
movement seems to care less than ever that neither Sharon nor any of 
his legatees have ever intended to come anywhere near meeting these 
standards. Today, the spread of myths about Sharon is the single most 
damaging factor for any prospect of achieving greater justice for the 
Palestinians.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked 
on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions 
of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a 
National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of 
Regional and Political Analysis.

They can be reached at 
<mailto:kathy.bill at christison-santafe.com>kathy.bill at christison-santafe.com.


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