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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionisms-calm-destruction-palestine">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionisms-calm-destruction-palestine</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Zionism's calm destruction of Palestine</h1>
<p class="node__submitted"> <span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog"></span><span
class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2017-11-16T17:47:13+00:00">16 November 2017</span></span>
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<p>Two stories reported by <em>Haaretz</em> on
Wednesday underscore the unchanging goal of Zionism:
the destruction of the Palestinians as a people and as
viable communities, and the theft of their land for
exclusively Jewish colonial settlement.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.823075">first
story</a> reports on declassified minutes of cabinet
meetings in the months after the 1967 war, when Israel
occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as
Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.</p>
<p>Israeli leaders were pondering how to deal with the
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under
military occupation. It was already clear that the
Israelis wanted the land but not the people who lived
on it.</p>
<p>One of the “solutions” offered by Levi Eshkol, then
Israel’s prime minister, was, effectively, to expel
them.</p>
<h2>Deprive Palestinians of water</h2>
<p>According to the minutes, Eshkol told ministers he
was “working on the establishment of a unit or office
that will engage in encouraging Arab emigration.” He
added, “We should deal with this issue quietly, calmly
and covertly, and we should work on finding a way
[for] them to emigrate to other countries and not just
over the Jordan [River].”</p>
<p>And in a premonition of today’s brutal <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege">Israeli
siege</a>, Eshkol indicated that “precisely because
of the suffocation and imprisonment there, maybe the
Arabs will move from the Gaza Strip.”</p>
<p>But he wasn’t necessarily going to leave it to
chance. The prime minister proposed: “Perhaps if we
don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice,
because the orchards will yellow and wither.”</p>
<p>He also suggested that “Perhaps we can expect another
war and then this problem will be solved.” He must
have been thinking back to the 1948 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba">Nakba</a>,
when Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 750,000
Palestinians from their homes during Israel’s
so-called “War of Independence.”</p>
<p>Eshkol was emphatic: “We are interested in emptying
out Gaza first.”</p>
<p>There was apparently no disagreement.</p>
<p>Yigal Allon, another minister, urged “thinning the
Galilee of Arabs.” This is important because the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/galilee">Galilee</a>
is a region within the land on which Israel was
established in 1948 and the Palestinians who live
there are nominally Israeli citizens.</p>
<p>But for Israel’s leaders they were and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/election-day-israeli-leaders-step-anti-arab-incitement">remain</a>
nothing more than a “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/demographic-threat">demographic
threat</a>” to Zionist expansion and overall
control.</p>
<p>Zerah Warhaftig, minister of religious affairs, made
the goal clear: “We must increase [the number of] Jews
and take all possible measures to reduce the number of
Arabs.”</p>
<h2>50 years on</h2>
<p>Fast forward 50 years to the present day, to the
occupied West Bank village of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/al-walaja-0">al-Walaja</a>,
southwest of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Israel has been proceeding for years to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/photos-al-walaja-village-faces-slow-death-israel-takes-its-land/13264">deprive
the villagers of their land</a>.</p>
<p>They are already cut off from much of their farmland
and from Jerusalem entirely by Israeli-built walls and
fences.</p>
<p>Two days ago, <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.823113">according
to <em>Haaretz</em></a>, the villagers received
notices from Israeli occupation forces that a military
checkpoint will be moved about 2.5 kilometers deeper
into the West Bank.</p>
<p>“Once the checkpoint [is] relocated, Palestinians
without Jerusalem resident papers will not be allowed
to pass through it,” <em>Haaretz</em> reports. “They
will not be able to visit the spring area or their
fields and terraces beyond it.”</p>
<p>This is an area – similar to nearby <a
href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1492">UNESCO-recognized</a>
<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/battir">Battir</a>
– with ancient stone terraces and springs tended by
the native Palestinians for generation after
generation.</p>
<p>As Palestinians of al-Walaja are deprived of access
to their land and water, their orchards will, as
Eshkol put it, “yellow and wither.”</p>
<h2>Dreams of destruction</h2>
<p>Today, just like in the cabinet in 1967, Israeli
politicians and pundits dream of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/fuck-it-wipe-out-gaza-says-spokesman-new-eu-campaign/21296">bombing</a>,
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/concentrate-and-exterminate-israel-parliament-deputy-speakers-gaza-genocide-plan">starving</a>
and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-refuses-condemn-israeli-genocide-plan">forcing</a>
Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in
order to take their land – if not inflicting <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/hamas-bends-over-backwards-yet-eu-retains-snub">another
Nakba</a> or <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes">outright
extermination</a>.</p>
<p>Israel is already taking the land, albeit – in
Eshkol’s words – “calmly and covertly,” knowing that
this is the best way to ensure the support and
sponsorship from American and European governments
that continue to spout platitudes about “shared
values,” Israeli “democracy” and “innovation,” while
the occupation soldiers, bureaucrats and colonists’
bulldozers do their dirty work.</p>
<p>And where Israel hasn’t <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/video-forced-drought-hits-jordan-valley-farmers-israel-steals-their-water">deprived</a>
Palestinians of water, that state has made it <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/life-septic-tank/20826">toxic</a>.</p>
<p>Of course Israel’s regular <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-massacre-price-jewish-state">spasms
of mass violence</a> are intended to speed the
process along and “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/mowing-lawn-israels-latest-massacre-gaza-and-lies-behind-it">mow
the lawn</a>” of Palestinian resistance.</p>
<p>What is happening in al-Walaja is a microcosm of what
is and has been taking place all over the country
since the advent of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/balfour-declarations-many-questions/22216">European-backed
Zionist colonialism</a>.</p>
<p>It illustrates the continuity of Zionism’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562">incremental
genocide</a> in Palestine.</p>
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