Gaza Roundup
Map of West Bank from Sources and MethodsFor those Americans who remain mercifully ignorant of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians over the occupied territories I have included many many references to simple introductions to the topic. For those interested in the emotional lives of those involved I have in the References links to a radical Jewish settler's diary and to an article about the average concerns of Palestinians living in the occupied territory- both from the Guardian. For all my references I would like to extend the cordial hat tip to Antiwar.com ,Real Clear Politics, and War in Context, also a thanks to Mark Riebling of Sources and Methods and Pbase for the visuals.
The story involves nine thousand Jews living in settlements among over one million Palestinians - and therefore needing thirty thousand Israelis to protect them. For those who have a religious commitment to "Greater Israel" - none of the obvious political conclusions drawn from these numbers can assuage the feelings of betrayal. One can pity them - but why American tax-dollars should be part of their consolation I do not know. Forced resettlement is one of the most brutal things governments in the modern era can do. No conservative can support it save for the most grave reasons. Noah Millman cogently explains the necessity:
Israel would be crazy to want to hold on to Gaza because it cannot plausibly govern the territory without making the Gazans Israeli citizens, and it cannot plausibly do that and remain in any meaningful sense a Jewish state. No one will take Gaza off Israel's hands, and remaining in Gaza will do nothing to improve the prospects for the emergence of a pro-coexistence party within the Palestinian Arab leadership. Whether or not it makes sense for Israel to take the war to the enemy and continue military operations in Gaza, it makes no sense for Israel to keep its civilians there if it has no intention to hold on to the territory. Unilateralism lets Isarel set the terms and timetable of the withdrawal, and does not commit it to any diplomatic concessions as the price of getting a piece of paper blessing what they've already decided is in their interest. - Noah Millman
Go to his blog and read his entire post for a provocative discussion of the likely ramifications of this withdrawal from the settlements.
Settler being 'Evacuated' - PBaseI find it troubling that many politically informed Americans take such intractable stands pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian etc in a conflict this far away. While an outsider may have opinions on the justice of this or that action it betrays a national haughtiness and an intellectual poverty to take such reductively absurd and passionate 'positions' on such conflicts.I find it more troubling that Americans are not curious about the foreign aid distributed to the governments of Israel and Egypt and even tot he Palestinian Authority. If Americans have any overriding concern about these conflicts it should be in the imprimatur of the American Republic given to the actions of these governments in the form of our subsidies. The professional punditariat would deride this concern as smacking of "isolationism". This criticism is not that our concerns are unjust or insensible but that they are simply "amateurish". Foreign aid is a part of being a super-power kids now stop pestering us, we have a world to run.
Noah finishes his post with a stunning bit of political realism and a rebuke:
What can America do to help? Not much. This is Israel's problem. We can offer them some diplomatic support if the going gets tough, but we can't fight their wars for them, nor can we make peace for them. That's something Israelis forgot for a while back in the 1990s (and Bill Clinton encouraged them to forget it), but I don't think they'll forget again soon. (American Jews, on the other hand, may still need to learn this lesson.) What we could do to make things worse is invest too much energy and hope in this batch of Palestinian leaders. That's a mistake Israel has learned not to repeat, but I'm not sure America's leadership class has learned it as well. - Noah Millman
Posted on 8/16/2005 06:12 AM
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Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics
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19 References
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Source: History of the Gaza settlementsThe planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will bring the most sweeping changes the area has witnessed since Jewish settlements were first established in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day war. But what many hardline Israelis find hard to understand is how the architect of settlement construction, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has become the main reason for their dismantling. -
Source: In pictures: Gaza pullout begins
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Thousands of Israeli army troops moved into Gaza Monday morning to serve eviction notices on settlers and confronted hundreds of opponents blocking their way into communities across the coastal strip.
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The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, vowed Saturday to continue its armed campaign against Israel after Jewish settlers and troops protecting them leave the Gaza Strip. It sent a message to Palestinians celebrating the impending withdrawal, saying that resistance is key to ending occupation and achieving statehood.
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Source: Gaza Strip Map
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Defiant and tearful Jewish settlers locked their communities’ gates and formed human chains to block troops from delivering eviction notices Monday, as Israel began its historic pullout from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.
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FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good? But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of
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I don't want to rehash all the arguments for the withdrawal, but here's a brief rundown. Israel would be crazy to want to hold on to Gaza because it cannot plausibly govern the territory without making the Gazans Israeli citizens, and it cannot plausibly do that and remain in any meaningful sense a Jewish state. No one will take Gaza off Israel's hands, and remaining in Gaza will do nothing to improve the prospects for the emergence of a pro-coexistence party within the Palestinian Arab leadersh
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Israel's effort since the 1967 Mideast war to fill the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jews has grown from the scattered actions of zealous squatters into a network of 142 towns and villages that house nearly 240,000 people. Now that Israel plans to spend some $2 billion to dismantle just 25 of the settlements — for which U.S. aid has been requested — it raises the question of how much money has been poured into populating these biblical lands with Jews, and exactly where it came from.
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Source: 'I believe God wants us here'We're planning on staying. This is Jewish land. The settlement's been here for 17 years; people have been growing stuff and planting here all those years. We believe that this is our land and we're not going to leave. We've prepared a lot of food so we can stay for a long time. Potatoes, onions, tinned foods, the kinds of food you can survive with if they cut off the electricity. Food that will last a long time. We're also preparing medical equipment in case we have to take care of people here.
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DISENGAGEMENT BEGINS today. So does the day after. History never rests. Not anywhere, and clearly not in the Middle East. For many months disengagement was looming large over Israel’s public life. Disengagement also became a focus of the international community’s relations with Israel and the Palestinians. For more than a year it pushed aside other initiatives and considerations. But now it is happening, and it is time to refer to what will be the day after.
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Israeli settlers in Rafiah Yam set fire to their cars and property on Sunday in protest against the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Israeli security forces began final preparations for the dismantling of all 21 settlements inside Gaza, and 4 in the West Bank.
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Israel sealed off its Gaza settlements last night as a deadline passed for residents to leave their homes in a historic move that for the first time will see the razing of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory. A combined force of about 50,000 troops and police is to be deployed over the coming days, in Israel's largest military operation outside of a war. They will remove those settlers who refuse to leave of their own accord. The army says it hopes to complete the clearing of 21 settleme
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After more than 38 years of its oppressive military occupation of the Gaza Strip, Israel will soon begin evacuating the few thousand settlers who have been denying freedom to more than a million Palestinians there. Israel has marketed the Gaza withdrawal as yet another historic opportunity to jump-start the peace process. But Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem indicate that Israel's unilaterally imposed disengagement was never meant to start a peace process, but rather to end one.
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As he sits outside the front of a relative's house, barely half a kilometre from Gush Khatif's largest Jewish settlement, Iyad al-Laham ponders what might be. He has dreams that life after the evacuation will be so much better. The Israeli occupation of Gaza has spanned his entire life and, he says, he has a few things he now wants to fulfil. He wants electricity for his area, and to build a house for his wife and three-year old son. 'I was not allowed to build here all this time. It is forbidde
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In the midst of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to promote disengagement as Israel's best way of extricating itself from the conflict and decreasing its vulnerability to terrorism.
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Mr Sharon has said it is a unilateral measure to push forward the peace process with the Palestinians. The Palestinians say he has done it as an alternative to talks and as a tactic to hold on to the much larger West Bank settlements.
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Related: Gaza StripThe Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of land in the Middle East not internationally recognized currently as a de jure part of any sovereign country. It takes its name from Gaza, its main city. It is one of the most densely populated territories on earth, with a predominantly (99.4%) Palestinian population of about 1.4 million in an area of 360 km². 69% of the Strip is currently under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, while the remaining territory (mainly the areas containing and surroun -
Related: Gaza Amatuer Photo Page
Reader Comments (2)
That said, there is something touching and interesting about the conflict between soldiers and settlers. I noticed online various photos of soldiers and settlers hugging and crying together. There is such a close identity in Israel of its defense forces and its people. They are nearly one and the same. This prevents massive abuse by an alienated and elitist standing army; its' a true republic of citizen-soldiers. That said, the army lacks basic military discipline if it cannot bring itself to handle this task professionally. Perhaps some mutual grieving and acknowledgement by settlers that the soldiers are merely following orders and doing their duty is the best outcome, for a society where "following orders" has always had a sinister pedigree.
I think that, given the way we've been conned into throwing billions of dollars into a first-world country subsidizing its less-than-admirable treatment of indigenous Christians, we might be justified in having a fair amount of righteous indignation.