With the
Israel-Palestine talks in tatters due to Palestinian president Abbas
threatening to put a halt to Netanyahu’s stretching out of the process to buy
time, the Israelis have resorted to bringing the issue of Iran’s so-called
‘nuclear weapons program’ back to the forefront in an effort to provoke
instability that may lead to the war the Israelis so desperately want. Abbas’s
threat to go to the UN to seek membership of various international
organisations seems to have been the tipping point which has caught Israel off
balance.
US Secretary of
State, John Kerry, has spent the last fourteen months trying to get a peace
settlement between Israel and Palestine but with neither side actually wanting
any kind of settlement that didn’t give each all that they wanted, the talks
were doomed to failure before they even started. The two main sticking points,
one for each side, was the Israeli demand from the Palestinians that they
recognise Israel as a Jewish state and, on the Palestinian side the demand for
the right of return of the refugees. Then, of course, there was the issue of
the settlements; Israel refuses to abandon them while the Palestinians insist
they go.
The only reason
the Israelis went along with the talks was to buy time while they waited for
the right geo-political environment to evolve in which they could launch an
attack on Iran. In order to buy that time the Israelis mumbled stuff about
freezing settlement building without actually doing it, and also released some
Palestinian political prisoners knowing that at any time they could be
rearrested – especially when Israel decides to go to war against Iran and fully
occupy the West Bank to prevent Palestinian retaliation from West Bank
Palestinian fighters for attacking Iran. For the Palestinians it was an
opportunity to show the world how intransigent the Israelis are wanting more
and more of land earmarked for a Palestinian state and dictating what the final
form a Palestinian will take. It also brought time for the BDS movement to take
hold in terms of opening debate about Israeli oppression even if it’s not doing
much to actually hurt the Israeli economy.
But now the talks
have faltered, Netanyahu and his right-wing cohorts have got impatient. They
see the opportunity of striking at their enemies slipping away. Events are
overtaking the Israelis. International support for the Palestinian cause,
particularly in the West, is gathering pace. The BDS movement’s actions are
beginning to bring awareness of the Palestinians plight into the glare of the
mainstream media. This is having the effect of delegitimising Israel for its
actions persecuting and oppressing the Palestinian people both in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. As Thomas
Friedman has recently written, the world is beginning to see Israel as
nothing more than colonisers and the backlash to that is the increasing demand from
the world for there being a one state solution with full democratic rights for
all.
Israel has gone
beyond the point of no return. After decades of trying to blame the
Palestinians for there not being a Palestinian state, the West has finally
woken up to the fact that all the while Israel has been holding up the
Palestinians as being intransigent, it has been the Israelis that have
insidiously been ensconcing themselves on lands that they claim are god-given
to them that all along have had been earmarked to be part of a future Palestinian
state.
The Zionists of
Israel have painted themselves into a corner. Their wars, most of which,
contrary to Israeli propaganda, had actually been provoked by Israeli actions,
have succeeded only in proving to the world that their intentions have never
really been about anything else other than creating an expansionist Greater
Israel. They’ve annexed the Golan Heights and they have gradually taken over
the West Bank. They have invaded several times south Lebanon but have always failed
make good their occupation there. The Israelis hold up their withdrawal from
the Gaza Strip as being an expression of their desire for peace but in reality
all they created was the world’s largest prison on a tiny strip of land
surrounded by a fence and a vast no-mans land as well as being blockaded from using
the sea in order to trade.
Israel, of course,
could march back into the Gaza Strip at any tick of the clock but cannot
without some casus belli to do so. The same with the West Bank.
With the cards now
stacked against them, the Israelis need to resort to their usual stunt of
creating – or, in this case, recreating – an existential threat that would
allow them to take on all of their enemies while at the same time realise their
goals of re-occupying the Gaza Strip, fully militarising the West Bank and
annexing the settlements as well as invading and occupying south Lebanon al
with a view of creating a Greater Israel in the future.
And so it’s back
to Iran which, as
I reported last week, Israel has put back on the front burner. At the same
time, Israel has also begun provoking Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank. Over the last few months
Israel has shot dead several innocent Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In
retaliation Palestinian fighters have launched rockets into Israel. Israel in
turn has launched air strikes into the Gaza Strip. In explaining their reasons
for the attacks the Israelis simply say they are in retaliation to the rocket
strikes on Israel. Not mentioned is the reasons why Palestinian fighters
launched the rockets in the first place.
Meanwhile, Israel have
resumed the frequency of their low level mock air attacks over Lebanon in a
bid to provoke a response from Hezbollah, a tactic they used to start their
2006 war against Hezbollah when Hezbollah responded to Israeli provocation by
capturing several Israeli soldiers on the Lebanon-Israel border and launching
thousands of rockets into Israel.
Israel’s position
is now desperate. With the six months nearly up on the agreement between the P5+1
and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program, Israel are likely to insist that they
reserve the right to unilaterally strike Iran if deems it is a threat in
anyway. Such a strike would then trigger the all-out
war Israel has been all along been hoping for.
Time, it seems,
may be running out for the Israelis. The world needs to be aware that they might
lash out at any time.
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