Olmert to press on with Gaza offensive
Let's look at this in perspective. Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli territory is annoying but hardly the greatest danger than any nation has ever faced. Indeed, in the last four years this highly ineffective form of warfare has succeeded in killing eight Israelis and three foreign workers. Now let's remember that figure. ELEVEN people killed in FOUR years.
In order to supposedly stop this rocket fire the Israelis have been bombarding the Gaza Strip and have killed more than THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY people in the last FOUR MONTHS.
This is what Europeans complain about when they speak of a disproportionate response.
Now, should this rocket fire cease? Of course it should, especially as it is met with such a lunatic response. It is in the Palestinians best interests to stop such rocket fire.
However, that does not in any way alleviate the dreadful disproportionality of the Israeli response to these attacks. The IDF are one of the world's most technically advanced army's and they are facing an unarmed civilian population who simply want their own state.
The IDF frequently use the full power of that army in response to crude home made weaponry that is of a largely symbolic value. The idea that the State of Israel is actually under serious threat from this home made arsenal is laughable, but the Israeli response to this is not.
The real question that is often ignored in all of this arguing regarding proportionality is how does Israel come to live in peace with her neighbours?
Forgotten in all of this is the fact that the Saudis have already placed a peace plan on the table as recently as March 2003. The plan was effectively ignored by Washington.
The main points of the plan are:
- Israel is required to withdraw from all territories seized in 1967 - the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
- In return, all Arab states offer normal diplomatic relations - including a peace deal that recognises Israel's right to exist and secures its borders.
- The plan was formally announced at an Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2003.
Other parts of the plan that can be gleaned from an interview given to the New York Times newspaper by Crown Prince Abdullah include:
The Israelis can continue to carry out their hugely disproportionate attacks on the Palestinians, with all the worldwide opprobrium that encourages or they can sit down and negotiate.Reports suggest that the Saudi plan allows for Israeli sovereignty over the Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem - one of Judaism's holiest sites. The same reports suggest that the plan allows for the transfer of some areas of the West Bank to Israel in return for equivalent transfers to a Palestinian state. It is also suggested that the issue of the right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel has been dropped or sidestepped. This issue is crucial because many Israelis see the Palestinian claim to the right of return as a fundamental demographic threat to the idea of Israel as a state for Jewish people.
One of the greatest failings of George Bush's presidency is that he has done nothing to rein in the violence in the Middle East - indeed, at times he has seemed to encourage it - and he has done nothing to foster negotiations between Israel and her neighbours.
The end result, as the war between Israel and Hizbullah attested to, is an Israeli state that is less safe now than it was six years ago when George W. Bush entered the White House.
The idea that Israel can use it's military superiority to ensure her safety was exposed as a fantasy by the war with Hizbullah. Conventional forces will only protect Israel from conventional armies, and that is not what she is up against.
Rather than engaging in this brutality against the people of Gaza the Israelis would be better served by negotiating with the leaders of Hamas and finally bringing sixty years of madness to an end.
The Saudi plan and George Bush's Road Map continue to lie stagnant on the table. It is high time for Israel to abandon the neo-con myth that violence can bring about peace through the humiliation of your neighbours and to begin to negotiate.
Towards the end of his Prime Ministership even that old warhorse Ariel Sharon had realised the futility of his actions and was preparing to hand back Gaza and the West Bank. Olmert, himself, was elected to carry out this plan.
It remains the only way forward. Israel's actions in Gaza needlessly isolate her from world opinion. The Israeli electorate showed that they were ready for peace when they elected Olmert to disengage from Gaza and the West Bank. Olmert's mistake was to attempt to do so unilaterally with no input from the Palestinians.
As Churchill memorably said, "it's time for Jaw-Jaw, not War-War".
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Author accuses government of failure of leadership
"Any logical person in Israel or Palestine knows today the lines of a possible settlement of the conflict between the two people," he said. "Talk to the Palestinian people, talk to the sorrow and the deep wounds they have. Acknowledge their ongoing suffering. Doing so will in no way diminish your or Israel's position."
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