The Emperor
Has No Clothes:
The West Bank, Settlements and the Two State
Solution
By Miko
Peled
February
01, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"American
Herald Tribune"
-
Sadly, over
the last seventy years Israel has had many successes
at the expense of the Palestinian people. But the
one success that is the most remarkable is getting
Palestinians and the world to buy into the notion
that the occupation of Palestine began in 1967, and
that therefore, the solution to the Palestinian
question is what is known as the two State Solution.
This is a manipulation of reality that would make
any magician proud.
It has
become completely acceptable to disregard the fact
that the vast majority of Palestine has been
occupied since 1948. Mentioning the ethnic cleansing
of Palestine and the eradication of Palestinian
towns and villages, mosques and churches, schools
and homes is now considered radical. Forty-nine
years of occupation is the claim one hears over and
over again, the fiftieth anniversary of the
occupation is upon us, people say, and hard as I
try, when I add forty-nine to the year 1948 I do not
come up with 2016, but rather 1997.
There is
almost complete disregard by the international
community for the crimes committed by the Zionists
between 1948 and 1967. The erasure of the fact that
these were years marked by dispossession, massacres,
and unspeakable abuse of human rights by Israel, is
a truly impressive magic trick. Two small areas
within Palestine that were drawn by Israel and left
out of the boundaries of Israel in 1948, i.e. the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have become recognized
as Palestine. But that is not all. Not a single inch
of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip is under
Palestinian sovereignty. All of the Palestine, from
the River to the Sea is controlled by Israel.
So when
European countries recognize Palestine they too are
behaving like fools in a magic show, happy to be
part of the illusion of some great master of deceit.
And indeed, as the world is led by the nose, fooled
by the illusion of a Palestine that exists, Israel,
the master of deceit, continues to shrink what
little is left of Palestinian life and no one stands
up to admit that the emperor has no clothes! There
is no Palestinian state, there is no Two State
Solution, there is no West Bank, and there is not a
single inch of Palestinian sovereignty anywhere in
Palestine.
“OPT” has
become a rather well known acronym, used to describe
the Occupied Palestinian Territories. But when we
ask people to see those territories on a map, all we
see is what used to be the West Bank, an area that
Israel created in 1948 and then eliminated in 1967,
and the Gaza Strip which exists only as a
concentration camp in which Israel is allowed to
commit genocide, as the world looks the other away
and pretends not to see.
This begs
the following questions: If the OPT are limited
to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip then where
are the Un-occupied Palestinian territories? Are
there Palestinian territories that are not
occupied? If such territories do exist, can
someone please point them out on a map? Because
every map I look at and every inch of Palestine
that I visit is occupied. Another term that is
used a great deal in connection to Palestine is
“settlements.” Sometimes they are called,
“illegal settlements.” Both refer largely to the
Israeli colonies built in the West Bank. There
is talk of “settlement expansion,” “settlement
blocks,” etc. Again, this begs a question: what
is the difference between the Jewish settlements
in those areas and the ones built in Al-Jaleel
or the Naqqab? What about the settlements built
around Jerusalem or the one near Yaffa known as
Tel-Aviv?
Israelis
who live on Palestinian land that was stolen in
1948 like to see themselves as authentic
Israelis, good liberal minded people and God
forbid they are not settlers. Settlers are those
“other” Israelis who live on lands that were
stolen from Palestinians in 1967. But what is
the difference? All of Palestine was stolen by
force, and with very few exceptions, all Israeli
cities and towns, villages and farms were built
on land that was stolen, which makes them all
illegal settlements. Once again the master of
deceit is leading us all by the nose to see the
world as Israel wants us to see it and there is
no one to cry out: “the emperor has NO clothes!”
Between
1948-1967 Israel gained legitimacy by committing
horrendous crimes and creating what they call
“facts on the ground.” The 1967 conquest of the
West Bank and Gaza, in which Israel completed
the occupation of Palestine, shifted the focus
from the territories Israel occupied in 1948 to
the newly occupied territories. Now, for the
past five decades Israel has been creating
“facts on the ground” in those areas, which are
now known as “Judea and Smaria.” But every
magician, every thief and certainly a master of
deceit of such proportions has to have
accomplices.
Few
people can actually claim not to know what
Israel is doing. The international diplomatic
corps is fully aware of what takes place in
Palestine. The CIA and the US State Department
are fully aware of every trick and every crime
committed by Israel. Each and every US
administration as well as the European
governments has been complicit in the crimes
committed by Israel. However, it is time for the
rest of the world to wake up and end the
illusion. The illusion that Israel has
legitimacy, the illusion that Israel is somehow
the answer to the holocaust and to
anti-Semitism, and the illusion that some parts
of Palestine are occupied while others are not.
It’s time to call out loud and clear that all
Israeli settlements everywhere are illegal and
just as in the tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,”
the emperor had no clothes, Israel too has no
legitimacy.
Miko
Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in
the US. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. His
father was the late Israeli General Matti Peled.
Driven by a personal family tragedy to explore
Palestine, its people and their narrative. He has
written a book about his journey from the sphere of
the privileged Israeli to that of the oppressed
Palestinians. His book is titled “The General’s Son,
Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.” Peled speaks
nationally and internationally on the issue of
Palestine. Peled supports the creation of a single
democratic state in all of Palestine, he is also a
firm supporter of BDS. |