Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

No Chance of Peace
September 1, 2010

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of "Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness."

If the Obama administration accepts the myth that dismantling settlements is impossible for Israel, there are no prospects for peace. The settlements are illegal under international law. Yet settlers have been pampered for more than 40 years, and their violence against Palestinians is consistently tolerated. Peace depends on the Israeli government rectifying the problem they and their predecessors created.

So long as Netanyahu fails to break with settler leaders and the U.S. vacillates on this issue, a just peace is far away..The settler enterprise is a deliberate strategic creation of Israel, beginning with the occupation in 1967. This enterprise has been indulged and enlarged by every Israeli government since then.

From the outset, this was a project to colonize and control Palestinian land. It still is. As Ariel Sharon said in 1998: "Everybody has to move; run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours. Everything we don't grab will go to them.”

Today, there are nearly 500,000 settlers living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The U.S. has only occasionally and timidly objected. This irresoluteness, coupled with millions in tax-exempt funding, amounts to complicity in the 40-fold expansion of settlements since 1972.

The U.S. and Israel demand that the Palestinians engage in everything short of civil war (including torture and repression) to protect Israel's security, and yet American leaders fail to demand that Israel confront its own Frankenstein. While a minority of settlers may resist a peace deal requiring their departure, many are there because of generous government subsidies. These settlers would leave if provided with suitable incentives. The U.S. could withhold some of the $3 billion given to Israel as military aid annually and divert it toward housing settlers within Israel's own borders.

But so long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fails to break with settler leaders, including his own foreign minister, and the U.S. vacillates on this issue, a just peace is far away.

• Congressional Cigar Association Is Front For Lobbyists

  "Lobbyists for major banks, insurers, pharmaceutical firms, energy companies and at least one foreign government have been helping organize lavish gatherings of staffers and members of Congress since early 2009, funneling K Street money through an officially chartered staff organization called the Congressional Cigar Association. "

• India's Israeli-Arab tightrope walk - Focus - Al Jazeera English

  "Almost a decade before independence, the father of the Indian freedom movement, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had clearly articulated his position on the issue. In an editorial in the Harijan, a widely circulated Indian weekly, on November 11, 1938, Gandhi declared: "My sympathies are with the Jews ... but my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me ... Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.""

• BBC News - Israel to restrict white phosphorus use in future wars

  "The Israeli military will restrict its use of artillery shells containing white phosphorus, it has told the UN. The controversial weapons cause deadly burns and rights groups say they are banned from use in civilian areas. The Israel Defense Forces used weapons containing white phosphorus during a 22-day assault on Gaza which began in December 2008. In its report to the UN, the IDF said steps would be taken in future to avoid civilian casualties. "

• The Curious Rabbit Case: Teacher Loses 'Rabbit-Phobia' Trial - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

  "A German teacher has lost a defamation suit Tuesday in which she claims that a 16-year-old student spread vicious rumors saying that she has a rabbit phobia. The court case, which triggered nationwide headlines, was dismissed on the grounds that the student proved the teacher's phobia as fact. A teacher in the northern German town of Vechta lost her case Tuesday that would have put to bed the rumor that she's afraid of rabbits. Marion V., 60, a German and geography teacher, made headlines earlier this year by accusing a 16-year-old schoolgirl of defamation, alleging that the student maliciously gossiped that V. suffers from rabbit phobia. The defendant, named as Kim P., caused the stir by drawing a rabbit on the blackboard of V.'s classroom. Upon entering the room and seeing the drawing, V. reportedly fled from her classroom in tears. "

• Abbas: Specific US assurances on borders needed

  "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants the U.S. to spell out its views on the borders of a Palestinian state before resuming direct negotiations with Israel, an adviser said Wednesday, raising a condition that Israel is unlikely to accept. "