http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=4&datee=5/8/01&id=118905
The conquerors of Canaan
By Shulamit Aloni
Ha'aretz, 05/08/2001
The Palestinians have paid a steep price for their refusal to accept
the United Nations partition plan for Palestine in 1947 that would
have divided British Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an
Arab one. Today, more than 50 years after the plan was rejected, the
following question must be asked: How much longer must we pay until we
finally realize that despite the territories we captured in the
Six-Day War of June 1967, this land belongs to two nations?
Until this land is partitioned and until the Palestinian nation
receives its sovereign rights, we will never have a quiet moment. The
question must contain the words, "how much longer," because we have
already made the first payment - and a very heavy one, indeed - in the
War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War.
All the pressure that was exerted on Golda Meir to withdraw Israeli
forces from Egyptian territory was futile. On the eve of the Yom
Kippur War, Israel's prime minister declared: "If Sadat wants war,
that is exactly what he will get; and we will defeat them again."
And sure enough, the war came. We paid for that war with thousands of
dead and wounded soldiers, and we can no longer sing "Sharm al-Sheikh,
we have returned to you" or chant songs about "A Nahal army outpost in
the Sinai."
Yet we have learned nothing from all this. Quite the contrary, new
adventures cropped up, including the War in Lebanon and a "new order
in the Middle East." The Shi'ites were delighted when we arrived in
Lebanon, but we managed to turn them into bitter enemies. We destroyed
Lebanon; we killed Lebanese; we suffered losses; and the wounds are
still gaping - both ours and those of the South Lebanon Army. Some 18
years down the line, we returned to the Israel-Lebanon border, but we
were bankrupt and painfully remember our losses.
That is how another needless, blood-soaked occupation came to an end.
Had all the money we sunk into that destructive war been invested in
the Negev, hundreds of us would still be alive today and Be'er Sheva
would be a thriving metropolis.
Our leaders, however, have grander visions that go far beyond the tiny
Negev. We have time only for heroic actions; we are the ones who have
captured Canaan by storm. And the same can be said for all the money
and energy invested and still being invested in the territories that
remain under our military rule.
In 1949, after our War of Independence, all the parties to the
conflict accepted the cease-fire lines, which would be come under the
aegis of the UN. For 18 years, until the Six-Day War, the Green Line
was Israel's recognized eastern boundary. In 1988, the Palestinians
recognized this border as well.
Even the UN recognized this border in resolutions 242 and 338, which
were ostensibly adopted by Israel's governments - ostensibly, so it
appears, because with our military might and with unrestrained greed,
we began to craftily build settlements on the soil we had captured,
eventually succeeding in placing the Palestinians in a stranglehold.
Once again, lives and money and bulldozers are being invested in the
destruction of homes, entire communities, vineyards and orchards and
in the planting of the seeds of hatred. At the same time, we are
hearing much proud talk and much false rhetoric about our immense
strength and our rights, referring to ourselves, of course, as "the
victims" - just as Golda used to say: The Palestinians turned us into
victims because they forced us into killing them.
Of course they are forcing us to kill them, because they are unwilling
to surrender their lands, their freedom or their rights just to
satisfy the will of the "chosen people" and its zealous emissaries,
those who, in the name of God and His representatives, the rabbis of
the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements, are the "conquerors of
Canaan."
Eli Zeira, the former head of Military Intelligence who promised us on
the eve of the Yom Kippur War that war would not break out in the
foreseeable future has recently explained that the Palestinians do not
deserve a country of their own because prior to the Israeli occupation
in 1967, they did not have one. Yet half of the UN's member-states
were never countries, but colonies. Even we weren't a country 53
years ago.
Our prime minister is determined to keep every one of the settlements
intact and even wants to expand them. Furthermore, he wants to turn
the Israel Defense Forces into a ruthless army that fights civilians
and destroys homes and crops for the sake of the settlements. In the
meantime, the Palestinians are waging their own War of Independence.
Israel's governments have never had the wisdom and courage required to
bring about peace, because peace means concessions and we, after all,
do not want to give up anything. This is the reason why people are
using the blood-curdling motto, "Let the IDF win!" How should the IDF
win - through genocide or mass deportations? The IDF can engage in
such activities and then, only then, will international forces
intervene.
The only thing that can be hoped for today is that before we start
committing acts against humanity, international intervention will
force us to accept an imposed peace.
As experience has shown, we know how to use our might to fight, to
occupy and to invest our finest resources in things that we covet, not
in things that really belong to us.
