- I'm not sure exactly why it is, but nothing I have read
recently about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians touched me quite
so deeply as the destruction of about 60 shops in the village of Nazlat
Isa. The shootings of civilians, the bulldozing of homes, the reports of
torture, the scores of morally-filthy assassinations, the improper arrests
-- the whole vast, organized mechanism of apartheid cruelty is stomach-turning,
but the deliberate bulldozing of a thriving little street of shops just
seems uncivilized and bleak beyond measure.
-
- Shop owners in the little village were driven out by
Israeli soldiers with gas grenades, and their stores and possessions were
smashed by bulldozers. Israel's excuse for this atrocious behavior is that
the shop owners had not obtained the necessary building permits from Israeli
authorities.
- It is well known that the Israeli authorities make it
difficult for Palestinians to obtain permission to undertake the most basic
projects. Requests to make changes or improvements in sewers or streets
or buildings remain unanswered for years.
-
- It all resembles what Soviet citizens used to experience
when trying to get licenses or permissions from apparatchiks. The effort,
often ending in failure, could consume a good fraction of one's lifetime.
It proved a remarkably effective way to destroy human initiative, to say
nothing of the human spirit.
-
- There is an important difference in the two situations,
though. The problem in the Soviet Union resulted from the sheer size and
complexity of its bureaucracy plus the inability and unwillingness of anyone
at almost any level to take responsibility for making a decision.
- The problem in the West Bank reflects something more
deliberate and ugly. It is Israel's refusal to treat Palestinians as equal
human beings. Their needs count for little or nothing. What in many places
is a normal, everyday activity, the issuing of building permits, becomes
in the Israeli-occupied West Bank a quiet mechanism for denying people
livelihoods, dignity, and even health. It is slow motion ethnic cleansing
carried out through bureaucracy.
-
- Polls show an increasing number of Israelis supporting
"removal," Israel's terrible euphemism for ethnic cleansing by
bayonet rather than bureaucracy. This growing support undoubtedly reflects
the degrading influence on human values of Sharon, Netanyahu, and Bush.
- But as I've asked before, where do more than three million
people go? What poor, crowded, and troubled country of the Middle East
could take them? The answer is obvious to all but the ideologically blind
and morally obtuse -- no one in the Middle East can take them.
-
- America's my-protg-right-or-wrong support for Israel's
excesses is what has made the existing situation possible. If America is
not willing to see a proper Palestinian state established (and that does
not mean a walled-in Bantustan), and it is not willing to insist that Israel
absorb Palestinians as citizens, then it has a moral obligation to do something
else.
-
- America could grant all Palestinians the right of residence
in the United States. This would go some way to redressing the balance
of many tens of billions of dollars spent subsidizing Israel. The United
States has granted this right before, in the case of Cuba, and it did so
for decades. Any Cuban was entitled to an automatic visa, but this policy
reflected America's bitter, self-righteous hatred of Mr. Castro rather
than any sense of obligation about justice or compassion. It would be remarkable
were the United States to make such an offer where it does indeed have
a great moral obligation, so I won't hold my breath.
-
-
- John Chuckman encourages your comments: <mailto:jchuckman@YellowTimes.org>jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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