War on Terror and Illusions of Peace

PEACE WITH ZIONISM AND IMPERIALISM IS A MERE ILLUSION

Nizar Sakhnini, 15 September 2006 - nizars@rogers.com

A ZIONIST-IMPERIALIST JOINT VENTURE

Imperialist powers realized the services a Jewish State would provide to their designs for hegemony and control and the first call for the creation of a ‘Jewish State’ was made by the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1807, Bonaparte issued an invitation for a Jewish convention to discuss the idea, long before Hess, Pinsker and Herzl called for the creation of Der Judenstaat. (For details on the French and British early efforts for the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine see: Mohammad Hassanine Haikal, Secret Negotiations between the Arabs and Israel (Arabic), Cairo, 1996, Book 1, pp. 27-51)

During WWI, extensive discussions were made between the Imperialist powers and the Zionist leadership, which led to the Balfour Declaration issued on 2 November 1917. These discussions included the British, the U.S., the French and the Italian Governments as well as the American Zionist leaders headed by Judge Brandeis. (For details of these discussions and other related topics, see: Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971. Second Printing, Washington, 1987, pp. 165-211)

HERZL’S COLONIAL PROJECT

Herzl published his pamphlet at a time when European imperialist powers were involved in spreading their colonial projects all over the world. He considered the Jews to be a nation who are entitled to have their own colonial project.

Herzl’s colonial project was spelled out in the draft-agreement of The Jewish-Ottoman Land Company (JOLC) “for the purpose of settling Palestine and Syria with Jews” that Herzl lobbied for in Istanbul in 1901. (The full text of the draft-agreement is available as an appendix to an article by Walid Khalidi, The Jewish-Ottoman Land Company: Herzl's Blueprint for the Colonization of Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume XXII, Number 2, Winter 1993, pp. 30-47)

Herzl’s efforts, however, almost died with him in 1904 and led to a period of disillusionment in the Zionist Movement. The Balfour Declaration was a lifesaver and opened the road for Imperialist-Zionist cooperation ever since.

BORDERS OF THE ‘JEWISH STATE’

A map specifying the ‘homeland’ that the Zionists had in mind was submitted to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The map included the Golan Heights and Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River as well as the Western part of Trans Jordan. (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 17. See also: David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989The Uprising and beyond, p. 20)

The proclamation of Israel on 14 May 1948 did not specify Israel’s borders. This fact reflected the Zionist intention for territorial expansion beyond the partition lines of General Assembly Resolution # 181 (II) of 29 November 1947.

Ben-Gurion never regarded the partition borders as the last word. He considered a Jewish state in part of Palestine as a first step to be followed by other steps for expansion whenever the time was right. His vision was spelled out in a letter to his son, Amos: “A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning.... We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring...we shall establish a multi-faceted Jewish economy - agricultural, industrial, and maritime. We shall organize a modern defense force, a select army...and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if there is a state… (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 91 - 92)

The first opportunity for expansion came in 1956 when Israel joined the British and the French in the Suez Canal War. In a round table meeting with the French at the S?vres Conference, Ben-Gurion proposed a plan for settling all the issues in the Middle East. The plan included, among other things, that Israel would annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. It also included partition of Jordan, with the West Bank going to Israel and the East Bank to Iraq. In exchange, Iraq would sign a peace treaty with Israel and undertake to absorb the Palestinian refugees. (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp., pp. 236-244)

The Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza were occupied in the 1967 war.

In March 1978, Israel launched Operation Litani and occupied southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. (David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989The Uprising and beyond, p. 33)

Israel remained in Southern Lebanon until May 2000 when Israeli PM Ehud Barak was obliged to withdraw as a result of the Lebanese resistance led by Hizbullah. On 12 July 2006, Israel re-invaded Lebanon but failed again as a result of the courageous resistance. This does not mean that they will not try again.

WAR ON TERROR

In February 1982, Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official wrote an article, which appeared in the WZO’s periodical Kivunim. In his article, Yinon outlined a strategy that calls for the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states. (Nur Masalha, pp. 196 - 198, citing Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, [Hebrew], Kivunim, Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 53 - 58)

By the end of 1991, the USSR ceased to exist. The ‘Cold War’ was over, which meant that a new pretext was needed to justify U.S. wars for global hegemony and control.

In the summer of 1993, Samuel P. Huntington published his ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory that culture and cultural identities, are shaping the patterns of conflict in the post-Cold War world. This opened the door for a talk of a Judeo-Christian civilization vs. ‘Islamic Terror’.

On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, a former head of the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, delivered a document to the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle, and a team of American neo-cons, had been tasked by Netanyahu to draft a new Israeli strategy that would abrogate the Oslo Accords and overturn the entire concept of ‘comprehensive land for peace’ in favor of a policy of military conquest and occupation. ( http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm )

A Washington-based neo-conservative think-tank, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), was founded in 1997 to ‘rally support for American global leadership’. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a window of opportunity for furthering PNAC’s agenda. The ‘Cold War’ was replaced with a new war against ‘Islamic Terror’, which is used as a pretext to justify Imperialist and Zionist wars.

BANKRUPTCY OF ZIONISM

Israel’s expansion in 1967 brought with it a ‘Demographic Threat’ represented by the millions of Palestinian Arabs whom Israel failed to replicate on them the ethnic cleansing of 1948. A systemic effort to confront the Arab ‘Demographic Threat’ was introduced according to which annual conferences were held in the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center – Herzliya to discuss and confront this basic and strategic threat to the ‘Jewish State’.

The report of the first conference, which was held during the period of 19-21 December 2000 stated, “The demographic trends in Israel and its surroundings and their ramifications pose a severe threat to Israel in terms of its character and identity as a Jewish state belonging to the Jewish people. The demographic threat to the continued existence of the State of Israel is the most immediate and most likely to materialize. The threat is developing rapidly, while the pace of designing a national policy dealing with the threat is slow…” (Journal of Palestine Studies 121, Volume XXXI, No. 1, Autumn 2001, pp. 50-61. For more details on all conferences held to this date, see the Website of the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center – Herzliya at: http://www.herzliyaconference.org/Eng/ )

ILLUSIONS OF PEACE

On 30 October 1991, the ‘Middle East Peace Conference’ convened in Madrid under the auspices of the U.S. and the USSR to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israeli PM Shamir, later declared that he wanted the negotiations in Washington (following the Madrid conference) to continue for 10 years, if need be, so that he had enough time to keep on going with planned Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and leave nothing for the negotiations to talk about.

Secret negotiations were held in Oslo between Israel and a number of Palestinians headed by Mahmoud Abbas. These negotiations led to a Declaration of Principles that was signed between Israel and the PLO at the White House in Washington on 13 September 1993. The Oslo agreement did not stop Zionist theft of Palestinian lands to build more colonial settlements in the OPT, which made it clear that the Zionists are continuing with their strategic Zionist goal of an Exclusive Jewish State. This makes it clear that peace in the Middle East is a mere illusion.

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Nizar Sakhnini was born in Acre in 1932. His paternal grandparents came from Sakhnin, which explains the origin of his family name, Sakhnini. He was forced to become a refugee in 1948. He now lives in Canada. He can be reached via e-mail at: nizars@rogers.com