Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbor states but has steadfastly
refused to negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last few years.
Why?
"My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine',
you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and
not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the
land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people
who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do
you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not
your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your
sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland,
as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land." Menahem
Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?"
More from the horse's mouth
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would
never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.
Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God
is not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago,
and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler,
Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here
and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion,
quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president
of the World Jewish Congress.
More from the horse's mouth
"Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land
and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the
generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel
we cannot plant a tree and build a home." Israeli leader Moshe Dayan,
quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the
History of Zionism and Israel"
More from the horse's mouth
"The Arabs will be our problem for a long time," Weizmann
said, "It's not going to be simple.One day they may have to leave
and let us have the country. They're ten to one, but don't we Jews have
ten times their intelligence?" Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1919
at the Paris peace conference, quoted in Ella Winter, "And Not To
Yield."
The international consensus on Israel (a very small representative
sampling)
"[In the early 1950s] Arab states regularly complained of the reprisals
to the UN Security Council, which routinely rejected Israel's claims of
self-defense...
"In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, and it used aerial
bombardment to destroy entire camps of Palestinian Arab refugees, By these
means Israel killed 20,000 persons, mostly civilians...Israel claimed self-defense
for its invasion, but the lack of PLO attacks into Israel during the previous
year made that claim dubious...The [UN] Security Council demanded 'that
Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to
the internationally recognized boundaries of Lebanon'...
"The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention's
provision that certain violations of humanitarian law are 'grave breaches'
meriting criminal punishment for perpetrators, found a number of Israel's
practices during the uprising [the intifada] to constitute 'war crimes.'
It included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees
and their subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition
of collective punishment on towns, villages and camps; the administrative
detention of thousands of Palestinians; the expulsion of Palestinian citizens;
the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and demolition
of Palestinian houses." John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel:
A Challenge to Justice."
From the 1970s until the 1999 Israeli High Court decision forbidding
torture during interrogation (theoretically), hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were subjected to inhuman treatment in Israeli prisons.
"Israel's two main interrogation agencies in the occupied territories
engage in a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and torture - according
to internationally recognized definitions of the terms...The methods used
in nearly all interrogations are prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged
sight deprivation using blindfolds or tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged
maintenance of body positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal
threats and insults.
"These methods are almost always combined with some of the following
abuses; confinement in tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to temperature
extremes, such as deliberately overcooled rooms, prolonged toilet and hygiene
deprivation; and degrading treatment...Beatings are far more routine in
IDF interrogations than in GSS interrogations. Sixteen of the nineteen
detainees we interviewed [detained between 1992 and 1994] reported having
been assaulted in the interrogation room. Beatings and kicks were directed
at the throat, testicles, and stomach. Some were repeatedly choked; some
had their heads slammed against the walls...
"Israeli interrogations consistently use methods in combination
with one another, over long periods of time. Thus, a detainee in the custody
of the General Security Service (GSS) may spend weeks during which, except
for brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny chair to which he is painfully
shackled; to a stifling, tiny cubicle in which he can barely move; to questioning
sessions in which he is beaten or violently manhandled; and then back to
the chair.
"The intensive, sustained and combined use of these methods inflicts
the severe mental or physical suffering that is central to internationally
accepted definitions of torture. Israel's political leadership cannot claim
ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centers. The
number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic," 1994
Human Rights Watch report, "Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel's Interrogation
of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories."
The use of "force' - continued
"Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial,
most Palestinian detainees arrested for 'terrorist' offenses and tortured
by the Shin Bet (General Security Services) 'have been accused of offenses
such as membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They have
also included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for
raising a flag.' On a related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted
that there wasn't a single recorded case in which the Shin Bet's use of
torture was prompted by a 'ticking bomb' scenario: 'In every instance of
a Palestinian lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified
its use in order to extract a confession about something that had already
happened, not about something that was about to happen.'" Norman
Finkelstein, "The Rise and Fall of Palestine."
The 1997 U.N. Commission Against Torture rules against Israel
"B'Tselem estimates---that the GSS annually interrogates between
1000-1500 Palestinians [as of 1998]. Some eighty-five percent of them -
at least 850 persons a year - are tortured during interrogation...
"The U.N. Committee Against Torture,..reached an unequivocal conclusion:...'The
methods of interrogation [used in Israeli prisons]...are in the Committee's
view breaches of article 16 and also constitute torture as defined in article
1 of the Convention...As a State Party to the Convention Against Torture,
Israel is precluded from raising before this Committee exceptional circumstances'...The
prohibition on torture is, therefore, absolute, and no 'exceptional' circumstances
may justify derogating from it." 1998 Report from B'Teslem, The
Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,
"Routine Torture: Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service."
Some arguments used to justify Zionism
"There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire
for relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when
it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice
to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization
of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates
the need for justification...
[E.g., the inheritance claim] The aim of Zionism is the restoration
of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not
advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It
does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,]
Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine
3,000 years ago!...
[Jewish suffering as justification] It was easy to make the Palestinians
pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the
enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of
the Jews.
They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars.
They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and
defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal
victims for an abstract revenge....
[Anti-semitism as justification] Unlike the situation of Jews
persecuted for being Jews, Israelis are at war with the Arab world because
they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because of their Jewish
identity...
[The law of the jungle justification.] Presenting the world as
naturally unjust, and oppression as nature's way, has always been the first
refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The need to justify
Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli
world view...In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis
have become famous...
[The effect on Israelis] Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse.
It is the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel
be discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews?
This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli
reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis;
it marks everything and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the blood
and marks every moment of existence." Israeli author, Benjamin
Beit-Hallahami, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism
and Israel."
Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine
"Zionism's 'historical right' to Palestine was neither historical
nor a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia
of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement
outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic 'mysticism' of 'blood
and soil' and the Romantic 'cult' of 'death, heroes and graves'... "The
claim of Jewish 'homelessness is founded on a cluster of assumptions that
both negates the liberal idea of citizenship and duplicates the anti-Semitic
one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic nation. In a word, the
Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid as the anti-Semitic case for
an ethnic state that marginalizes Jews." Professor Norman Finkelstein,
"Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict,"
How about the Zionist argument that Jordan already is the Palestinian
state?
"It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier 'territorial
compromise', namely in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised
'national home for the Jewish people,'...a decision that is difficult to
criticize in light of the fact that 'the number of Jews living there permanently
in 1921 has reliably been estimated at two, or according to some authorities,
three persons.'" Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Why doesn't Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East,"
have a constitution?
"The abstention from formulating a constitution was no accident.
The massive expropriation of lands and other properties from those Arabs
who fled the country as a result of the War of Independence and of those
who remained but were declared absent, as well as the confiscation of large
tracts of land from Arab villages who did not flee, and the laws passed
to legalize those acts - all this would have necessarily been declared
unconstitutional, null and void, by the Supreme Court, being expressly
discriminatory against one part of the citizenry, whereas a democratic
constitution obliges the state to treat all of its citizens equally."
Israeli author, Boas Evron, "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"
"The only democracy in the Middle East?" - continued
"The 1989 Israel High Court decision that any political party advocating
full equality between Arab and Jew can be barred from fielding candidates
in an election...[means] that the Israeli state is the state of the Jews...not
their [the Arabs'] state." Professor Norman Finkelstein, "Image
and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."