Countdown

A Curious Double Standard

Vol. VIII, No. 21
Posted on Tuesday August 14, 2007

Six months ago, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israeli Defense Forces issued an order that declared any unauthorized construction in the West Bank a criminal offense. The order had been issued as a result of an investigation by Talia Sasson, a former state prosecutor, which revealed that Israeli state bodies had been secretly diverting millions of dollars to build unauthorized, illegal outposts in the West Bank.

This week, the order was revoked following complaints from a group of attorneys known as the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, who advocate for settlers’ rights. According to an August 13 article in Haaretz, the Defense Ministry revoked the order because the attorneys claimed it “violated the basic civil rights of the West Bank settlers.” One wonders how the Israeli government rules it legal for its citizens to build on occupied land without any authorization, when Palestinians under Israeli occupation are forced to obtain an Israeli permit to build on their own land.

A Prophetic Warning on Iraq – From Dick Cheney

An ironically interesting video has been making its way around the net, in which Vice President Dick Cheney makes the case against going into Baghdad in the wake of the first Gulf War. In a 1994 interview on CNN, Cheney noted, “If we’d gone on to Baghdad we would have been all alone…it would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. ...Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took out Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put into its place? ... It’s a quagmire if you go that far…”

We know why Cheney didn’t listen to any of the cautionary voices in the intelligence community in the run-up to war. What we didn’t know is he had been one of them.

“The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam”

This is the title of an article appearing in the August 16 edition of the London Review of Books, written by Henry Siegman. In declarative prose that is unusual in this subject area for its absolute clarity, Siegman declares that the Israeli political leadership “will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control over the West Bank.” The evacuation of Gaza, in this context, “was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans.” It is important to note that Siegman, as the long-time head of the American Jewish Congress, is in a position to make these statements and require attention to them, and not have them be dismissed the words of an anti-Semite or even a self-hating Jew.

Appearing with a companion piece on the Palestinians by Rashid Khalidi, it seems that President Bush’s intention to revitalize the peace process may have spurred efforts to bear even greater fruit than his own limited initiatives could achieve – as Siegman’s policy recommendations show.