Monday, May 3, 2010

Something else I've been thinking about...

The very day Joe Biden proclaimed U.S. support for Israel, the Israeli government announced the planned construction of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank (which goes against every joint report the U.N. has filed on the matter - good thing the Israeli's have the U.S. security council veto in their pocket).  If these settlements are to be built on land that was, before the 6-day war, Palestinian land, what has to happen first? Clearly the houses that are already there (the ones that, according to Israel do not have the proper zoned building permits - because they were built before Israel came up with that law) will be demolished.

Israel knows that if a two state solution ever happens (which it probably won't - not while the U.S. is stacking the deck in Israel's favor) the borders will be drawn based on who's actually living where.  So their strategy is to knock down Palestinian houses and put up their own as quickly as possible in order to "legitimize," in some bastardized sense, their claims to the land. The zoning laws and Israeli-only highways that divide the West Bank into segments are also part of this strategy.  It's a basic geopolitical strategy and the main reason it works is because the U.S. media reports it in a way that favors Israel.  Calling the illegal settlements "neighborhoods" evokes a totally different feel than "occupied territory" does. It's the same reason U.S. media reports of violence are always "Israeli retaliation" and never "aggression."

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