semitism.net

Amira Hass broke a big story today in Haaretz. While the international community is focused on what to do about Hamas’s electoral victory, Israel has quietly sealed off the Jordan Valley - an area comprising the entire eastern third of the West Bank. According to Hass, the military issued orders in March of 2005, prohibiting entry to the area to anyone but registered residents of the towns there and Palestinians employed in the settlements. Since then, Israel has built permanent checkpoints on the main roads to block access and the IDF is conducting nightime raids to drive unregistered Palestinians out of the restricted area. Israel has nearly completed the strategic plan for annexation of the West Bank that Yigal Allon set forth thirty-five years ago…

This picture of such a large Palestinian area being absolutely cut off from the rest of the West Bank has emerged from tours and talks Haaretz has conducted in the area over a period of a number of weeks, from testimonies gathered by the B’Tselem human rights organization and reports from officials from the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs…

The prohibition… applies to thousands of residents of towns and villages in the northern West Bank, like Tubas and Tamun, most of whose lands are in the Jordan Valley, and some with residents who have been living there for many years. The residents of the Jordan Valley villages are tied to the northern West Bank villages through family connections, joint land ownership, work, school, and medical and social services.

Also affected by the ban are people who for years have earned a living by doing seasonal agricultural work for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, as well as an unknown number (several thousand apparently) of Bedouin and sheep-herders who live in the area permanently in tents and makeshift structures, but are registered as residents of towns and villages a few kilometers to the east.

When I was in the West Bank a year ago, the Palestinians were talking about Israel’s plan to cantonize the territory. They had maps showing the Jordan Valley annexed by Israel, and the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement block protruding from Jerusalem’s eastern border to bisect the West Bank into two disconnected areas. Israel was already routinely interfering with north-south transit via roadblocks and checkpoint restrictions.

The Palestinians felt the idea was to break down the unity of Palestinian society - cause social disintegration. And, of course, to take more land. Israel has denied this vigorously.

Sure enough, after Hass broke the story, Prime Minister Olmert admitted that the annexation of the Jordan Valley was part of Israel’s plan to establish permanent borders. BBC News reports:

Israel’s next government will aim to fix the country’s final borders, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.

Mr Olmert, who will lead the Kadima party into national elections on 28 March, said the move would be the “first objective” of a new government.

Correspondents say his remarks signal an intention to stage unilateral pullouts from parts of the West Bank.

Mr Olmert has already said that Israel needs to give up some land to ensure a Jewish majority within its borders…

Mr Olmert has said that Israel should keep the Jordan Valley, as well as East Jerusalem and major settlement blocks, as part of a final settlement.

See also the revealing February 7 article in the conservative Jerusalem Report. It argues convincingly that the architects of Israel’s security plan - Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon - had intended all along to annex the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, leaving the scattered pockets of high Palestinian population density cut off from each other and from the outside world. Israel has denied this for decades, insisting that it comes to the Palestinians with an open hand, seeking peace, and is met with violence and hatred in return.

It was Israel’s deputy prime minister, Yigal Allon, who first proposed to the Israeli cabinet just after the Six-Day War on July 26, 1967, that Israel retain new defensible borders based primarily on control of the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge down to the bottom of the Jordan Valley, as well as the Judean Desert that was adjacent to the Dead Sea…

n 1972, Allon explained that this security zone, amounting to approximately one-third of the West Bank, needed to be placed under Israeli sovereignty. Israel paved a north-south road in the West Bank known as the Allon Road, just above the Jordan Valley, that roughly marked the western border of the “Allon Plan” region…

n 2005, Eitan Haber, who was Rabin’s chief of staff and speechwriter, confirmed that Rabin sought to retain well above a third of the West Bank. According to Haber, Rabin said the Palestinians would receive 50 percent or maybe, at the most, 60 to 70 percent of the West Bank. Journalist Akiva Eldar, who spoke with Haber, adds that he was “absolutely convinced that Rabin was not prepared to hear of territorial concessions on a scale of 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank, as was proposed in American president Bill Clinton’s outline, which prime minister Ehud Barak presented to the Israeli cabinet for approval in late 2000.” In short, Rabin wanted to hold on to the Jordan Valley…

Some American publications have misinterpreted Sharon’s ultimate map of withdrawal in the West Bank, asserting that he planned to pull back to the line of the security fence or even to the line that President Clinton had proposed in 2000. But all evidence indicates that Sharon was determined to retain the Jordan Valley and many other vital areas beyond the security fence. Indeed, one Sharon advisor recently admitted: “Sharon repeatedly stressed the importance of the Jordan Valley to Israeli security.” Finally, on February 6, 2006, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, whose ministry was responsible for designing the route of the security fence under Sharon, declared his view that the Jordan Valley would ultimately be incorporated into Israel.

In fact, Olmert said explicitly last week that Israel’s borders would extend far beyond the route that the Israeli supreme court has allowed for the separation wall:

Even though we’re talking about a security fence, my instructions are that Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim remain an inseparable part of the State of Israel.

Also last week, Peace Now released its annual settlement report. In 2005, 9,000 settlers were evacuated from Gaza and 12,000 new settlers moved into the West Bank, most of them in and around Ma’ale Adumim. From Haaretz:

According to the report, the Jewish population in the territories continues to increase at an average annual rate of 5.5 percent - compared to a 1.8 percent growth rate for the overall Israeli population.

The government also continues to pave new bypass roads throughout the West Bank.

“The Za’atara bypass road is apparently the largest infrastructure project being carried out by the State of Israel in the West Bank today,” the report said. The road connects southeast Jerusalem with the isolated settlement of Nokdim.

In the first six months of 2005, construction began on 1,097 housing units compared to just 860 during the first half of 2004.

This all puts Hamas’s militancy into a different perspective, doesn’t it? Invading and annexing land that belongs to another people is generally considered an act of beligerancy. Why, exactly, should the Palestinians lay down their arms and make peace with a country that intends to take half their remaining territory and lock them into isolated reservations with no natural resources and no international borders?

We have gotten this far by force and falsehood, by ignoring the rights of generations of Palestinians, by denying them freedom and self-determination and confining them in a police state while stealing their land bit by bit. So let me ask you this: what the hell is the use of a Jewish majority if it is obtained by violating every principle of justice and humanity that Judaism might possibly stand for?