Betrayal: The "Peace Process" Moves On Forked Roads

Bridgethought of the Day: Native Americans used to say of the Europeans when they invaded their lands, "White man speaks with forked tongue." Now when Israel moves into Palestinian lands, they follow a forked road: one for propaganda purposes, the other for their own purposes which do not involve giving the Palestinians their own "contiguous" state, let alone a "right of return".

That kind of "peace process" is a roadmap to nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere. It's a roadmap to disaster. Hello, genocide. Hello, oppression. Hello, war without end. Goodbye, compromise. Welcome to Mideast Security Hell.

Now we have former President Jimmy Carter taking the undeniably brave stand of telling it like it is vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians. He said to Amy Goodman regarding his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,

“The word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate. This is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated. Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers. So within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.”
Carter lays much of the blame for the lack of momentum toward a solution on the absence of debate in the U.S.: “It’s a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land. I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good-faith peace talks.”

That's nothing new, either. This is the policy of the United States since Israel was formed. The difference being that after so many years, the obvious apartheid and oppression have only increased, not mitigated. The Israelis are acting like the National Socialists who once oppressed them, not at all like people with a "higher moral authority" driving their actions. Oppression is nasty. Oppression is bad. It's evil. It's wrong. Face it.

There is no motivation for Israel to shape up, either. The Palestinians have very weak and inappropriate "supporters" indeed in the Arabs. The totalitarian dictatorships that make up Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and previously Iraq - now replaced by a Disaster Area in Explosive Phase One - were perfectly content to buy off Yasser Arafat with bucks which he fed to his cronies, wife, and God only knows what else, but certainly did no good to the Palestinian people.

The money and oil such governments have are, in their view, nothing more than pocket money to spend on personal luxuries and pet fantasies. Like the fantasy of Prince Bandar who loves to promote himself as a "friend to Presidents" and a power-broker in the superpower game of chess, wherein Palestinians are mere pawns.

Meanwhile, Israel is secretly implementing another plan to divide Palestinian territory into little pieces of a land-locked archepelago joined by roads over which they have no control. Who cares? Palestinians are a topic that's verboten here. No politician in his right mind will touch it. They are supposedly "untouchables". And so here are the results:

(Source: http://www.btselem.org/English/)
When the Roadmap to Peace has to be paved by Palestinian bodies - men, women and children - what kind of peace, really, is at the end of that supposed Road? Since when was peace or democracy achieved by force, at gunpoint? When did ethnic cleansing become acceptable international policy? Obviously, the U.S. govt. is cool with it. But it never did, and never will, achieve any kind of peace. And peace and security are 2 sides of the same coin. Security doesn't mean war, guns & checkpoints. It means trust.

Try building trust at the end of a gunbarrel. Or a bulldozer. Or try depriving families of water, electricity and food. That ought to create a lot of trust.

There really is no roadmap to peace right now. What they're talking about is a forked road: one road to Israel, and the other road to a junkyard of flammable, volatile human debris. But that's just talk. In truth, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians want hatred, distrust, and failure. So why do the power-brokers, the Israelis with their Superpower pals, keep traveling in that direction?