In another sign of how Israel has been entrenching the settlements while paying lip-service to a peace process, the Israeli media revealed that 24 major infrastructure projects had been approved for the West Bank. They include more than $57 million for new settler roads and the first planned train service linking the settlements to Israel.
Israeli dispossession policies are not limited to the occupied territories. Foreign minister Avigodor Lieberman's plan to redraw the borders to strip part of Israel's large Palestinian minority of its citizenship received a major fillip last month. For the first time government lawyers rejected the opinion of international law experts and gave their blessing to what the liberal Haaretz daily called Lieberman's program of "ethnic cleansing" of its own citizens.
If negotiations collapse, it should be clear that, while both sides were supposed to be talking, one side -- Israel -- was vigorously and unilaterally acting to further its goals.
It now seems the Palestinian leadership will respond in kind, by pushing their bid for statehood at the UN. Israel has already threatened "punitive measures," meaning things are likely to turn yet uglier. But the era of wishful thinking may finally be coming to an end -- and that will be progress in itself.
A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
