[August 2002 issue of International Socialist Review]

by William James Martin

In 1978, on the occasion of Jimmy Carter's presiding over a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, the only non-Jew to have ever chaired such a meeting, Carter was told by then Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Sharon, that there already was a Palestinian State, that it was Jordan, and that Carter could take for granted that within the next few years there would be 2 to 3 million Jews living in the occupied territories. Sharon added that 'even as we speak, Jewish families are migrating into Judea and Samaria.'

This statement echoes an earlier one of David Ben-Gurion in a 1937 letter to his son he writes

A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish state will serve as a means in our historical effort to redeem the country in its entirety…. We shall organize a modern defense force… and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means… We will expel the Arabs and take their place… with the force at our disposal.

.A few years later Ben-Gurion told a Zionist meeting:

 I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine.

 As the leader of Israel, it is likely that Sharon’s relentless destruction of the Palestinian Authority, the social institutions under Palestinian control, and his persistent subjugation of the Palestinians have less to do with self defense and more to do with the Zionist program of establishing a purely Jewish state in ALL of Palestine.

 On July 8, 2001, Brigadier-General, Shaul Mofaz presented to the Israeli government a document entitled “The Destruction of the Palestinian Forces” in which Israeli would launch an attack intended to smash the Palestinian Authority, force out Yasser Arafat, and kill or detain its security forces. The assault would be timed after the next big suicide bomb attack in Israel that caused widespread deaths and injuries with Israel citing the bloodshed as the justification. the report said “a suicide bomb attack would provide the necessary motive for Israeli troops as well as enabling Israeli ambassadors and other officials to tell concerned countries that military action was a justified response.”

The significance of the suicide bombings inside Israel, of which there have been about 60, is that they are an opportunity for Sharon and the Israel Defense Forces to respond by destroying more of the PA and to confiscate more territory. With every suicide bombing, Sharon can blame Arafat, gain support from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, increase the economic strangle hold of the Palestinians, and destroy more of the underpinnings of a viable Palestinian society, while keeping the focus on Arafat rather than on Israel’s disregard for international law.

 The relentless establishment of settlements in the West Bank and in Gaza have nothing to do with Israeli security. Israel has populated the Palestinian areas occupied in 1967 with about 400,000 mostly fanatical settlers whose presence in the midst of the Palestinian populations enhances Israeli security not one iota. Nor do the 300 miles of bypass highways, on which only Israelis and Jewish settlers can travel, enhance Israeli security. These settlements and bypass highways, which are segregated excluding Palestinians,  partition the West Bank into approximately 200 disjoint segments making travel and commerce between sections virtually impossible for Palestinians. For their construction, they require the confiscation of Palestinian agricultural land and the demolition of Palestinian residences. There have been about 9000 Palestinian homes demolished by the Israelis since the beginning of occupation in 1967.

 Nor did the recent invasion of Palestinian cities and towns have anything to do with self defense. So called , operation Defensive Shield,  featuring the destruction and the theft of documents, computer hard drives, and laptops from the Ministry of Education, with records of over a million students, the Palestinian Cultural Center, the Ministry of Deeds and Records, the International Bank of Palestine, the numerous non-governmental institutions engaged in human rights, in the efforts to promote health care, and environmental protection and water conservation all had a purpose, but it was not self defense. Records of land transaction, years of intellectual effort captured and recorded in files or on computer hard drives all carted away by the Israeli army. The destruction and vandalism of infirmaries, libraries, and nurseries cannot be justified as legitimate self-defense.

 Every aggression on the part of Israel is advertised as “defensive”, but it was not in this case and it has never been in the entire history of Israel’s conflicts.  It was an effort to destroy the basis of a Palestinian society, to erase from memory the Palestinian presence in Palestine, as happened in 1948.

 One should not be fooled by Sharon’s multiple uses of the word “terror” or “terrorists” in his every speech to Israeli and American audiences, nor by his constant effort to link the Sept. 11 attack on the Trade Center and the Pentagon with a parallel threat from Arafat and the Palestinians.

 Sharon knows what he is doing, he always has. He wants to make the statement he made to President Carter into a reality