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The nuclear holocaust party. ...,
2006-08-25 11:44:29
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we get dumber...,
2006-08-27 07:50:44
we read fiction:
Jo-Ann Mort for the American Prospect: "Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party was organized with one political purpose: to manage a unilateral withdrawal of much of the West Bank."
Does no one remember when this was first being bandied about how silly it looked when new settlements were simultaneously announced? Here's the actual Kadima Party plan of action regarding the West Bank:
Determination of Israel’s future borders will be part of a final status agreement and will be based upon the following principles:
- Israel will retain areas that are crucial for its security.
- Israel will retain Jewish holy places that are of central religious and symbolic national importance, in particular a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
- Israel will retain the large Jewish settlement blocs.
And where does "much of" come from? The "withdrawal plan" actually discussed in public by Kadima was to remove 11 of 120 'legal' West Bank settlements, 15,000 of well over 200,000 settlers, that "would not include handing the land back to Palestinians", my emphasis, because that needs to be emphasized. What kind of "withdrawal" are we talking about if Israel intends to retain territorial control over it? "Kadima's plan would be to immediately dismantle isolated settlements where few Jews lived and fold them into the so-called settlement blocs." The 15,000 would just be relocated to live with the other 200,000, and continue exercising ultimate territorial control over the West Bank. And at that nothing immediately happened, then nothing more happened in the mid-term, and nothing has happened yet in the way of immediately removing those 11 settlements.
For a single solitary political goal it sure was abandoned quickly. "Realignment" of the settlements, the very limited plan put on the table, being called "withdrawal" is nonsense, and doing it "unilaterally" is idiotic, it looks like a retreat from militants rather than a political bargain with moderates. Meanwhile they're taking more of the West Bank as we speak:
IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank.
During the reported period, IOF resumed the construction of sections of the Wall near “Shavi Shomron” settlement, northwest of Nablus. IOF completed the construction of a section of the Wall to the east of the aforementioned settlement at the beginning of 2006. “Shavi Shomron” settlement serves as a military base for IOF, from which they conduct incursion into Palestinian communities. On 17
August 2006, IOF handed a military order to a number of Palestinian civilians, confiscating dozens of donums of agricultural land in the west of Far’oun village, south of Tulkarm. The military order was issued on 21 June 2006, which does not allow Palestinian civilians to appeal against it. In addition, a journalist was wounded and 7 demonstrators sustained bruises, when IOF used force against a peaceful demonstration organized in protest to the construction of the Wall in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah.
Here's a settlement in East Jerusalem slated to open next year:
Built amid 10,000 Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem village Jabel Mukhaber, the 395 new housing units of Nof Zion will comprise a Jewish settlement in the heart of the area that every internationally recognized peace plan considers the future capital of a Palestinian state.
395 new units there, 1500 acres there. It's everything anybody can do to suspend new construction on their backyards for a few months, and every little success turns them a little blue.
What doesn't make sense is how this became the fundamental narrative of the Kadima Party's existence in the first place, since no Kadima officials seem to have ever taken the idea seriously enough to put it in the platform. Sharon's intent to "end the tyranny of the Likud Central Committee" sounds a lot more like what the "one political purpose" might have been. Talk about "withdrawal" when what was intended was an extremely limited plan to buffer the ever-expanding settlements was nothing more than a marketing campaign, until now I was wondering who the target audience was. Now, being as Kadima itself has been fairly upfront from the start, who's doing the marketing?
:: posted by buermann @ 2006-08-25 13:08:03 CST |
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