Gideon Levy (Haaretz) : A war born in Israel's greed for land

[tocqueville]

The real estate war

By Gideon Levy

This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel's greed for land. Not that Israel is fighting this time to conquer more land, not at all, but ending the occupation could have prevented this unnecessary war. If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out.

Peace with Syria would have guaranteed peace with Lebanon and peace with both would have prevented Hezbollah from fortifying on Israel's northern border. Peace with Syria would have also isolated Iran, Israel's true, dangerous enemy, and cut off Hezbollah from one of the two sources of its weapons and funding. It's so simple, and so removed from conventional Israeli thinking, which is subject to brainwashing.

For years, Israel has waged war against the Palestinians with the main motive of insistence on keeping the occupied territories. If not for the settlement enterprise, Israel would have long since retreated from the occupied territories and the struggle's engine would have been significant neutralized. Not that a non-occupying Israel would have turned into the darling of the Arab world, but the destructive fire aimed at Israel would have significantly lessened, and those who continued to fight Israel would have found themselves isolated.

The war against the Palestinians is therefore unequivocally a territorial war, a war for the settlements. In other words, in the West Bank and Gaza, people were killed and are getting killed because of our greed for land. From Golda Meir to Ehud Olmert, the lie has held that the war with the Palestinians is an existential one for survival imposed on Israel when it is actually a war for real estate, one dunam after another, that does not belong to us

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746698.html

[madrchsod]

1. nothing new under the sun

the semite tribes have always fought over land and water. i doubt that they will ever stop.

[orwell]

2. Water...

...maybe even more important than land.

[IntiRaymi]

3. I proposed the water theory to some pro-israel posters, and they scoffed.

They said that it was very easy for Israel to desalinate sea water, and provide for themselves in that manner.
Then I did a bit of googling, and I hit on this:
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/israel/
The Ashkelon Desalination Plant.
"The new Ashkelon seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant - the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world - commenced initial production in August 2005, less than 30 months after construction began. Initially running at around 30% to 40% capacity, it will ultimately provide an annual 100 million m³ of water, roughly 5% to 6% of Israel's total water needs or around 15% of the country's domestic consumer demand."
Infrastructure of this sort if very vulnerable to attack, so it is not a completely viable strategy for correcting the water shortage that Israel undoubtedly suffers from. Additionally, there is the issue of Israel's geopolitical goals, which (I think) are in line with the USA's - to control the flow of oil of the Middle East, in light of the ascendancy of China and India. Israel's job appears to be to modify the balance in the region. Iran is quite powerful.
Therefore, you must ethnically cleanse people from an area. Native people have historically given validity to the most effective guerrilla movements: Hezbollah, Viet Cong, American Revolutionaries, African National Congress, The Maoist armies in China, the Tamils, the armies led by Camilo Cienfuegos in Cuba, etc.
So, to displace the shiite salt of the earth in southern Lebanon, you must do to them what you are doing to the Palestinians further south: Make them miserable, weaken them, crush them, make them die of thirst, etc, etc. And that is what appears to be going on.

[cali]

4. This is an excellent

article by Levy.

[regnaD kciN]

5. Could you imagine...

...what the reaction would be if such sentiments, not unheard of in Israel's own main publications, were to have appeared in a major U.S. newspaper?

Don't bother. It never would have been allowed to appear in a major U.S. newspaper. :eyes:

I think the following passage is of particular interest, since it notes the pattern I've observed after years of watching the Israeli response to surrounding Arab countries:

That's how it works with us. When the other side is quiet, why return territories? And when they do go to war, "there's nobody to talk to," and certainly not while we are "under fire."

[burythehatchet]

6. ...at any cost