So long as America continues to support and reward Israel's expansionism, the world is going to become an increasingly dangerous place. America's stance makes a lie of everything it says it stands for, from weapons of mass destruction to championing freedom. It is contrary to both justice and international law.
At the core of the problem is Israel's dispossession of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are being driven out of their homeland as surely and relentlessly as the Europeans dispossessed the American Indian and the Australian Aborigine. America officially opposes illegal Jewish settlements on occupied land, but hasn't the slightest intention of holding Israel to account. It is a fundamental principle of international law that no country may annex and colonize land belonging to another country. That was the whole justification for the first war with Iraq.
For decades America has joined with the rest of the world in demanding an end to the illegal settlements. Israel not only failed to curtail the settlements, it expanded them again and again. America did not simply stand by. It continued to pump billions of dollars in military aid into Israel. Now President Bush says it would be unrealistic to expect Israel to return to its legal borders. He gave his unofficial endorsement to the Sharon plan, which would make half of the West Bank permanently part of Israel.
If America, Britain and the other world powers wanted to create a Jewish homeland they should have offered land which they owned. Palestine wasn't theirs to give, and everything that has happened since flows from that.
I'm not saying the clock can be turned back. Every Jewish child born in Palestine has as much right to be there as a Palestinian child. They are as much innocent victims of their parents' crimes as the Palestinians are. But the continuing land theft has to stop and some restitution has to be made. The starting point for any lasting peace has to be Israel's acceptance of its 1967 borders. That does not mean that all Jewish settlements on the West Bank have to be abandoned. But those that choose to stay must become citizens of Palestine. The Palestinians have a right to self-determination and they are entitled to a real state, not some captive Bantustan.
Nor do I support random acts of violence against non-military targets. There are other options for resistance, all of which would be unnecessary if America withdrew its support for the continuing outrages inflicted on the Palestinian people. As long as the US continues to defend the indefensible, there will be no shortage of fanatics wishing to inflict harm upon America and its people. Israel's latest excursion into Lebanon will spawn a whole new generation of suicide bombers and Muslim fanatics.
American foreign policy should be made in Washington, not Tel Aviv. In one fell swoop Israel shot to pieces America's attempts to convince the Arab world that it had their best interests at heart. Those were American bombs falling on Lebanon, paid for by the American taxpayer. The Arab world knows it. The Muslim world knows it. The American public doesn't. And nothing infuriates the Arab world more than America's refusal to listen.
Israel has no intention of negotiating peace, or abiding by a single concession, so long as it has a blank check from America.
