BY
ALI ABUNIMAH, MICHAEL BROWN & NIGEL PARRY
The inclusion in the Israeli government of the racist National Union, which openly calls for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, has received muted coverage in the mainstream media.
The National Union is an alliance of three small parties: Moledet, Tekuma and Yisrael Beitenu. Moledet (which means homeland) openly calls for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by forcing millions of Palestinians out of their homeland, while the National Union's joint platform states that all three parties espouse transfer and population exchange.
On its web site, Moledet states that the party is an ideological political party in Israel that embraces the idea of population transfer as an integral part of [a] comprehensive plan to achieve real peace between the Jews and the Arabs living in the Land of Israel.
The party boasts that Moledet has successfully raised the idea of transfer
in the public discourse and political arena in both Israel and abroad.
The party claims that its policy which fits the international legal definition
of genocide offers a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that
is both practical and moral.
'Evil beasts'
To justify its ethnic-cleansing policy, Moledat leader Benny Elon in an undated article posted on the Moledet web site entitled Breaking the Transfer Taboo, quotes Leviticus from the Bible: And I will give peace in the Land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land and the sword shall not go through your land.
The implication is that Palestinians are a sub-human race who can be mistreated. Moledet believes that the two sides of the Jordan River, comprising the Biblical Land of Israel and Balfour's Palestine, are both rightfully ours, but concedes it is willing to allow the Palestinians' expulsion to the east of the river, in other words to Jordan.
Moledet was founded by former Israeli cabinet minister and general Rehavam Ze'evi, a lifelong advocate of expelling the Palestinians. After his assassination by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ze'evi was elevated into a national hero in Israel; all Israeli schoolchildren were required to study and celebrate his legacy on orders of the Israeli government.
The three National Union parties' combined platform states: Within the framework of any agreement, it is necessary to solve the Palestinian refugee problem refugees who have spent the past 55 years in refugee camps. The proposed solution is transfer by agreement (population exchange) by which the refugees would be settled in Arab countries in place of Jews who emigrated to Israel from these countries.
In addition to millions of Palestinians in surrounding countries, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, and almost two-fifths of Palestinians in the West Bank, are refugees.
The National Union's frank call for expelling the Palestinians by force
or voluntarily by depriving them of rights and jobs fits the legal definition
of genocide contained in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide.
Government of colonisation
The Palestine National Authority (PNA) described the newly formed Israeli government as a government of occupation, colonisation and fundamentalism that seeks to topple the peace process.
PNA minster of culture and information Yasser Abed Rabbo said the new Israeli government, which the Israeli prime minister began forming after his right-wing Likud party's election victory in January, seeks to destroy all signed agreements with the PNA and persist in its war against the Palestinian people.
The new government, comprising far-right hard-line parties, annuls any chance to resuscitate the peace process, Abed Rabbo stressed. adding, This government will not lead to the improvement of the livelihoods of both Palestinians and Israelis.
With the National Union joining Sharon's coalition, the prime minister will control 68 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Sharon has claimed that he will be pursuing US President George Bush's two-state solution, with an independent Palestinians state established on territory occupied by Israeli in 1967.
However, this seems unlikely with the entry of extremist parties into government that not only oppose a Palestinian state of any sort but also oppose Palestinians' very presence in Israel and the occupied territories.
It is obvious from the nature of the parties that the Israeli government will be a government of settlement activities, of military escalation and incursions, Palestinian local government minister Sa'eb Erekat said. The only thing that will be absent is the peace process.
Sharon resorted to a coalition with the National Union and the far-right National Religious Party a champion of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land after the Labor Party refused to join his government. Labor said it could not find common ground with Sharon on dismantling illegal Israeli settlements.
Before they joined Sharon's government, the two parties sent the PM
a letter stating their opposition to the formation of a Palestinian state.
The National Union also won a promise from Sharon that he would not move
ahead with any peace deal without prior government agreement.
Ethnic cleansing in Hebron
Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces are continuing their military assault against the 300,000 residents of Hebron city, which has been completely sealed off and put under curfew since March 10 in revenge for the killing of an Israeli soldier and the wounding of four others.
Israeli bulldozers destroyed agricultural land in Diar al Mahawer, near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, residents said. Olive and almond trees, as well as grapevines, were uprooted. Armed Israeli settlers also occupied a house in the area belonging to citizen Mohammad Dana.
According to Dana, the settlers forced their way into the house at gunpoint, beating all 16 family members and forcing them to flee their home in fear for their lives.
Eyewitnesses also said that Israeli bulldozers demolished three houses in three locations in Hebron and raided dozens others. At least nine citizens were detained, they added. The Israeli occupation army said Palestinian fighters used one building as cover after shooting at the Israeli patrol.
However, citizens disputed the Israeli account, accusing the Israeli occupation army of using the incident as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing against the city's residents. Suppose a fighter passed by the building, does that justify destroying it in the middle of the night and throwing dozens of sleeping men, women and children onto the street, said Hasan Jaber.
Last November, the Israeli occupation army destroyed several civilians' houses following an ambush in which 12 Israeli soldiers, border police and armed settlement security guards were killed.
After that attack, Sharon toured the site and announced that the government would occupy part of Hebron to create a passage connecting the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs or al Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron's old city.
Some 400 armed Israeli settlers have already taken over much of the old city of Hebron, forcing Palestinian residents out. They live in the middle of a city of some 300,000 Palestinians, heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers.
Abdel Hadi Hantash, an expert in settler activities in Hebron and a member of the Committee for Land Defence, said: These activities, performed in the name of 'security', are part of an Israeli plan to evacuate the areas of Palestinians, pushing them into isolated cantons, so that Israelis can gain full control of the area. The problem is that the world is not paying sufficient attention to what is happening here.
People keep warning against the 'threat' of 'transfer' especially in the context of a possible war against Iraq, said Renad Qubaj, coordinator of the Palestinian Network of NGOs. But transfer is not a threat; it is a reality currently taking place in pockets all over the West Bank.
[Abridged from reports by the Electronic Intifada and the Palestine Media Centre.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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