The strong prevail – the rest submit
The so called ‘peace plan’ now made public from the White House is no peace plan at all. There has been no attempt to camouflage its support for Israel’s most ambitious, expansionist plans. It lauds Israel and blames Palestine for aggression, indeed making it
clear than any part of the plan that accedes anything to Palestine will be contingent upon Israel judging that Palestine is compliant and servile. In other words there is no guarantee that even the crumbs on offer to Palestine would ever be delivered. It is improbable that a Palestinian State would ever be granted, even under these Swiss cheese conditions. It is a plan for Israel to take as much of the West Bank that it can with as few Palestinian residents as possible. It is, as many commentators have said, a plan for permanently entrenched apartheid.
The Australian government has ‘welcomed’ the plan. What was in its head in doing so?
It is inconceivable that Australia, which fought so hard for the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, would now endorse apartheid in Palestine/Israel.
Let me try for a moment to put the best (if it is possible) interpretation on this unfortunate
message. Clearly the prevailing situation, which enables Israel to incrementally take over the West Bank in a thousand cuts, is unacceptable, cruel, humiliating, a source of continuing violence and the cause of on-going security problems. This status quo, enabling Israeli aggression and colonisation has prevailed for far too long. Every year less and less Palestinian land remains while more and more Palestinians are imprisoned for objecting to this outrage. Hope is progressively snuffed out.
So, what is the alternative?
There must be a circuit breaker. Perhaps the best light that can
be put on the government’s response is not that it is welcoming the details of
the plan, for any government interested in peace and justice could not welcome
them, but what is being welcomed is an intervention which calls for a different
way forward.
The problem is that the way forward being offered is totally unacceptable, it is known to be
unacceptable, Netanyahu and Gantz are almost certainly relying on it being
rejected by Palestinian authorities, in order that they can continue their slow
strangulation of the Palestinian people and in the process claim they offered a
way forward which was rejected.
So what can be put on the table?
Palestinians and Israelis have one unpleasant reality in common, they are both badly let down by their political leaders: the racist, extreme right-wing government in Israel
and the fractured and in-effective Palestinian Authority in Palestine. These politicians serve their own political interests and power rather than the peaceful future of their people.
It is my contention that if an independent, non-political, anonymous, poll was taken about the future of this much torn corner of the planet, a considerable majority of
Palestinians and a not insignificant minority of Israelis would vote for one
state with equal rights for all. Any sane person should agree that this is the most desirable outcome for all, given facts that now prevail on the ground. The problem with such a plan is that it faces hurdles that are as high externally as they are internally. The external hurdle is the rise and rise of dangerous nationalism that threatens the peace of the world. This nationalism crosses all political, religious, and ethnic boundaries. Its frightening face is Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Janos Ader, Jair Bolsonaro, Xi Jinping, Mohammad Bin Salman, Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin etc. all of whom interfere in one way or another, on either side of the Israel/Palestine impasse. Palestine is the pawn of other’s agendas as well as Israel’s ambition. Even more insidiously, the Christian evangelical right of the US to which audience Trump constantly plays, is
opposed to such a plan, willing the dominance of a Jewish theocracy that simply
does not exist.
What needs to be agreed by the free world is that when human rights prevail, when justice is given prominent place, when diversity is seen as strength not weakness, then
peace will prevail, and prosperity will replace conflict.
As a first step the Palestinian community, on their own, or with the help of Jordan, (Jordan has as much right as the US to put forward a ‘peace plan’) should put forward a version of such a bold plan, or another plan which the international community can support, as a counter to the Trump takes over proposal.
This could include:
- Equal rights under law for all residents Freedom of religious practice;
- Freedom of movement;
- Equal and complimentary rights of cultural expression;
- Equal rights of return;
- Equal value at the ballot box;
- Re naming of the country as Israel/Palestine or some equivalent;
- Demolition of separation walls.
If such a plan were to be presented by the Palestinians then it should be welcomed by the Australian government in the same way, in the same spirit, and for the same reason that the present plan has been welcomed – but more honestly and vigorously.
What cannot be allowed to happen is for the current status quo to roll on year after year, decade after decade, for this will simply corral Palestinians in Bantustans and cement
Israel’s place as a pariah state. This fate is as serous for Israel as it is for Palestine.
In the meantime the most able young Palestinians and Israelis should be given the fullest possible exposure to each other and to their peers in the global community. Restrictions should be lifted for travel, and opportunity given, especially to the most able young on the Gaza strip, for overseas education and opportunity.
People who have been exposed to and communed with those who had previously been thought of as foes, can never turn back. What had been assumed to be true is proved to be false through dialogue and friendship.
The current and prospective leadership of Israel, who have stated there will never be a
Palestinian state on their watch, will never agree to such a proposal, but that
is not a reason for withholding it.
The Trump proposal is shameless. Israel must choose. It must either choose a magnanimous future with Palestinians as equal partners in a prosperous and harmonious future, or it will have chosen a path that necessitates its children and their children
maintaining an apartheid regime by military might in perpetuity. Not to choose is always to choose.
George Browning is a retired Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn
George Browning was Anglican Bishop of Canberra Goulburn 1993 – 2008. He was President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network 2013 – 2022. He is now its Patron. He is also Patron of Palestinian Christians in Australia, and of the Palestinian ecumenical liberation theology centre -Sabeel.
Comments
One response to “GEORGE BROWNING. Trump’s definition of peace in Israel”
George Browning,
Ref: your last paragraph.
Israel must choose.
But it has chosen. It decided almost 70 years ago on the very path that we have all witnessed and are witnessing today. They knew after 1967 and their criminal attack on the USS Liberty that given time, the US was able to be totally controlled and there has hardly been an Israel leader who hasn’t said so publicly, arrogantly and without contradiction from anyone in the USA. Not one. “We own America”
These Israeli leaders have all been quoted so many times, there is no point in listing them again. No one questions it.
In the 1960’s, JFK was a stumbling block for their entry into their required world of nuclear weapons. Not for long. Then along came Johnson, more Jewish by choice than anyone before or since in his capitulation to the needs of Israel. He was sickening. From then on it has been an easy ride to the gradual control of US government, US political decisions, US military support, US aid and funding. At the same time Israelis upped their invites for anyone influential to Israel and the holocaust events, for almost all countries, penetrated academic institutions by stealth, and developed their successful but now tiresome “anti-Semitism” campaigns with the help of their new and controlled political friends and the rest is what you see in the US today,. This is mirrored in a much less noticeable way in our little country with a Governor-General flying off this month to yet another holocaust show in Israel.
They call in their dues when the time is right, across the world. Give it good newspaper coverage too.
Since then, through media ownership and control, almost all the networks, media corporations, film studios, banks and other finance institutions were gradually owned and controlled by Israel through local US “ownership”. Every politician grovelled to be seen at the AIJAC events to show their subservience to Israel and Netanyahu, a PM now being seen in his own country for what he really is, but the only person in US history to enjoy 28 standing ovations (in 47 minutes) in the joint houses of US government.
Is that control? And how. How can Americans refute the facts?
So, that must change to see any change in what is happening on the ground in Palestine. An enquiry into Israel and its corruption in the US is what is needed. But that will never happen.
But it is not just Palestine as you would know. It is almost all the middle eastern countries that Israel has on its list of “Eretz Israel” and with the criminal USA, capable of electing leaders like Trump, there is nothing to stop them. You would be well aware of the United Nations when the majority of members were able to bring influence to bear on South Africa and its apartheid state. Has it ever even been mentioned about Israel’s apartheid state? Never to my knowledge.
Years ago Israel set about analysing what it needed to do to win this battle for “Eretz Israel”, the expansion into almost all their neighbours and the ownership of land ‘from the Euphrates to the Nile. They set about understanding the western character, strengths and weaknesses and capitalised on the weaknesses. Just look at the US Congress and the Senate today and their outspoken voices for Israel, every single day.
So the US/Israel plan for Palestine. What is it?
A charade. Was never meant to be anything else.