Pacification Re: Conference on Racism:Jewish Caucus Statement

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie:
>
>>The "peace process" was neither just nor even expedient for the Palestinians
>>and for that matter Israelis. Oppressing another people imposes costs on
>>those who are made to do the dirty work of repression, first of all
>>military duties -- no piece of cake.  More and more Israelis as well as
>>Americans, I hope, will reject the high costs of maintaining occupation.
>
>The peace process is a process, and not an event. There is a state of war,
>and there are attempts to end that state of war through the establishment of
>peace. There is no alternative to continued, fruitless and destructive
>sectarian violence in Israel and Palestine but a peace process. Israeli Jews
>will not be driven into the sea, and Palestinians will not disappear into
>surrounding Arab states, no matter what irredentists of every stripe insist.
>
>Leo Casey

The "peace process" has not brought "a positive peace which is the 
presence of justice" but instead led to a new phase of pacification.

*****   7 February 2001
Israel elects Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon, whose 28 September 2000 incursion into Al Aqsa 
sanctuary accompanied by at least 1,000 armed soldiers and police 
officers triggered the outbreak of the current crisis that has so far 
led to the death of hundreds of Palestinians and the wounding of up 
to 12,000 others, has been elected Prime Minister of Israel by an 
overwhelming majority. Addressing his supporters, Sharon said: "The 
country has embarked on a new path, a path of peace and unity at 
home, and a striving for true peace with the Arabs." He called on the 
Labor party to join his government "in a true partnership for 
security and peace."

Sharon's call for 'peace' may seem ironic, since he is described by 
many as a brutal warmonger responsible for the deaths of tens of 
thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. It is worth noting 
that his so-called "Pacification of Gaza" campaign in 1971 involved 
merciless repression and brutality, bulldozing thousands of 
Palestinian homes in the Gaza refugee camps and the arrest and 
deportation of several thousand Palestinians into the Sinai Desert, 
Jordan or Lebanon. As Defence Minister in 1982, Sharon was the 
principle architect of the "Peace for the Galilee" operation - the 
invasion of Lebanon, which caused the death of tens of thousands of 
civilians and left about a million homeless....

<http://www.lawsociety.org/Press/Preleases/2001/February/sharon.html>   *****

Why the necessity of pacification?  You might ask Amira Hass, among others.

Yoshie