I finally listened/watched the debate.
For the sake of saying...If it were up to me personally right now (which I know it isn't), and I was to get what I wanted (which I am old enough to know not to expect anytime soon), we would have a non-national (as opposed to binational) secular socialist democratic state in all of Palestine.
And I WAS somewhat saddened by Chomsky's backing of the Geneva Accord. In the Geneva Accord, there is clause which states that there will be a "border between the states of Palestine and Israel [which] shall be based on the June 4, 1967 lines with reciprocal modification on a 1:1 basis"(Israel would get all the major settlements in East Jerusalem and upper West Bank, and the Palestinians would get some territory added to the east of Gaza and west of Hebron, all in the northen Negev, for a map: http://www.btvshalom.org/geneva/map.html). Yet, closer examination done by me (when the document was first published) shows that the territories that are to be annexed to Israel are 162,899 dunam, and the territories to be annexed to Palestine are 148,051 dunam, so the argument that the Accord enacts a 1:1 modification of borders is not genuine and actually the 'exchange' favors Israel (surprise surprise). Now, if I calculated correctly, this is 5.2 sq. miles of difference between the two, but the important thing is which 5.2 sq. miles this is, not all territory is equal. Again, to emphasize, Israel gets all the E. Jerusalem settlements, while Palestine gets some sub-fertile land in the upper Negev.
Besides this issue are the perhaps even more problematic aspects of Israeli use of Palestinian airspace, longterm Israeli control over all border crossings, Israeli medium term control over the Jordan Valley (the whole eastern border of the West Bank), Israel may maintain two "Early Warning Stations" in the northern, and central West Bank, which "shall be subject to review in ten years, with any changes to be mutually agreed. Thereafter, there will be five-yearly reviews whereby the arrangements set forth in this Article may be extended by mutual consent"
OK, enough about problems with the Geneva Accord, according to Sharon, there will be a permanant control over the Jordan Valley by Israel, making the sitution similar to this map: http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/images/map_big_eng.gif
or this:
http://www.mediamonitors.net/images/barak3.jpg
* One state, two states, binational, secular democratic, nonnational state, or no states, what we should be expecting and demanding, inter alia, is an immediate end to the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, implementation of all the pertinant UN resolutions, adherence to international law and human rights, formal acceptance of Israel's responsibility for the Nakba and the Paletinian Right of Return, with practical implementation to be negotiated (and from my discussions with some of the individuals in these negotiations, this is definitely doable), and the formal and practical implementation of equal rights for all citizens of the State of Israel, including and especially the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the same goes for the future state of Palestine for that matter, if that will be the case.
I stated that there needs to be and end to the military occupation of Gaza because it isn't over...at the AIC conference this weekend, a professor at Birzeit stated that the EU monitors who have been stationed at the Rafah/Sinai crossing, merely take the Palestinian IDs, register them into a computer, which then goes to Israeli authorities, who then either accept or reject the authorization, and then the EU monitors follow whatever comes up in the comptuer (authorization or rejection of the ability of the Palestinian to cross over the border from Gaza to Egypt), so the EU Monitors have merely become proxy actors for the Israelis. In practice, little has changed)
*But it is obvious to me that Chomsky is using the Geneva Accord as an arguing point, not as his vision, he is saying that even this two state solution has been rejected by Israel and the US...knowing Chomsky's long years of writing on the situation here, I am sure that any vision Chomsky has would adhere to what I say above are the immediate and essential demands that we need to promote. The original article that started this discussion, accusing Chomsky of promoting a KKK agenda, is ridiculous.
A couple other points:
*Dershowitz's maps are completely off base...they don't even include an important element that was part of all the proposed final status agreements, which I mentioned above, Israeli control over the Jordan Valley...
*Dershowitz calling Peres "A Man of Peace,"...what a joke...the only thing Peres is, is a Man of Piece of Shit.... (to be vulgar)
*Whenever anyone talks about final borders "based on" the 1967 borders, we need to emphasize what everyone who has been actively fighting against the Segregation Wall all this time have known since the begginning, and which Tzipi Livni, Israel's Justice Minister has now finally stated publically at the end of November, that the "separation fence"(as it is called in Hebrew) will serve as "the future border of the state of Israel" and that, "the High Court of Justice, in its rulings over the fence, is drawing the country's borders."
Livni's statement contradict the ruling of the Israel Supreme Court, which has stated:
“We accept that the military commander cannot order the construction of the separation fence if his reasons are political. The separation fence cannot be motivated by a desire to ‘annex’ territories to the State of Israel. [...]
Indeed, the military commander of territory held in belligerent occupation must balance between the needs of the army on one hand, and the needs of the local inhabitants on the other. In the framework of this delicate balance, there is no room for an additional system of considerations, whether they be political considerations, the annexation of territory, or the establishment of the permanent borders of the state [...]” (HCJ 2056/04, Par. 27).
Recently, this argument of the Court has been weakened when it did admit that, at least in regard to the ever expanding borders of Jerusalem (which Israel mantains it has sovereignty over), not only security issues are relavant. For more about this issue, see my Letter from the Editors from the June issue of News from Within: http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&Itemid=70&limit=1&limitstart=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
Moreover, Livni's recent statement has severely undercut what has been the Israeli state prosecution's (who serves under Livni) argument everytime that petitions against the Wall are heard in cout. The state prosecutor has repeatedly stated in court that the Wall is a temporary measure, and emphasized that it is a "security fence" rather than a "political fence." The state advocate has repeatedly stated that, "Just as the fence has been built, so it can be taken down or moved."
Now, thanks to Livni, we know that even the Israeli Justice Ministry admits that this is not the case in reality.
*When Dershowitz says that it was racist of Chomsky to call the settler roads cutting up the Occupied West Bank, "Jewish roads," Dershowitz was arguing de jure and ignoring the practical reality. The settlements in the WB are Jewish only (I hope Dershowitz isn't going to argue against this), and the roads are specifically designed to serve the settlers, the settlement infrastructure, and the military's defense of the settler population. While Palesitnian citizens of Israel can use these roads, it is illegal for green licenced (vehichles registered under the Palestinian Authority) vehichles (meaning the large majority of Palestinian vehichles in the West Bank, to use these roads...and if you are not a Jew, you risk being stopped, harrassed, delayed, etc. at the many permanant and mobile military checkpoints. Case and point when I returned from a conference in Bethlehem this Saturday evening, our bus, driven by a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was made to take the inspection route at the El Khader checkpoint (if you look nice and "Israeli"...meaning Jewish, you are waved through by the soldier, if you look Palestinian, you are often made to go to the inspection line, to the right). There, with one soldier keeping an M-16 pointed straight at us with finger on the trigger (all the while using the other hand to talk on his celluar phone to a friend), the other soldier makes us roll down the window, and show our ID. When the soldier saw that we were mostly jewish "Shalom, Erev Tov," etc., he waved us through immediately. But I have been other times with Palestinian taxis with other Palestinian passengers and only me the Israeli, at that same checkpoint. During these times, everyone is made to get out of the car, everyone's ID is taken by the soldiers and called in to 'headquarters' to check out, and I am asked questions about where I was (to sniff out whether, being an Israeli which makes it technically illegal, I was in PA controlled territory), and then what the hell I am doing in a Palestinian taxi, like I am some traitor or freakshow, by this mere fact. Sometimes, in these cases, the soldiers hold one, two or all the other passengers back while waving me, whoever is left, and the driver through. So, call them what you will, but in practice, they are Jewish only, segregation roads.
-- Bryan Atinsky Editor, News from Within e-mail: bryan at alt-info.org Tel: (972)2-624-1159 P.O. Box 31417, Jerusalem 91313 http://www.newsfromwithin.org http://www.alternativenews.org
