analyses the reality behind the rhetoric of the Middle East 'peace process'. FOLLOWING the assassiof Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, many commentators were concerned at the effect on the "peace process'.
Such concem is misplaced. In the first place. Rabin's successor, the former Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. should be regaroco as the true architect of this process, the man who convinced Rabin to tempt a different strategy.
And secondly because, despite the doubts of the extremists who plotted assassination, this process truly serves Israci's interests and confirms the dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people.
Euphoria
Indeed, amongst all the euphoria at the signing in Sep. tember of the second Oslo "Why all the fuss? What has changed?"
For what has been decided is that:
• the Isracli army will withdraw completely from six Palestinian towns. and partially from Hebron:
l the other 450 Palestinian towns 3n0 Villages in the oc cupied territories will be administered by the Palestine Autony, altough the 1sraeli military presence will • 68% of the West Bank will remain entirely under IsThis 68%, which is effectively being annexed to Israci. includes not only the hunarcos of cionist colonies in the West Bank, but the lands which they have stolen from Palestinian cultivators. the rosos walch unk them, dil 'strategic' routes, and the whole of Greater Jerusalem.
Surrounded
The West Bank and Gaza are being cantonised, with ar- cupation. cas under nominal Palestinian rule being surrounded by Is. raeli soldiers and settlers, who will control all access to the Palestinian zones, and com. munications between them.
In the words of Isracli Police Minister Moshe Shahal:
"Arafat was forced to sign in the White House an Agreement which includes Palestinto the conflict. ian acquiescence, de facto and de jure. to the entire network of Jewish settlements in the (occupied] territories. Osto I gave the Palestinians in the interim period everything but the settlements, Oslo I! reversed what had been agreed upon and has kept everything in Israel's hands but the Palestinian cities".
So the agreement does not even begin to resolve most of the issues that led to the Intifada - the continuing misery of the Palestinian refugees languishing in the camps of Well as icon ahoot dan, since the establishment of Israel in 1948; the theft of Palestinian land and other natural resources. for the benefit of the Zionists; the cultural or political prospects for the mass of the Palestinians in the occupied territories: the swaggering racist arro gance of the Isracli settlers. backed up by the army of oc- such an unlikely agreement would simply restore the situ Even an agreement on the lines hoped for by some Is- war of June 1967. racli liberals and Palestinian But the 1967 war was not optimists - complete israeli as accidest. Nice - Seupia he military withdrawal from all rael's regular propaganda of the territories occupied in claims - was it a war of de1967; dismantlement of all Isease in catched Ann rachs settlements: the estab aggression. lishment and recognition of Three weeks before the an independent Palestinian start of the war, Rabin, then state - would not bring an end Israel's Chief of Staff had Except for the replacement "The moment has come of Jordanian rule in the West when we will march on DaBank and Egyptian rule in mascus to overthrow the SyrGaza with rule by the PLO. ian government". Crowds welcome Palestinian police officers to West Bank town of Jenin And after the war, he remarked: "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war". Similar remarks have boen made by President Weizmann, then IsIsrael went to war in 1967 in order to seize Palestinian land and natural resources (particularly water), and in order to destroy the nascent PalLiberation Organisation, which strug gico for ine resum of Paiestnian refugees to the homes from which they had been expelled in 1948.
Zionists of the left as much as the right had seen the 1948 partition of Palestine as a necesary first stage in the occupation of the whole of Palestine.
tinacco, the Likud opposition still officially lays claim to the whole of Jordan as 1967 provided the opportunity for the achievement of long-standing Zionist aspirations.
Ine so-calico peace proc ess" is simply a means of stabilising and policing Israel's continued rule in the occupied territories.