Don't Be Distracted by One-State/Two-State 'Debate' on Israel -- Something Much More Nefarious Is Going on
Noam Chomsky: Two-State 'Debate' on Israel -- Something Much More Nefarious Is Going on ■ Israel is systematically extending plans that were sketched and initiated shortly after the 1967 war, and institutionalized more fully with the access to power of Menahem Begin's Likud a decade later. The first step is to create what Yonatan Mendel calls "a disturbing new city" called "Jerusalem" but extending far beyond historic Jerusalem, incorporating dozens of Palestinian villages and surrounding lands, and furthermore, designated as a Jewish City and the capital of Israel. All of this is in direct violation of explicit Security Council orders. A corridor to the East of this new Greater Jerusalem incorporates the town of Ma'aleh Adumim, established in the 1970s but built primarily after the 1993 Oslo Accords, with lands reaching virtually to Jericho, thus effectively bisecting the West Bank. Corridors to the north incorporating the settler towns of Ariel and Kedumim further divide what is to remain under some degree of Palestinian control. ● Meanwhile Israel is incorporating the territory on the Israeli side of the illegal "separation wall," in reality an annexation wall, taking arable land and water resources and many villages, strangling the town of Qalqilya, and separating Palestinian villagers from their fields. In what Israel calls "the seam" between the wall and the border, close to 10 percent of the West Bank, anyone is permitted to enter, except Palestinians. ● Israel is also taking over the Jordan Valley, thus fully imprisoning the cantons that remain. Huge infrastructure projects link settlers to Israel's urban centers, ensuring that they will see no Palestinians. Following a traditional neocolonial model, a modern center remains for Palestinian elites, in Ramallah, while the remainder mostly languishes.