Palestinian Villages Become Israel’s Playground

Group Highlights ‘Memoricide’ in West Bank

Canada Park — As spring sets in early, Israelis have been pouring into one of the country’s most popular leisure spots. Visitors to Canada Park, a few kilometers north-west of Jerusalem, enjoy its spectacular panaromas, woodland paths, mountain-bike trails, caves and idyllic picnic areas.

A series of signs describe the historical significance of the landscape, as well as that of a handful of ancient buildings, in terms of their Biblical, Roman, Hellenic and Ottoman pasts. Few, if any, visitors take notice of the stone blocks that litter sections of the park.

But Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot (Remembering), is committed to educating Israelis and foreign visitors about the park’s hidden past — its Palestinian history.

“In fact, though you would never realise it, none of this park is even in Israel,” he told a group of 40 Italians on a guided tour this past weekend. “This is part of the West Bank captured by Israel during the 1967 war. But the presence of Palestinians here — and their expulsion — is entirely missing from the signs.”

Zochrot also seeks to remind Israelis of the Nakba, the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

Its tours are not popular with most Israelis, suggesting, he says, how far they still are from understanding the territorial compromises needed to reach the kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians currently being promoted by the new US administration.

An impressive building a short way into the park, signposted as a Roman bathhouse, is all that is recognizably left of a Palestinian village once known as Imwas, itself built on the ruins of the biblical village of Emmaus.

There are traces of a cemetery, as well as scattered rubble from the village’s houses, a coffee shop, a church, two mosques and a school.

The 2,000 Palestinians living there, along with the 3,500 inhabitants of two other villages, Yalu and Beit Nuba, were expelled as the Israeli army captured this area of the West Bank from Jordan. Today, they and their descendants live as refugees, mostly in East Jerusalem and near Ramallah.

In place of the three villages, a park was created by an international Zionist organization, the Jewish National Fund, paid for with $15 million in charitable donations from Canadian Jews.

The park entrance is only a minute’s drive from the busiest motorway in the country, linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Similar parks across Israel have been established on the ruins of other Palestinian villages but, in those cases, the destruction was a result of the war of 1948 that founded Israel. Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, has referred to this massive erasure of Palestinian history as state-organized “memoricide”.

But Canada Park is far more sensitive for Israel because it lies outside the country’s internationally recognized borders. The Palestinian inhabitants’ expulsion, Mr Bronstein said, was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing of villagers who put up no resistance.

“We have photographs of the Israeli army carrying out the expulsions,” he told the group of tourists, holding up a series of laminated cards.

Yosef Hochman, a professional photographer, captured scenes that included columns of fleeing Palestinians carrying possessions on their heads, army officers arguing with an elderly woman who refuses to leave her house and bulldozers moving in to destroy the villages.

According to Mr. Bronstein, the wrecking spree can be explained by the Israeli army’s failure in the 1948 war to capture the area, which juts out into what is today Israel and was once known as the Latrun salient.

“In 1948, Israeli commanders regarded conquest of the salient as vital for widening the safe passage from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They were desperate to make amends in 1967 when they got a second chance.”

Uzi Narkiss, a leading general in the 1967 war, vowed that the Latrun salient would never be returned. Establishing Canada Park was Israel’s way of secretly annexing the territory, Zochrot says.

Since 2003, Mr Bronstein has been demanding that the Jewish National Fund post additional signs highlighting the park’s Palestinian history.

The Roman bathhouse, he notes, is visible only because the foundations were subsequently excavated. For centuries, the structure — a shrine to Obeida Ibn al Jarah, an Arab warrior who helped conquer Palestine in the seventh century — served as an important Palestinian holy place.

The Jewish National Fund and the Civil Administration, the military government in the West Bank, agreed to post two new signs, marking the centers of Imwas and Yalu, only after Zochrot petitioned the courts. The experiment in openness was short-lived, however. After a few days, black paint was used to conceal part of the sign at Imwas, and soon afterwards both signs disappeared.

“We were told that scrap-metal dealers were probably responsible for stealing the signs,” Mr. Bronstein said. “That’s a little hard to believe, since the official signs close by are there to this day.”

Zochrot is considering widening its campaign by alerting Canadian donors to the fact that their money has been used – in contravention of international law — effectively to annex a section of the West Bank to Israel. Mr Bronstein believes many are unaware of the use their donations have been put to.

He is preparing to take the Jewish National Fund back to court to demand it replaces the missing signs and erects similar signs in parks inside Israel to commemorate the Palestinian villages razed by the army after the 1948 war.

According to Zochrot, 86 Palestinian villages lie buried underneath JNF parks. A further 400 destroyed villages had their lands passed on to exclusively Jewish communities. Zochrot’s several hundred activists regularly select a destroyed village, taking Palestinian refugees with them as they place a handmade sign detailing the village’s name in Arabic and Hebrew. Within days, the signs are removed.

But Mr. Bronstein said he believes signs erected by official bodies may have a greater impact in opening Israeli minds.

“In a recent newspaper interview, a senior JNF official admitted that it would be hard to stop our campaign,” he said. “Slowly we believe Israelis can be made to appreciate that their state exists at the expense of another people. Only then are Israelis likely to be ready to think about making peace.”

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

23 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. RH2 said on March 10th, 2009 at 2:11pm #

    Numerous cides have accumulated in Palestine since 1948, genocide, landcide, ethnocide, memoricide … etc. All these cides flow into the calamity of occupation. Fortunately there are moderate and courageous Zionists like Bornstein and Pappe who show a guilty conscience.

  2. bozh said on March 10th, 2009 at 2:19pm #

    all that happened in a ‘holy land’. i wonder what wld have happeaned if the land was unholy?
    probably all pals wld be killed? but being ‘holy’ warriors in ‘holy land’, ashk’m didn’t have heart to kill them all.
    but now regret for not solving the problem correctly? or they wanted to, but US said, NO? or at least didn’t say, YES?
    and even now US says, No expulsion or mass murder. Be patient and wait for my signal?
    tx

  3. RH2 said on March 10th, 2009 at 2:48pm #

    If the land were not holy, the Zionists had probably not been there. They are there praying to the divine holiness.

  4. Tree said on March 11th, 2009 at 5:39am #

    Good article. Very sad.
    Reminds me a bit of what happened in the Smoky Mountains when the US gov’t turned it into a national park and forced people out of their homes.

  5. Barry said on March 11th, 2009 at 5:57am #

    A tour of the National Parks of Israel is lovely. The Israelis have planted them with trees, (maybe we’ve all seen ads in the past saying we can ‘plant a tree in Israel!’), and there are beautifully landscaped walkways and gentle breezes off the Mediterranean that flow upslope at each gorgeous sunset – an idyllic setting.

    These parks were built over Palestinian villages. From 1947 – 49 Jewish terror forces carried out their Plan Dalet (Plan D) which plan detailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its native population. It involved rounding up of fighting-age Palestinian males (pretty much 8 to 80) and summarily executing them. Others who protested joined the dead in the ditch. Naturally, the remaining people, mostly women, oldtimers and children fled. This was repeated in village after village until neighboring villages got the advance word and fled before the Jews arrived. In this manner Palestine was cleansed – “a miraculous cleansing of the land’ in the words of arch-Zionist Chaim Weizmann (likely the first use of the ‘cleansing’ metaphor for genocide).

    What to do with the empty villages? Not only had they been replete with housing, but they contained mosques, churches and holy sites as well. The Israelis came up with the ingenious idea of burying the villages under woodlands and parks. Bulldozers leveled whatever structures had not already been bombed and burned – and the tree planting program quickly ensued. Voila! – a national park system.

    Mostly, the well-traveled walks and paths of these parks keeps one away from the tell-tale ruins. But if one is willing to wander off the beaten path into the thickets – and if one looks carefully, the odd chunk of stone wall or steeple can be found, along with the remains of cisterns and wells. Little mini-Dachaus, all refashioned into sylvan pastorals. Visitors don’t know or don’t care that the Palestinians had chosen such lovely places to live.

    Of course, Palestinians in exile attempted to return to their homes. But return to “Israel” was forbidden. The parks, however, were not off-limits to Jews and their Gentile (honorary-Jewish) guests from Europe and America. In fact, the pretty parks functioned as a selling point displaying the civilized Western sensibility of the new Jewish state.

    But for the former denizens who tried to return over the border in nighttime journeys back to their farms and homes – there was only a hail of bullets fired by, of all people , Arab Jews – Mizrahi and Sephardi and Yemenite Jews – brought in by the Ashkenazis for the express purpose of manning the borders in deterrence of those they labeled ‘infiltrators.’

    The system worked so well that Israel re-employed it in their 1967 ethnic cleansing of the West Bank – hence ‘Canada Park.’

  6. Barry said on March 11th, 2009 at 7:34am #

    RH – Pappe may have been a Zionist at one time, but I’m pretty sure he no longer thinks of himself as one. In fact, he’s now persona non grata in Israel, and holds a faculty position in England.

    Bozh – I don’t think the Jewish terror groups could kill ALL the Palestinians – at least not back in 48/49. I believe they reasoned that it would be enough to kill large numbers of able males – and kill a smaller number of females to inspire Palestinians to flee to their Arab brethren in the hinterlands. The Zionists wanted to move quickly with the armaments they had (considerable though by any standard) and did not want to be accused of mass murder. The perfect solution is to say the Pals fled the fighting. The Zionists stuck to that explanation for decades until Erskine Childers revealed its lie back in the late 60s. Of course, by then, the Israelis were repeating the process in the WB.

  7. bozh said on March 11th, 2009 at 8:28am #

    barry,
    unfortunately, we can’t read minds. at least one ‘zionist’, yabotinsky, had stated that he devotes his life for establishment of a ‘jewish’ state with ‘jewish’ ‘majority’ that wld also include jordan.

    we all know, that original partition of palestine wld not suffice for ‘zionists’. and even all of palestine wldn’t do.
    subsequent events, such as ’67 aggression, invasions of lebanon, attacking ossirak nuclear plant, raid on tunis, bombing of syria, ‘settling’ WB, siege of/raids on gaza, avoidance of peace, etc., prove- and not only indicate- that yabotinsky spoke for ?all ‘zionists’ then and speaks for most members of the judeo-christian ad hoc bloc.

    and the hell with mind reading. i am not a historian of the conflict; so, i’m alighting from the topic why ‘zionists’ did not accomplish in ’48-49 the telos; which wld have included greater slaughter/ expulsion of pal’ns. tnx

  8. bozh said on March 11th, 2009 at 8:52am #

    barry,
    i forgot to posit the fact that ‘zionists’ also had an army, haganah, in addition to the two terrorist groups, irgun and stern gang.
    and UK troops were on their side.

    i do not know much about what pal’ns had for armaments; it does seem, judging by what happened, that they were without much defense.
    UK had done its job for ‘zionists’ by word and deed; or so it seems.

    it may be that ‘zionists’ did not just legally and illegaly immigrate but were also bringing with them arms or were supplied with arms by mostly UK.
    and it may have been UK which forbade further expulsion/death of the pal’ns.
    btw, pal’ns may be only slightly arab. in those days, people who’s armies conqured regions, may or may have not in any numbers left their homeland to settle conquered lands.
    eg, ottoman empire had conquered much of balkan. yet in bosnia, slavs remained vastly slavic and retained their language as well. most also retained their christian faith.
    nevertheless, balkan haters, often called bosnian muslims “turks”.
    so if we are gonna err, let us err on side of the victims.

  9. Barry said on March 11th, 2009 at 11:27am #

    No Bozh, we can’t read minds but some of these guys were so sure of themselves they left a good track record.

    Yes, Haganah was the military wing of ‘mainstream’ Zionists. They did not always get along with Irgun and Stern Gang (aka Lehi). But then again they frequently cooperated – and Haganah could alway pin the blame on those pesky renegade groups when things got heated with the British. For instance, Ben Gurion/Haganah was in on the planning for the bombing of the King David Hotel – but passed blame entirely onto Begin/Irgun afterwards. Irgun and Lehi – and Haganah were folded into the Israeli army with statehood. (And for those who don’t think Jews would never kill Jews – Ben Gurion blew up an Irgun weapons ship killing about dozen Jews. He was afraid they’d continue to operate after independence and he wanted the usual state monopoly on violence.)

    With regard to borders, early Zionists pressed the Mandate Authorities – Britain and France for a Jewish ‘homeland’ that would extend north to the Litani River in what is now Lebanon, and east past the Jordan River into Transjordan, south to the Red Sea, and they had hoped for at least a piece of the Sinai. Palestine had been in the French domain – with Lebanon and Syria (as part of Greater Syria) – but France ‘ceded’ it to Britain – the latter wanting it and being the stronger power after WWI. Along with passing Palestine to the Brits, France separated Lebanon out of Syria to create a Christian enclave loyal to France. In any case, the Brits outlined a Palestine no further than the Jordan, and on the north, short of the upper reaches of the Jordan’s tributaries and well short of the Litani. The Sinai remained with Egypt – but Palestine was to reach the Red Sea (as it should).

    Jabotinsky was a Fascist – and that is something he would not have denied. He believed that liberal democracy was a failure – the world was to be fought over by the Fascists and Bolsheviks. His model for the Jewish state was Mussolini’s Italy – and Jabotinsky and his Revisionist Zionists were on fairly close terms with il Duce. The Revisionists in general were fond of Nazism as well, believing its anti-Semitism was a more or less juvenile phase or short term tactic that Germany would have to grow out of. There were a whole lot of Revisionist/Fascist cooperation and a whole lotta Jews being rounded up before the Revisionists abandoned the axis powers – but never abandoned the philosophy. It can be said that Jabotinsky was more straight up than Ben Gurion about their intentions. Ben Gurion believed in disguising and hedging and waiting for the opportune moment – Jabotinsky believed the Jews should remove the Palestinians with no waste of time – and the Pals just need to be told that this is the way it is going to be. Gun Zionism. It might be said that Ben Gurion won the day – it is B-G who became Israel’s first president and their entire apparatus became the Labor Party. But it is Jabotinsky’s political position that became triumphant – pretty much adopted wholesale by the Israeli state. In fact, all land conquered by Israel has been done so by the Labor Party.

    Ben Gurion never let go of the notions of an Israel extending into Jordan. Lebanon and Egypt. in the 1950s he tried to get his cabinet to annex southern Lebanon, but it was nixed by his cabinet. He also tried to get Britain to agree to let Israel gain the Sinai from Egypt, but the Brits said that was no-go. Of course, he happily jumped at the chance to join Britain and France in the 1956 attack on Nasser’s Egypt. The intent (besides ousting of Nasser) was the annexation of all or most of the Sinai. In what is probably the last time the US chose sides correctly – Eisenhower ordered the 3 invaders to cease and desist. They went home. But gaining these lands has always been in the back of the Zionist mind. So too gaining the West Bank – which they promptly did 11 years later in ’67 and are still there. I think these are the limits of land they ‘realistically’ think they can have. I know Menachem Begin’s old Herut Party (part of the Likud Coalition) boasted a flag with an Israel from deep within the Sinai (as far as the Nile?) to the Euphrates River in Iraq (its northern reaches where Syria and Iraq meet – not the Euphrates where it reaches Baghdad).

    In the war with the Zionists (Dec 47 thru 1949) the Zionists were heavily armed (by the East Bloc) and funded (by Western Europe and American Zionists). The Palestinians had no arms to speak of. Several months after the genocide was underway, Palestinians were able to join other Arab forces. These were variously armed and variously trained. None but the Pals themselves fought with tenacity though the well-trained Arab legion and Jordanian forces managed to secure the West Bank for Jordan. In that matter, there was also some collaboration with the Jews over dividing the spoils. But for the Jews, much of the war was pretty much shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the Arab state armies were pretty much pomp-and-circumstance forces whose steady job was to march in front of the king so he could ‘review the troops.’ Most of their equipment consisted of long-outdated rifles. The Jews had planes and tanks and planning and determination. And lots of money.

    Genome studies indicate that Palestinians are largely drawn from the same stock as the people that historically surround them – Lebanese, Syrians and the sub-populations that consitute these countries. In other words, the Palestinians are largely descended from Canaanite (including Phoenician), Philistine, Jew (as in ancient Hebrew), and likely Greek and other ‘early visitors.’ The Arab Peninsula component of Palestinian DNA is small. Of course, as a mixture of ancient Semitic and Indo-European populations, the Semitic side of regional populations all have an ancestry that likely originates in a drying-out Arabian Peninsula. That does not make them Arab though – the Arabs were but one group of many on that peninsula. Arab culture came with the spread of Islam, but its actual numbers were small. And the indications are that even in the Mandate period, Arab in-migration was neglible and seasonal – having to do with the following the rains – for grasses and crops – and then returning to Arabia.

  10. RH2 said on March 11th, 2009 at 12:10pm #

    Barry,

    I am not self-opinionated or dogmatic. I appreciate your assessment as I always do and will think my attitude to Pappe over. I will investigate my assumption as soon as I have time. Being a persona non grata in Israel is not the whole issue. Chomsky does not enjoy much honor in Israel. Yet I have no doubt about his covert Zionism. I will certainly check up on Pappe.

  11. bozh said on March 11th, 2009 at 1:26pm #

    barry,
    tnx for so much adequate/accurate info. i’ve read only one book on the euro-pal’n conflict, that of Martin Gilbert.
    but i evaluated that he avoided some facts. other facts he may have doctored.
    nevertheless, he brings us many descriptive info that one can evaluate true or false.
    many of his descriptions appear adequate/ accurate. tx

  12. Mulga Mumblebrain said on March 11th, 2009 at 11:31pm #

    The name Canada Park is significant as Canada, like the US, the UK and Australia is one of those western countries where Jewish power, political, media and business, actually controls the country’s policies. Here in Australia, the Jewish pro-Israel Lobby is ruthless in intimidation and political demands. At present the Rudd Government is being hectored in trade-mark style to withdraw from the Durban II Conference in Geneva. The usual lies, of anti-Semitic bias and global malevolence in targeting ‘poor, little, Israel’ for no other reason than racist hatred of Jews, who are, of course, eternally blameless, are being spread with customary zealotry. Politicians are being herded to the cause, any hesitation sure to be punished later. The arrogance, the presumption of this tiny minority, so used to getting their way in everything in this country, is breath-taking. To live in a state where a group that represents about 1% of the population, demands and receives veto power over foreign policy, is deeply disturbing. To express such a view, of course, brings down an avalanche of vilification and abuse. Argument is verboten. Any opposition is immediately labelled anti-Semitism, symptomatic of Nazi sympathies and a desire to enact a new Holocaust. Where it all ends is plain-in a deliberately contrived religious war against Islam, to protect Jewish colonies in Palestine. Just ask the Gazans, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Syrians and Somalis, with the Iranians bound to follow.

  13. Moz said on March 12th, 2009 at 6:23am #

    “Any opposition is immediately labelled anti-Semitism, symptomatic of Nazi sympathies and a desire to enact a new Holocaust. Where it all ends is plain-in a deliberately contrived religious war against Islam, to protect Jewish colonies in Palestine. ” – This for a “gentile” such as myself rings all too true.

    I would suggest any activist who is labelled “anti-semite” for not approving of Israeli policy tell the accuser to “get lost” (I would use more ripe language.)

    I was born in 1984, the Holocaust was not anything to do with me, I refuse to be silenced on a matter of great injustice just because the perpetrators of said injustice had a massive crime commited against them.

    After Versaille the Germans were left completely prosrate by the powers of the time, a massive act of collective punishment. Does that excuse/justify the crimes of Nazism? Of course not…no more than the Holocaust excuses Zionists when they are shooting children.

  14. mary said on March 12th, 2009 at 9:50am #

    Mulga’s comments hit the mark exactly and thanks to Jonathan Cook for the information about Mr. Bronstein and his work.

    The article brought this wonderful poem by Mike Odetella back to mind.

    Thinking of Spring in Palestine
    By Mike Odetalla

    What benefit or joy if,

    I were to gain the world,
    But lose the almond blossoms in my land?

    Drink a cup of coffee, everyplace
    But my mother’s home

    Journey to the moon,
    But not to the graves of my ancestors

    See the world’s wonders,
    But not the setting sun as it dips behind ancient olive groves

    Tour the world over,
    But lose the flowers on the hills of my native land

    Nothing but lethal silence…

    No need to gain the world

    Just a cup of coffee
    In a familiar place and
    An end to the lethal silence

    Within the hearts of the living…

    Mike Odetalla, thinking of Spring in Palestine! 3-27-2005

    http://www.hanini.org/springPalestine.html

  15. Barry said on March 12th, 2009 at 9:50am #

    RH – I was just noting that Pappe being ‘persona non grata’ in Israel is an indication of how far he has taken things. In Israel, you can criticize Israeli practice and policy regarding the state of things since 1967. It raises eyebrows but Israelis have now heard it all many times over. But to call into question the very foundations of the state causes apoplexy in many Israeli quarters. Pappe sees the entire exercise as having been a racist one – and that the only way to end it is through the demise of Israel and the establishment of a non-racial state. That’s his more recent material. I think his thinking as evolved over the years but he’s always been heading in the right direction. But yeah, there’s many an Israeli that would like to see him dissapeared somehow.

  16. bozh said on March 12th, 2009 at 11:20am #

    barry, you’re right,
    everybody’s thinking changes over time. i was not, i think , always for one state solution.
    the notion came to me just about two yrs ago. i also came just recently to the conclusion that even onestate solution is very wrong if we do not first of all prosecute dead and living criminals.
    and particularly gurion, yabotinsky, herzl, rabin, meir, dayan, begin, shamir, scharansky, et al.

    ideal solution for me wld be to expel ?all ashk’c land robbers- and the ‘settlers’ in particular- from palestina.
    however, it is pal’ns who have final say. tnx

  17. RH2 said on March 12th, 2009 at 3:04pm #

    Barry,

    Thank you for the explanation. Pappe is undoubtedly a fine person with whom you can speak. He calls a spade a spade and tells the world about Zionist crimes by name (and so does Avnery, Zionist?). I may be wrong about him. I will have to think it over. I have often changed my mind on the basis of new knowledge. I cannot stand sticking on false ideas. So I will take care of my psyche, investigate and reconsider my allegation about his Zionism.

    bozh,
    You cannot “expel all ashk’c land robbers- and the ’settlers’ in particular- from palestina” neither practically nor ideally. . We cannot undo the colonial demarcations of the last centuries on the world map. The Ashkenazi folks exist and will be by two continents, Europe and North America, supported to further exist. I find a one state solution impossible, because Palestinians have suffered 60 years long and the Zionists have found Palestinians a hindrance to a Palestinian free Israel. There is a huge retaliatory material in both cultures and languages.

  18. mary said on March 15th, 2009 at 6:39am #

    Why have we got to wait so long?

    CIA report: Israel will fall in 20 years
    Global Research, March 13, 2009
    Press TV

    A study conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has cast doubt over Israel’s survival beyond the next 20 years.

    The CIA report predicts “an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable peace in the region.”

    The study, which has been made available only to a certain number of individuals, further forecasts the return of all Palestinian refugees to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israeli – who would move to the US in the next fifteen years.

    “There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than 300,000 living in the area of just California,” International lawyer Franklin Lamb said in an interview with Press TV on Friday, adding that those who do not have American or western passport, have already applied for them.

    “So I think the handwriting at least among the public in Israel is on the wall…[which] suggests history will reject the colonial enterprise sooner or later,” Lamb stressed.

    He said CIA, in its report, alludes to the unexpectedly quick fall of the apartheid government in South Africa and recalls the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, suggesting the end to the dream of an ‘Israeli land’ would happen ‘way sooner’ than later.

    The study further predicts the return of over one and a half million Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe, and denotes a decline in Israeli births whereas a rise in the Palestinian population.

    Lamb said given the Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians and the Gaza strip in particular, the American public — which has been voicing its protest against Tel Aviv’s measures in the last 25 years — may ‘not take it anymore’.

    Some members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have been informed of the report.

  19. bozh said on March 15th, 2009 at 8:22am #

    mary,
    the CIA ‘prediction’ may or may not exist. but even if it is extant, it may be a ruse.
    perhaps the aim of the probable fake prophecy is to lead people away from watching what US/israel does.

    it seems that criticism of US/Israeli ad hoc bloc has never been higher.
    thus, US/Israel is desperate to reduce not only criticicm but also to cease hunting for war criminals.

    CIA, to me, is world’s largest and most potent terrorist org; thus, it seems unlikely that it wld not try to see that its/US/Israeli labors come to fruition. tnx

  20. mary said on March 15th, 2009 at 9:29am #

    Bozh I was actually being ironic or trying to be. I realize that the item is delusional and I think has been put around before.

  21. bozh said on March 15th, 2009 at 10:25am #

    mary, tx.
    i’m glad that u also took report as a possible sham. i am not aware that other observers deem the ‘report’ as a quite a stretch; i.e., even if it exists.

  22. HR said on March 15th, 2009 at 12:38pm #

    That reference to the “CIA report” also appeared on Information Clearing House. The grammar error and poor writing style made it seem suspicious to me.

  23. Barry99 said on March 15th, 2009 at 1:42pm #

    Mary – I’m no CIA kind of guy, but I too sense a change in the air on Israel, something I talked about earlier on DV. But I also see some differences between Apartheid Israel and Apartheid South Africa. For one, South Africa had no real constituency in the US beyond corporations that did hefty business there. I think once the corps came to understand that the new regime in SA would – economically anyway – be to a great degree old wine in new glasses they stepped out of the way. Israel however, (as we all know) has a large, organized, influential, vocal and punitive constituency – individuals and lobby groups. Israel is also viewed as a strategic asset (as too was SA) even though the reality is that it is closer to a strategic albatross.

    Presently, most Palestinians, as per polls taken many times over the years, favor a 2-state solution. This may be said to represent pragmatism as well as quiet desperation after more than a half-century of pounding. There just might develop during the Obama Administration a mad rush to create a state for Palestine, in the hope of forestalling a political drift on the part of Palestinians towards a unitary or bi-national state. Needless to say, Israel and the US will attempt to maximize the Israeli position – and what may come out of that is a Palestine state doomed to fail, especially if hundreds of thousands of refugees (for whom no one is speaking) ‘return’ to this new state as they are thwarted from returning to their old homes in Israel. We will then be setting the stage for several decades more of discord between Israel and Palestine, or Palestine will join a confederation with Jordan (something desirable in Israeli eyes).

    Indeed, many, many Israelis with any wherewithal whatsoever now have homes abroad or do business in Europe and US/Canada. This population is increasingly less nationalistic though by no means ready to throw in the sponge on ‘the Jewish state.’

    The increasingly jingoistic, racist, and desperate tone of present Israeli politics may be a sign of awareness that the geopolitical situation is closing in on Israel.

    A presently unknowable card is that of the environment. It appears the Levant is undergoing a drying period – not surprising given ongoing climate change. The Mediterranean is also lapping higher against the Levantine shore. It is quite possible that it will be next to impossible to maintain a Western standard of living (which Israel approaches) in a semi-desert to desert environment. With combined populations of more than 10 million the stress on the environment will be substantial. Jordan is already suffering from major water shortages. Israel less so, primarily because it steals the water underlying the West Bank. Even in a unified state, if it comes to water rationing, you can bet water will distribution will have a strong ethnic component – but that’s a story for another day.

    Whatever happens, there have always been Jews in Palestine – at least since that ethnicity invented itself. I would hope some would stay – and expect many would. More importantly, it’s almost a century since the demise of the Ottoman Empire when Palestinians and all Arab lands of southwest Asia were guaranteed their independence. So a state of Palestine is long overdue. And we will all reap the fruits of justice done – even Jews. For Jews, the burden of defending the absurdity of a race-based state will be over – and so will their need to strike out at their neighbors and fellow inhabitants.