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01 October 2010 By
Jonathan Cook With the resumption of settlement
construction in the
West Bank yesterday,
Israel's powerful settler movement hopes that it has
scuttled peace talks with the Palestinians. It would be misleading, however,
to assume that the only major obstacle to the success
of the negotiations is the right-wing political
ideology the settler movement represents. Equally
important are deeply entrenched economic interests
shared across Israeli society. These interests took root more
than six decades ago with Israel's establishment and
have flourished at an ever-accelerating pace since
Israel occupied the
West
Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. Even many Israeli Jews living
within the recognised borders of Israel privately
acknowledge that they are the beneficiaries of the
seizure of another people's lands, homes, businesses
and bank accounts in 1948. Most Israelis profit
directly from the continuing dispossession of millions
of
Palestinian refugees. Israeli officials assume that the
international community will bear the burden of
restitution for the refugees. The problem for Israel's
Jewish population is that the refugees
now living in exile were not the only ones
dispossessed. The fifth of Israel's citizens
who are Palestinian but survived the expulsions of
1948 found themselves either transformed into
internally displaced people or the victims of a later
land-nationalisation programme that stripped them of
their ancestral property. Even if
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
president, signed away the rights of the refugees, he
would have no power to do the same for Israel's
Palestinian citizens, the so-called Israeli Arabs.
Peace, as many
Israelis
understand, would open a Pandora's box of historic
land claims from Palestinian citizens at
the expense of Israel's Jewish citizens. But the threat to the economic
privileges of Israeli Jews would not end with a
reckoning over the injustices caused by the state's
creation. The occupation of the
Palestinian territories after 1967
spawned many other powerful economic interests opposed
to peace. The most visible constituency are
the settlers, who have benefited hugely from
government subsidies and tax breaks
designed to encourage Israelis to relocate to the
West Bank. Peace Now estimates that such
benefits alone are worth more than $550 million a
year. Far from being a fringe element,
the half a million settlers constitute nearly a tenth
of Israel's Jewish population and include such
prominent figures as foreign minister
Avigdor Lieberman. Hundreds of businesses serving
the settlers are booming in the 60 per cent of the
West Bank, the so-called Area C, that falls under
Israel's full control. The real estate and
construction industries, in particular, benefit from
cut-price land -- and increased profits -- made
available by theft from Palestinian owners. Other businesses, meanwhile, have
moved into Israel's West Bank industrial zones,
benefiting from cheap Palestinian labour and from
discounted land, tax perks and lax enforcement of
environmental protections. Much of the tourism industry also
depends on Israel's hold over the holy sites located
in occupied
East
Jerusalem. This web of interests depends on
what
Akiva
Eldar, of the
Haaretz newspaper, terms
"land-laundering" overseen by government ministries,
state institutions and
Zionist
organisations. These murky transactions create ample
opportunities for corruption that have become a staple
for Israel's rich and powerful, including, it seems,
its
prime ministers. But the benefits of occupation
are not restricted to the civilian population. The
most potent pressure group in Israel -- the military
-- has much to lose from a peace agreement, too. The ranks of Israel's
career soldiers, and associated security
services such as the Shin Bet secret police, have
ballooned during the occupation. The demands of controlling
another people around the clock justifies huge
budgets, the latest weaponry (much of it paid for by
the United States) and the creation of a powerful
class of military bureaucrat. While teenage conscripts do the
dangerous jobs, the army's senior ranks retire in
their early forties on full pensions, with lengthy
second careers ahead in business or politics. Many
also go on to profit from the burgeoning "homeland
security" industries in which Israel excels. Small
specialist companies led by former generals offer a
home to retired soldiers drawing on years of
experience running the occupation. Those who spent their service in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip quickly learn how to
apply and refine new technologies for surveillance,
crowd control and urban warfare that find ready
markets overseas. In 2006 Israel's defence exports
reached $3.4bn, making the country the fourth largest
arms dealer in the world. These groups fear that a peace
agreement and Palestinian statehood would turn Israel
overnight into an insignificant Middle Eastern state,
one that would soon be starved of its enormous US
subsidies. In addition, Israel would be forced to
right a historic wrong and redirect the region's
plundered resources, including its land and water,
back to Palestinians, depriving Jews of their
established entitlements. A cost-benefit calculus suggests
to most Israeli Jews -- including the prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu -- that a real solution to their
conflict with the Palestinians might come at too heavy
a price to their own pockets. Jonathan Cook is a writer and
journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel.
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).
His website is
www.jkcook.net
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