On May 28, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) endorsed a Palestinian state, with the West Bank and Gaza to be connected physically.
As an advocate for peace, I do not agree that Israel must be defeated for Palestinians to achieve liberation. That is a forever war. It reminds me of the statement by Russell Means of the American Indian Movement: “For Indians to live, Europe must die.” That haunts me because we know who is doing the dying. I would also prefer a one-state solution but too many Jews and some Palestinian zealots do not want to integrate, especially now.
As an advocate for justice, I believe Jews have a historic connection to some of that territory, but not most of it. In 1933, Jews and non-Jews lived side-by-side in peace, with Jews comprising 20% of that population. That can be the goal again with a two-state solution. The non-Jewish farms and towns that were stolen by settlers must be returned. The Jewish state has a right to only 20% of the land based on historic and demographic justice.
Theocracy is also a problem. If people claim that a deity gives them the land, religion becomes blasphemy, ending in genocide. Their god becomes the devil. Atheism is better.
When I said at the Friday Montebello Lake sign-wave that the West Bank and Gaza could be united with “everything in between,” a comment was made: “That is all of Israel.” I beg to differ. If one looks at a map of Israel, most of the Jewish state is north and south of the West Bank and Gaza, not between.
Currently, there is only one major highway between the West Bank and Gaza. That highway running east and west is crossed by two major highways running north and south that connect Tel Aviv in the north to Dimona in the south. That intersection is at Qiryat Gat or Beersheba.
A problem arises if the West Bank is physically connected to the Gaza Strip. That would cut Israel into two parts. Right now, Palestine is cut into two parts. Is it possible to have a situation where neither country will be cut into two parts without massive internal migration? Can Tel Aviv and Dimona remain Jewish and still allow Palestine’s two parts to be united? YES.
The east-west highway between the West Bank and Gaza Strip can tunnel under the north-south highways so both countries can have traffic routes without connecting to the other country’s routes. That is best done with a rural by-pass around Qiryat Gat or Beersheba to avoid urban congestion and more tunnelling. In the future, if peace can be established, the crossed routes can be connected for travel between Israel and Palestine with checkpoints at the crossings for border control. The tunnels can have off-ramps nearby for that purpose.
I therefore propose two short tunnels for a technical solution to ending forever war which could escalate into world war. Ironically after writing this, I saw Donald Trump’s peace plan advocates a tunnel all the way from the West Bank to Gaza, which seems unnecessarily ambitious. Here’s the map.
How to End the Israel-Iran War
I also propose a solution to the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Israel and Iran could negotiate mutual inspections of each other’s nuclear facilities. Israel would have to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty that all the other nine members of the Nuclear Club have signed. With mutual inspections, trust could be established and paranoia ended. If Israel or Iran would oppose such a solution, that would prove that they would prefer perpetual war over perpetual peace.
Inspections could lead to the eventual nuclear disarmament of the Middle East, especially if a Palestinian state is established with normal diplomatic relations with Israel. Land would be traded for peace. Hamas would fade away.
Today’s Wars Were Caused by the U.S. in 1917
World War Two, the Jewish Holocaust, genocide against Gaza, and the Iran war, were all caused by the United States when it joined the wrong side in World War One. At least the U.S. should have kept its treaty of neutrality.
World War One started when Germany tried to take down the bloody British colonial empire which was raping the world. But when the U.S. helped the British Empire force reparations on a defeated Germany, it gave rise to Hitler’s mobilization against perpetual debt bondage in the post-war depression. The rest is history. The Holocaust would never have happened if the U.S. had not sided with the bloody British colonial empire in 1917. Jews would not have needed to escape Germany to settle elsewhere at great cost.
The bloody Brits tricked the U.S. into supporting their racist empire. All wars start with propaganda wars. The undersea cables from Germany were severed by the Brits so the U.S. never heard the German side of the story. All we heard was British lies on how bad the Germans were.
Then the Brits deliberately sailed their ship Lusitania with U.S. passengers into the war zone even though the German embassy put an ad in The New York Times warning of the danger. It was later learned that the ship had hidden U.S. weapons for England in violation of the Neutrality Treaty. Though Germany was blamed for sinking the ship, in reality explosives had been planted on board beforehand and Winston Churchill, then the first Lord of the Admiralty, deliberately withheld rescue boats so as to maximize public outrage and help stampede the U.S. into joining the bloody British colonial empire’s war.
World War One, thus, caused World War Two, which caused the Holocaust, which caused genocide against Palestinians, which caused Iranian hostility and nuclear development, which now causes regional wars and global economic strangulation.
The U.S. capitalist ruling class is ultimately responsible for this catastrophic series of causations and bears responsibility to end the vicious cycle. China invaded no one. Cuba invaded no one. Venezuela invaded no one.
The U.S. invaded 34 victim countries of no threat to the U.S., killing 20 million people since World War Two.
Who threatens the planet, capitalism or communism?
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About the Author
Richard Ochs is a board member of Maryland Peace Action.
He has published articles in the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Chronicle, and the website: www.freefromterror.net.
He is past president of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Superfund Citizens Coalition, member of the Depleted Uranium Task force of the Military Toxics Project and a member of the Chemical Weapons Working Group.
In the 1960s, Richard was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Maryland, College Park. He accumulated ten arrests for equal accommodations with the Congress of Racial Equality and was resident printer for the D.C. Black Panther Party. He has been arrested about 40 times, protesting various U.S. wars, since the 60’s. In 1978 he was elected Shop Steward in IUMSWA Local 24, representing 150 burners and welders at the Bethlehem Steel ship repair yard in Baltimore.
Ochs was a Green Party candidate for Maryland State Delegate in 2006.
Richard can be reached at rjochs@comcast.net.
