Saturday reading: Two plans for the West Bank

One of the docs I’m reading today is the full text of the “Fayyad Plan”, aka the Program of the Thirteenth PA Government. If you recall that the PA was formed in 1994 to be the Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority, you can see how far behind the curve the US-led peace process has fallen…
Fayyad’s plan is not yet online as far as I can see. But I’ll let y’all know as soon as it is.
The second doc I’m reading today is certainly online. It’s a series of blog posts on the Haaretz website by a woman from San Mateo, California called Allison Speiser.
Her most recent post, on August 20, was titled “Making Aliyah to the West Bank: Touchdown!”
“Making Aliyah” is the “cute” way that Zionists and their supporters refer to the act of emigrating from other countries to Israel. Under Israeli law, any Jewish person who does so gets instant citizenship and a package of “absorption” benefits. Palestinian indigenes expelled from the country 61 years ago are still not, however, allowed to return to their homes there.
Other notable posts from Speiser this year have included these:

She seems like an interesting person. She apparently gave the limit of $2,300 to Obama’s election campaign last year. She refers repeatedly to “the West Bank”, instead of saying “Judea and Samaria/ Yehudah ve Shomron” as the hardline Israeli ethnonationalists do.
In her latest post, she writes,

    When you watch the steady stream of cars and buses in each direction, it is hard to imagine that anyone would think of this area as anything other than just another part of Israel – and yet there are clear signs that we are in a separate place. The West Bank.
    I still think about the signs, posters and graffiti that I saw in our first few days here. There is graffiti stating ‘Kahane was right’, ‘Gush Katif – we won’t forget and we won’t forgive’ and other notations indicating the right-wing leanings of the residents here. Bumper stickers tell a similar tale. There were also printed posters telling America to mind its own business and some hardline statements toward Obama and his recent demands on Israel. Seeing these posters as a brand new olah from America gave me mixed feelings – or perhaps just a weird feeling.

There is something interesting going on in her mind. She “saw” those apparently disturbing signs of her new neighbors’ rightwing views “in our first few days here”– but apparently she doesn’t still “see” them today? Does she perhaps, actually physically “see” them but not any longer pay them any heed? Has their presence become somehow normalized for her?
Then this:

    I wonder how I will deal with the big picture questions my kids will ask about bombs, rockets and what the green line is all about. I wonder how I will explain to them why some people use the term “Occupied Territory.” I wonder how I will explain to my kids what a “Palestinian” is.
    I feel strongly that this land is ours, that we have every right to live here and that we must do everything possible to hold on to this land. I want my kids to feel the same way I do, and to ascribe to the same beliefs as I do – doesn’t every parent? But I also feel that it’s important to teach all sides of the story so that people learn to look at an issue from all angles.

Oh my, look at those quotes around the “Palestinian”, and the “occupied territory.” But at least, she seems to be trying to keep something of the liberal values she apparently grew up with in California.
In the March post, she gave us a possible clue as to why– of all the possible places a new immigrant to Israel could choose to go and live– she (and I assume also her husband, though he seems oddly absent from her descriptions of the decision-making) decided to go and live in a West Bank settlement.
The post starts with an evocation of the highly stage-managed episode in late summer 2005 when the Sharon government evacuated the (yes, always quite illegal) Jewish settlements from Gaza…
Then, she writes,

    Although it was not me sitting on the roof then, and it was not me being led away, it’s a scenario that is not all that hard to imagine in my life. And I do imagine it. This summer, we will move to Israel. In all likelihood, we will move to a small yishuv (town) in the Shomron (northern West Bank) outside of the security fence still being built. We will be moving outside of the major blocs that many agree will be part of any future pull out.
    In 1967, Israel was viciously attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria also contributed in some way to the offensive. At the end of the war, Israel had gained control of several key pieces of land including the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. They attacked Israel, Israel won the war and won control of land. Borders are redrawn at the end of many, many wars. Anywhere else in the world, and that would be the end of the story. But not in Israel.
    The status of the land often referred to as “occupied territory” is complicated, lacks a simple solution that would satisfy all sides and is beyond the scope of this post. To that end I encourage everyone to do their homework, become informed members of the conversation. I do plan on making my home on land that I feel should belong to Israel, but I will also abide by any final decision made by the Israeli government. While the debate rages on, I’ll continue to protest, demonstrate, vote and argue. I hope that the government will see things my way and keep the land. But at the end of the day, I know its also important for us to be strong as one people and move forward as one people. So if that day in August ever does come, I’ll sit peacefully on top of my roof, make sure that my point was heard… and then wait for them to take me away.

So it strikes me her decision to migrate directly from San Mateo, California to a settlement in the West Bank may well have been motivated by financial considerations, more than conviction.
By going to this settlement, she becomes assured of: (a) higher social benefits and lower housing costs for herself and her family than if they’d moved to someplace inside Israel, and (b) a good prospect that, as part of the eventual settlement with the Palestinians, they will get a handsome “relocation” pay-off from the government– and financially underwritten no doubt, then as always, by Mr. & Ms. US taxpayer.
By the way, the comments under that March blog post are pretty interesting.

28 thoughts on “Saturday reading: Two plans for the West Bank”

  1. More Speiser, from July 27 as, still in the US, she starts trying to buy basic household goods online for their new place in the West Bank:
    I’m looking on popular online bulletin boards, groups and list-servs for English speakers in Israel, picking through the many items for sale. At first, I get excited – such a selection of beds, furniture, appliances and housewares at very good prices. And then I start to get depressed. It’s easy to see that the majority of people selling their belongings are those who made aliyah, gave it a try for a short while, and are now going back whence they came…

  3. Yeah, I can imagine someone from San Mateo might think like that. I was by there for a while this spring.
    She doesn’t sound too convinced. I should think it was hubby who made the decision. He fancies carrying an Uzi. I’ve seen this so many times. Hubby has a big idea, wife goes along with it. Once there, she finds life impracticable, but stays awhile. In the end she delivers an ultimatum. In the case of my friends in Paris, the wife simply upped and left, while the husband was away, and left him to come back to the apartment in Paris she had rented. Or not as he wished. He gave in.

  5. Housing is not too cheery in California at the moment. Many homes lost to foreclosure. If Speiser & her family have lost their home to foreclosure – Mr. Speiser having previously lost his job, perhaps, then starting over in a subsidized house on the West Bank could be economically compelling. God knows there’s little other reason to be enthused about being a settler.

  6. Many Israelis who live in the settlements are not necessarily Zionist, or even the rightwing or religous type of Zionism even though they are religous themselves, particularly the Ultra-Orthodox who make up a huge chunk of the settlers. They live there because its cheap and believe they have the right to be there because they built up this land. Like in the Gaza settlements, they had a highly productive agriculture industry and they were forced to let it all go.
    The thinking goes – why should I give up this land, they didn’t plant this tree or built that house. I remember a scene from an Israeli movie about an Ethopian Christian boy who passes by as a Jew because his mother didn’t want him to live the life she lived as a refugee. The boy is raised by a leftwing family and he asks his adopted grandpa about what he thinks should happen. The grandpa tells him about two trees that gives them shade, one was planted by the Jews, the other was planted by an Arab beforehand. He concludes that the land should be divided.
    Unfortunately, many right wingers use religous language and radicalizes the conflict. Same goes for the Palestinian side, perhaps even more so. Fayyad lays out a rather progressive plan for a Palestinian state(I didn’t read it yet but that’s what others are saying), but the next day, the highest religious authority of the PA criticizes it and says that the Jews have no connection to Jerusalem. And I don’t know how popular Fayyad is to the Palestinians but some of them say that he’s an American puppet.

  7. It’s clear from her writing she lost herself, her soul, as an American living American dreams, then went to Promises land dream, she lost between tow dreams….. Nevertheless, she wakeup on the reality on the ground there in Palestine the occupied land seen people suffering from occupation, thinking of her kids as mother so on and so forth.
    This woman has sense of hummer more from others, she care about her kids and their future.
    Israelis calling for more immigrants to full new settlement in the West Bank and other places after deserted land from the native resident “Palestinian”.
    The act of emigrating from other countries to Israel, the goal is beyond the adults, in our case here Allison Speiser. The goal is the new generations “kids” who will grow on the promises land or those who born on that land they will fell loyal to new land defending it even it is an occupied land.
    Btw, did she mention her partner/ husband in her writing? She looks a lone with her kids………..which take us to the “little minder” when he said: “but here in our world one does not ask a bereaved mother how much money she is going to get for the death of her young son. “…he forgot the money is every thing in his nation not the morals…

  8. That is sweet, a real woman, her real name, (no hasbara accusations hay?), explaining why she supports her side, plain spoken in her beliefs, and voting with her feet in spite of the physical danger, language difficulty, cultural differences, and the lowering of her living standard. Hats off to that lady and best wishes in her new life.
    It would be nice if Salah and Pirouz would go back with her enthusiasm to rebuild their Arabistan countries. They and their children have the right to go to Iraq and Iran, while I do not. Descendents of German, Spaniards, and Italians also get their citizenship in Europe and the right to go back, collect welfare and so on, and I do not, so stop the usual Helenic nonsense, welcoming back their people to a lone and singular Jewish state is a unique accomplishment to praise, which I do. Specially when you contrast it against the way that Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudis, and lately Jordanian refuse to accept Palestinians or other immigrants. The contrast is stark and embarrassing for a culture that claims great hospitality. The only hospitality to speak of is toward Bin Laden.
    Paraphrasing John Babsone Lane Soule “Go West, young man”, I say “Go East, brave woman”.

  9. Titus, my best friends in high school in Tehran were jewish-iranians. Guess what? Their homeland is Iran! There are tens of thousands of jewish-iranians that live in Iran, and their identity is Iranian. They’ve lived their for thousands of years. (Ayatollah Khomeini went so far as to issue a strict fatwa protecting them.)
    Not long ago, Israel tried to lure jewish-iranians to emigrate there, with even more attractive incentives than what this California family is receiving, in a bid to embarrass the Islamic Republic. Guess what? It backfired. There were very few takers.
    Israel a jewish homeland? Hah! Zionism is nothing more than political expediency. Just ask the Neturei Karta, true believers of the Jewish faith. They don’t accept the illegitimate heretical “Israeli” regime.
    I admit, jewish-europeans suffered a great injustice, being rejected from their German, Polish, Russian and other european homelands. But that is certainly no excuse whatsoever to forcibly invade and occupy Palestine, committing many of the same injustices upon a people that had nothing to do whatsoever with what took place in europe.

  10. Hi Helena,
    I like your blog a lot and really appreciate your analysis. But you should know that Aliya is not just a “cute” term made up by Zionists. It’s a term that long predates Zionism and is rooted deeply in both Judaism and Jewish history.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah

  11. “I don’t know how popular Fayyad is to the Palestinians but some of them say that he’s an American puppet.”
    They’re right.

  12. Shirin, I see you post far less here now. In human affairs, noting tires so much as to be found true and correct. I mean,really how can you possibly respond to any posts about Obama and disappointment?

  13. Lacks a simple solution? The international consensus on how to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is already in place (by way of the UN) but international law has a tough time being enforced. Also, it is against international law to aquire territory by war, thats why Japan doesn’t belong to the USA! This lady has no argument. She seems like she wants to be logical about the whole thing but is misinformed. And what is up with “this land belongs to us” thing? It reminds me of Manifest Destiny, the excuse my country used in order to uproot and kill many of millions of Indians in order to colonize the land in the name of God.

  14. Lacks a simple solution? The international consensus on how to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is already in place (by way of the UN) but international law has a tough time being enforced. Also, it is against international law to aquire territory by war, thats why Japan doesn’t belong to the USA! This lady has no argument. She seems like she wants to be logical about the whole thing but is misinformed. And what is up with “this land belongs to us” thing? It reminds me of Manifest Destiny, the excuse my country used in order to uproot and kill many of millions of Indians in order to colonize the land in the name of God.

  15. Roland, it astonishes me that there are still people who expect Obama to be the miracle worker. As for me, my expectations were so low that I did not think he could disappoint me, but he managed to do so in some areas. I knew we were in trouble when one of his very first acts as President was to sign off on bombing attacks in Pakistan – attacks that ended up killing tens of civilians, including a large number of children. It was then I knew without question that it would be business as usual for the empire, especially in the ME and South Asia. Of course, we are talking business as usual a la Clinton, not Bush, but it all leads to the same destination, the Democrats just take a less obviously ugly route.

  16. That’s it Shirin, I now have to see America for myself.
    I will attempt to do so next month. Maybe I can shake the hand of Senator Kucinich, what a tremendous honour that would be.
    I have to say for we observers in the rest of the world, most especially those of us that “suffer” from socialized medicine, modern America seems far too full of sentiment just as it is so miraculously and immaculately devoid of reason.
    No, let’s call a spade a spade. Just plain “nuts” frankly.
    Shirin, in the unlikely event you are in Haight-Ashbury come September I’ll shout you whatever they drink there that you can partake in:)

  17. Shirin,
    I knew without question that it would be business as usual for the empire, especially in the ME and South Asia.
    No Shirin, Obma did some changes.The Global War on Terror, Obama Administration ” prefers to avoid using the term “Long War” or “Global War on Terror” [GWOT]. Please use “Overseas Contingency Operation.'””
    Al-Qaeda? Iran? Or . . .

    With the shuttering title, “A Crude Case For War,” the Washington Post takes seriously the question of why Iraq? And why stay? Like a 600-lb. gorilla in the middle of the fetid and stinking room where this war has been shuttered for more than five years, all arrows point to the world’s second largest known reserves, with more discovered all the time, and contracts being signed regularly, it’s very much about the oil.

    Perhaps it began long ago, but this is the point at which the Iraq War becomes—at least it stands center stage, nearly invisible, for all to see who bother to look—hauntingly, the cost of doing business. The country has the privilege to look away, and the thousands tick off, all for . . . ?

  18. Pirouz points:
    Titus, my best friends in high school in Tehran were jewish-iranians. Guess what? Their homeland is Iran! There are tens of thousands of jewish-iranians that live in Iran, and their identity is Iranian. They’ve lived their for thousands of years. (Ayatollah Khomeini went so far as to issue a strict fatwa protecting them.)

    That is great and not unique to Iran, it has applied to many countries for 2000 years. It sometimes last long sometimes doesn’t like in Egypt or Yemen, not just in Europe.
    Zionism doesn’t try to break that, it provides an option just in case that fine harmony stops working.

    Not long ago, Israel tried to lure jewish-iranians to emigrate there, with even more attractive incentives than what this California family is receiving, in a bid to embarrass the Islamic Republic. Guess what? It backfired. There were very few takers.

    I would also not take the offer if I have roots and are comfortable, and trust me the Jews in Germany had more reasons to stay in their German homeland for sure. Having said that many countries offer incentives to targeted populations based on nationality, age, professional skills, for their own societal objectives. I knew quite a few friends that were lured from South America to Sweden for example, did they take anybody, heck no. Are the French eager to take in more Turks through Turkey joining the EU? Mais non! and they are very clear about that.

    Israel a jewish homeland? Hah! Zionism is nothing more than political expediency. Just ask the Neturei Karta, true believers of the Jewish faith. They don’t accept the illegitimate heretical “Israeli” regime.

    How about you define your Iranian homeland and let others define themselves? Since when is unanimity required to a homeland, do all Germans live in Germany? What a lame perspective. Zionism is a remarkable project by the Jewish people and nobody with a sane mind would question that they put their sweat, blood, and resources in seeing it through.

    I admit, jewish-europeans suffered a great injustice, being rejected from their German, Polish, Russian and other european homelands. But that is certainly no excuse whatsoever to forcibly invade and occupy Palestine, committing many of the same injustices upon a people that had nothing to do whatsoever with what took place in europe.
    Actually their right to embark on the project in Palestine was accepted by the international community at the time, from Balfour declaration, through the UN partition and acceptance. Apparently the community believed that in Palestine one could satisfy the aims of more than one party, just like it happens in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Haiti, in Cyprus, in Iraq, and many other places. For some reasons the Arab side, including outsiders that had no horse in that race (other than numbing their own peoples with a common enemy) had a mental block about accepting anybody else. WWII produced massive disruption and other countries and continents had a positive role in absorbing the displaced, mostly the presumably hospitable Arab culture could not deal with that.
    The parallel between the injustices of a national conflict in Palestine and the Holocaust is not there, and even poor Obama had to rehash why in Cairo. If you disagree just go do some homework on what Germans, Ukranians, Poles did in WWII, I know you may be drinking the Ahmadinejad kool aid, and in that case there isn’t much we can discuss. Yes there is some blowback at work here, but the role of the Mufti in siding and counting with the Nazis eventually eliminating the Jews in Palestine makes them part of the conflict, and when you take active sides don’t complain if you get hurt.

  19. Zionism doesn’t try to break that,
    There are substantial eveideance that not the case.
    In regards in Jews living in Iraq or Egypt, there many case that the evidence the early Zionist nationalist worked in dramatic and tragic manner to make the native Jews in Iraq to believe they are in danger so its better off leaving Iraq this start as early as 1935…

  20. I admit, jewish-europeans suffered a great injustice, being rejected from their German, Polish, Russian and other european homelands.
    You forgot one very important country that rejected jewish-europeans from entring thier land who is that countrt?
    UNITED STATE OF AMERICA…. Dude
    Got forgot Bush family financed the Holocaust champers for the German

  21. If the intellectual justification for the treatment of the Palestinians is as insubstantial as the charges against the Mufti then things are pretty dire chez Titus.
    The truth is that the collaboration between the revisionist zionists and their fellow fascists in Europe, was far more deep rooted and long lasting that the Mufti’s rather routine and inconsequential diplomatic dalliances in Berlin. These were not unlike those of some of the Irish and Indian nationalists who sought assistance in their struggle against the Empire.
    It is typical of fascists, to seek to blame a people for the offences of an individual especially when, as in this case, there is all the wealth of a nation from its lands to its infrastructure to be looted.
    Israel has become an emblem of the brutality, greed and cowardice of a civilisation in a decline so rapid that it has no time to consider the inevitable consequences of turning its victims into implacable enemies. Preferring instead to appease, in Zionism, a set up which is economically and culturally parasitical.

  22. Roland,
    Not to be too picky, but Kucinich is a congressman. Sorry, he hasn’t made it to the Senate yet, and I mean I’m sorry he’s not a Senator. Too progressive for that chamber.
    Jackie

  24. Sure Bevin, inconsequential due to their ineptitude, not lack of trying. And if you think the issue is irrelevant you ask the bride:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8230483.stm
    Hamas condemns Holocaust lessons
    The UN teaches some 200,000 children in the Gaza Strip
    Gaza’s ruling Islamist movement Hamas has resisted suggestions that Palestinian children should be taught about the Holocaust in UN-run schools.
    The head of its education committee in Gaza, Abdul Rahman el-Jamal, told the BBC that the Holocaust was a “big lie”.
    He said that to teach it would be to “grant a big favour” to Israel, which has been fighting Hamas for years.
    The UN, which runs most Gazan schools, recently asked local groups whether the Holocaust should be taught.
    It uses local textbooks and, in Gaza, that means using material from neighbouring Egypt, the BBC’s Tim Franks reports.
    But over the past seven years the UN has added its own coursework about human rights.
    Mr Jamal told the BBC that the UN should, instead, teach about the Naqba, the term Palestinians use to describe the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
    A spokesman for the UN said that no final decision on this year’s curriculum had yet been made. Some 200,000 children are taught in schools run through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
    During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany murdered some six million Jews.
    However, the event’s significance is often disputed in parts of the Middle East where Israel is seen as the enemy and the Holocaust is seen as a tool used by Israel to justify its actions.

  25. i know ms. speiser and her family for many years-she and her family are committed zionists and they did not move from CA on a whim. they are both very moral people.

  26. i know ms. speiser and her family for many years-she and her family are committed zionists and they did not move from CA on a whim. they are both very moral people.

  27. oh, she and her family did not give “the limit of $2,300 to Obama’s election campaign last year.$2,300 to obama”. Her husband is not named david and they are not from tenafy, nj either.

  28. Dear Ms. Cobban,
    I do not mean this as a rant, and wish that I had a way of writing to you offline. I came to your website via a link in the New York Times. After looking through your writings, I would respectfully invite you to be self critical of your apparent slant on a very important and sensative issue.
    I would respectfully remind you that an individual interested in Human Rights and Jusitce, must, by definition be interested in the universality of those concepts. To criticize one group disproportionately, at the exclusion of other groups engaged in the conflict can not properly be considered a Just position. One is either against the Israelis, or against the Palestinians, or one is for both sides and opposed to the conflict, or the methods of the conflict, itself.
    Your critique of Israel’s actions in Gaza is not proportional to your critique of the Hamas fired rockets. It must be recalled that Hamas, in launching untargeted rockets, was purposely choosing a method of attack that could not distinguish between military and civilian personnel. You fail to mention the plight of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, or put forward a plan to deal with the refugees that would be created if the West Bank settlements were to be abandoned.
    In short, you seem to be much more concerned with the injustices perpetrated by one side, than the other. I ask you, does this not call into question whether you are pursuing the agenda of a certain group rather than Justice and Humanity themselves.
    I would be deeply flattered if you would take the time to answer me either on the blog or via email.
    Respectfully,
    Neil

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