Monday, August 13, 2012

Zionising the Draft Modern History Curriculum 5

ACARA's 7th dot point reads as follows:

 "The attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, including: the 1949 Armistace, Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords (1973), Camp David Accords (1978/9) and Camp David Summit (2000), and the role of the United Nations."

ECAJ's Peter Wertheim suggests the following corrections...

"The seventh dot point refers to the 'Egyptian/Israeli Peace Accords (1973), Camp David Accords (1978/9)'. There were no 'Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords' in 1973. In fact, Egypt and Israel fought a war against each other in 1973 and eventually signed a Peace Treaty in 1979. The Camp David Accords were signed in 1978 (not 1978/9). We suggest that the necessary corrections be made."

... and adds:

"Further, in this item, which is dedicated to 'the attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis', the entire post-1993 Oslo process has been omitted, as has the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority under the Interim Agreement in 1995; Palestinian elections in 1996 and 2006; the Camp David Summit in 2000, the Taba Summit in January 2001, the Road Map of 2003 and the Olmert Peace offer of 2008. We suggest that these items be added."

Since Wertheim's referencing of the various highly mythologised milestones of the so-called peace (or Oslo) process (1991/1993-?) gives scope for students to be exposed to the false idea, peddled by the Zionist propaganda mill and uncritically broadcast in the ms media a thousand times since, that the process amounts essentially to a chronicle of missed opportunities by obdurate Palestinians unwilling to compromise, students need to be reminded of the following basics:

a) The Palestinian leadership's starting point was an acceptance of a Palestinian state on just 22% of their historic homeland, ie in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a quite unbelievable concession (Edward Said saw it as a Palestinian Versailles);

b) The Israelis, on the other hand, have spent the past 20 or so years of the process arguing that the Palestinians should accept less than this 22% in order to accommodate their illegally-built settlements.

(To take but the best known and most mythologised 'peace process' milestone, the Camp David II Summit of July 2000 (often spun as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's 'generous offer') amounted to offering the  Palestinians a capital in the village of Abu Dis (not in East Jerusalem); an Israeli insistence on an 'end of conflict' declaration, neutralising UN resolutions 194 and 242; the Israeli retention of its main settlement blocs in the West Bank;  allowing other Israeli settlements to remain in the Palestinian state with the option of living under Palestinian rule until further notice; ditto for Israeli assets in the Jordan Valley. With Israeli settlements, their lands, roads and defensive areas remaining in situ, the Palestinian mini-state would have become a mere parody of itself with only around 40-50% of the West Bank under its control. (See Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process,  Zalman Amit & Daphna Levit, 2011, pp 132-135))  

c) During this period, Israel's colonization of the West Bank with thousands upon thousands of settlers has proceeded apace, giving the lie to its international posturing as an earnest seeker after peace.

d) The US, which, under one Zionised administration after another, has facilitated the process, can in no way be described as an honest broker.

e) In short, what we are dealing with here is what Henry Siegman has correctly labelled "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

I'd suggest, therefore, that ACARA's dot point be amended as follows: 'The attempts to settle conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, including: UN resolutions 194 (1948) [conveniently omitted by Wertheim] and 242 (1967), the 1949 Armistace, the Egypt/Israeli Peace Accords (1978), and the US-brokered (UN-sidelined) 'peace process' (1991/1993-?).'

Further, given that the process' oft-stated goal of a viable and contiguous Palestinian mini-state has been rendered  increasingly unattainable by Israel's escalating colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories, there should be included room for discussion of a one-state solution to the 'conflict' with all that that entails for the dismantling of Israel's apartheid legislation and the transition from a 'Jewish' supremacist to a genuinely democratic state embracing both its Jewish and non-Jewish populations, including the returned Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967.

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