Reject the False Peace Conference at Annapolis

At the urging of the UK and US governments, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, are expected to meet next week in Annapolis for peace talks. But only false hopes can be fed there; it is a planned travesty and a bitter pill for all who pray for peace. We should have been questioning if Zionist Israel is not the catalyst for US’ serial wars, there to stage a “peace conference” to divert attention from other USA pending war plans in Iran.

Is peace the intent? It is natural to wonder if the persons representing the well-funded Israeli Zionists on one side, and the persons representing the homeless and hungry Philistines, insultingly called “Palestinians,” have any options to which they can agree. 

One of the biggest obstacles is that Israel has broken every promise to freeze annexation of land on the Arab’s side of the green line by establishing squatter camp “settlements.” The green line is supposed to be the 1967 peace boundary, but the huge wall built by the Israelis entirely on Arab land has now further contracted the Arab territory.  And Israel continues to blockade and starve 1.4 million mostly Muslim Arab residents inside the fenced prison called Gaza.  Israel’s actions say to Arabs “agree now to accept what we allow you to keep, or we will take that, too.”  Christian Zionists chant in the background, “take it all, take it all, God gave it to you.”

Even the US and the UK agree Israel must stop its land pilferage.  It is not that everyone does not know its intent; it’s too obvious to ignore.  It can be embarrassing to have Israel as an ally when it steals right in front of the whole world; it is like having OJ Simpson as a legal client. An incident reminiscent of the OJ hotel hold-up is found in an obscure but verifiable story in the London Guardian dated November 16, which seems to settle the question of that lack of serious intent for peace on the Israeli side: Israel is using private real estate firms to peddle stolen property on the Philistine side of the Green line to buyers in London!

The Guardian story states: “At the Israel Property Exhibition at Brent Town Hall, North London last Sunday, one (Israeli) company, Anglo-Saxon Real Estate, was offering for sale properties in Maale Adumim and Maccabim.  Both West Bank settlements lie on the Palestinian side of the so-called Green Line, the pre-1967 boundary often cited as the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state.”

Readers must understand that Israel has, by brute military force, built a wall 26.5 feet high on the Philistine side of the Green Line fencing off thousands of acres of Arab land, even villages, and it is now busily colonizing the land it fenced off from the legal owners before the conference. According to the Guardian story: Homes in illegal Israeli settlements for sale at London expo, “Israeli companies are using UK property shows to sell housing in illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Guardian Unlimited can reveal….Properties in illegal settlements were also on offer at a fair at Finchley synagogue, in North London, last month.” The poster advertising the exhibition called on investors to “strengthen your portfolio and Israel’s future.” 

Revealingly, the Guardian story tells us Gavin Gross, director of public affairs at the Zionist Federation, which organized the Brent fair, stated, “While the promotion or sale of houses beyond Israel’s Green Line is a contentious subject for some, it is not prohibited in Britain.”   Mr. Gross does not deny he is fencing stolen property, only that English law does not apply.

Anglo-Saxon Realty’s  website reveals a name is also a brazen fraud, in that it claims to be “the largest marketter and broker of real estate in Israel with numerous offices from Nahariya in the north to Eilat in the south,” and operates through franchises, like some American realtors. 

Palestinian Acting President Abbas, who serves at the pleasure of Washington and not the Philistine people, has demanded, probably with tongue in cheek, that Israelis halt all settlement activity and that the whole West Bank as a condition of a future Palestinian state. According to the Guardian, “Kim Howells, the British minister for foreign and commonwealth affairs, has described settlement activity as an “obstacle to peace”. 

Stolen land is an obstacle to peace, yes, but there is a more basic problem. There is zero chance of peace because neither the Israeli people nor the Palestinians are represented at the conference.

Like his predecessor, Arial Sharon, Mr. Olmert has been accused of financial self-dealing and fraud against the public, and represents the Likud party, which is committed to wiping the Philistines from Gaza to Lebanon off the map. The majority of the Israeli public understands this but can do little about it, because the Zionists are in control of the Likud, which has the support of the Administration, the UK, and US Christian-Zionists. So the Israelis are as disenfranchised as their enemies, who we prefer to call “the Philistines.”

Dwellers in the land of the Philistines are not represented by Mahmoud Abbas because they voted him out as president in the supervised 2006 elections.  By a large margin, they rejected his PLO party in favor of delegates of the Hamas party.  The reason Abbas is at the conference is that the US and Israel blockaded Gaza and have taken every possible measure to strangle the Philistines in order to force them to turn away from Hamas. Hamas’ leaders eventually agreed to allow the defeated Abbas to remain on as “President” as a peace gesture.  The Philistines are denied land, freedom, food, employment, water, electricity, and their very right to life itself.  And they do not have their own chosen representation at the Annapolis conference.

According to a Reuters News account on November 12, “The Israeli army arrested two Hamas legislators, it has now arrested and holds more than half of Hamas’ elected 74 legislators in prisons, so it can no longer assemble a majority.”  This is Israel’s way of arranging to have Mr. Abbas as opposition, and not Hamas, its democratically elected legislators are denied the right to go to the assembly and fire Abbas.*

Given these circumstances, the conference must be called what it is–a public show to stall peace while hunger and deprivation take their toll on the Philistines.  All honest and legitimate parties should withdraw from the conference and call it what it is, a photo op for Israel while it continues to whittle away at the little that is left of the 1967 green line boundary of the country that never was.  Israel’s lack of intent for peace is exposed at the Trade Show in London, where commercial realtors openly peddle stolen property land inside the Green Zone, and its suppression of Hamas, the rightful elected government of the “Philistines.”  What more evidence is required?

What is next after Annapolis fails?

In the interest of all people who seek peace the Middle East, Zionism must be overcome, both in “Christian” churches, and in Israel where it should be replaced with a single democratic state where all people have equal rights and enjoy the God-given right to exist.  Overcoming Zionism is the title of an excellent new book written by Jewish author, Joel Kovel published by Pluto Press, London, which correctly asserts, “No state has an absolute right to exist.”  I agree.

This author has but one suggestion to add to Dr. Kovel.  The Arab people of the region might consider adopting the descriptive name “Philistines” to replace the pseudonym “Palestinians” which was given to them by their Roman, British, and now their Zionist occupiers.  The word “Palestine” has been irreparably corrupted by the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat. Zionist Israel, supported by Christian-Zionists, has no honest intention that there ever be an independent state of Palestine.  Israeli published maps long ago named the West Bank and Gaza “Judea and Samaria.”

Both Jews and Arabs should be made full citizens of a restored homeland that might be called Israel-Philistia.  The racist Zionist state of Israel has no moral right to exist, as Jewish writer Joel Kovel points out, and neither does the non-state of Palestine have such a right.  But every man, woman and child does have a right to exist–a right that comes not from a map but from God.  Racist Zionist Israel and Palestine should both be wiped from the face of the map. The civilized world must not accept the planned killing of even one more Philistine or Israeli, nor should we accept any state based on the racist concept of a supreme people, “a master race” as one man once called the non-Jewish Arians of his native land.