Biden Pulls the Rug Out From Under Israel’s Justifications for Its Occupation

T. Belman. Bar’el has a narrow vision. Yes Israel has played security as the reason she demanded  a permanent presence in Area C. This flows from Res 242 which entitles us to “secure” borders. But the real truth is that it belongs to us according to International Law and The Legality of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria according to International Law

It is imperative that all Israel leaders state categorically that the land is Sovereign Israeli lands and not Palestinian Occupied lands.

By Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

In his 2010 memoir “Decision Points,” former President George W. Bush wrote, “Afghanistan was the ultimate nation building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society,” because “a democratic Afghanistan would be a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists.”

Last month, prior to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, President Joe Biden took exception to Bush’s approach. “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,” he said. Instead, it was to eliminate Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and to reduce the threat of terrorism faced by the United States. This week, in addressing the American people, Biden declared that the “mission to degrade the terrorist threat of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and kill Osama bin Laden was a success.”

Bin Laden was indeed assassinated in 2011, but the degrading of the threat of terrorism – from the Taliban – still requires proof. What doesn’t need to be proven is that the United States has ceased being an occupying power in Afghanistan. It also looks like the Americans will soon be withdrawing entirely from Iraq, and with that put an end to the chapter of modern occupations by the United States. It will also mark the end of the ideological fraternity linking Israel and the United States as two occupying countries.

From now on, Israel will be the last Western country involved in an occupation – to which it attributes strategic security importance, in a not overly successful effort to conceal its ideological, historical and messianic-religious master plan.

Suddenly, in one fell swoop, Biden is stating that an occupation can only have concrete, security-related aims and when they’re achieved, it needs to end.

Nation building or democratization, the fulfillment of the vision of the prophets or economic exploitation – none of these are included in his user’s manual for occupiers. In the process, he has also pulled the rug out from under the justifications that Israel has created over many years for continuing to maintain the occupation.<
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This also recalls then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outrageous speech to the U.S. Congress in 2011 in which he explained to his hosts, “My friends, you don’t need to do nation building in Israel. We’re already built. You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it.”

But he was only telling part of the truth. Even 10 years after the speech, a period nearly all of which was with Netanyahu at the helm, Israel is still engaged in building itself as a nation, and its democracy is in need of reconstruction.

• A short distance between the occupiers and the occupied
• The world is watching Afghanistan in horror, but may still make Taliban legitimate partners
• America’s debacle in Afghanistan ends with the right decision, however ugly

Because unlike the American occupation, when it comes to its goal, for Israel the occupation is a central foundation for shaping Israeli society and culture, an essential component in building the Jewish nation, and in instilling a consciousness of the right to control another people and bring divine promises to fruition. It informs a colonialist policy and creates a distorted form of Israeli democracy.

With such a way of thinking, Israel cannot withdraw from the territories. It doesn’t have the luxury to withdraw that the United States does. That’s the basis of the fear over the American withdrawal and particularly of Biden’s remarks last month, when he said, “It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

That’s mainly heresy in Israel’s view, shaking the foundations of the Jewish nation and denying its right to an ideological occupation that it sees as completing the vision of its establishment as a state.

Because today, Biden is talking about the Afghans. Tomorrow, he’ll be saying the same things about the Palestinians. Israel can argue that the right of its citizens to run their country as they wish is not inferior to that of the Afghans. The problem is that Israel cannot sit and watch the United States leave it behind.