Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(September 2005)
An ex-Brit gives his views - (without
fear or favor) - of the American Scene
The
Gaza Strip situation:
The impending pull out of approximately 9000 Israeli settlers from
the Gaza Strip, (who in many people’s opinion should never have been there
in the first place), does not a Palestinian State make. The Gaza Strip is a much-coveted
piece of land, which has a very desirable stretch of Mediterranean shoreline,
hence the occupation by Israeli settlers.
 Since the inception of the Israeli nation in 1948 (*1) the
Israelis have devoted great efforts, (financed mainly by American and British
monetary interests), to take over the whole of the Palestine, especially the
fertile coastal strip from Haifa in the north to Tel Aviv in the south, plus
the West Bank and Gaza which were previously owned in part and inhabited by Palestinian
Arabs.
(Pre-WW2 Germany called this type of occupation a desire to obtain Lebensraum).
I’m certainly not anti-Semitic, nor pro-Arab,
or vice versa, and I try to report things as I see them
and the arrogant holier then thou attitude of the Jewish
people in claiming to be God’s chosen people and
that Palestine is their God given land, plus their chaotic
demonstrations against ejection from the Gaza Strip settlements
does nothing to enhance their image in a world where
anti-Semitism is on the increase. (*2)
Even though they have occupied part of the Gaza Strip for the last thirty-eight
years and claim it to be their land, the Israelis have got to recognise that
compromises must be made and the dismantling of some of the many settlements
that they have built upon Arab land must be given back to its  rightful owners.
This is land that many people consider to be territory that the Israelis virtually
stole from the Palestinian Arabs during and after the 1967 war, and in order
for peace to be established between Jews and Arabs the stolen lands must be
returned to their rightful owners.
The American news organizations have given
full coverage to pathos of the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza
Strip and also from two West Bank settlements, but to my knowledge have conveniently
given little if any mention that there are at least one hundred and twenty
Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the building of more is continuing
and so far in this year alone an additional 9,000 or more Jewish settlers have
set up home in the West Bank.
If there is ever going to be two viable independent
states in Palestine, then the Israeli segregation wall
has got to be removed and much of the land that has been
confiscated and built upon by Israel in the last thirty-eight
years has got to be returned to the rightful ownership
of the Palestinian Arabs.
So now that the removal of the Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip is so
say complete what is the future for the area, will it become the building block
for a  new
Palestinian State, a Hamas controlled hot bed of terrorism, or without financial
aid to provide job opportunities for the Arab people will it become an extension
to the current slum conditions that many of them have lived in for years?
My crystal ball cannot provide a reliable answer -
so, what do you the readers think?
I know that I have
mentioned this situation a number of times in previous
newsletters and I have no regrets for doing so as this
is a very important issue if there is ever going to be
some resemblance of peace in Palestine/Israel and the
surrounding areas of the Middle East.
Your dollars at work. It would appear that the American
administration have furnished Israel with up to three
billion dollars to finance the Israeli withdrawal form
the Gaza Strip.
Relevant information:
(*1) Paragraph in the April 2002 edition of “View from America”,
entitled "The burial
of Sergeant Ernie Lambert" (Ramallah 1947).
(*2) Paragraph in the January 2001 edition of “View
from America”, entitled “A
brief history of Israel".
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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