Wat intensieve landbouw ons echt kost

Wat intensieve landbouw ons echt kost

Landbouw De landbouw in Nederland moet veranderen, schrijft Carla Koen . Want er zijn nog veel meer nadelen dan de stikstofcrisis doet vermoeden.

Illustratie Hajo

De stikstofuitdaging heeft de discussie over de landbouw in Nederland weer doen oplaaien. Talloze bouwprojecten liggen stil, boeren protesteren. Maar de problemen die samenhangen met de Nederlandse landbouw zijn vele malen groter dan de stikstofkwestie doet vermoeden. Het gaat niet alleen om natuurgebieden, biodiversiteit, en klimaat, maar ook om waterwinning voor nu en in de toekomst en de volksgezondheid.

Carla Koen is hoogleraar technologie, strategie en entrepreneurship aan de TIAS School for Business and Society, Tilburg University. Lid van de voormalige Taskforce Verdienvermogen Kringlooplandbouw.

De verborgen kosten van de Nederlandse landbouw of kosten die gedragen worden door de Nederlandse bevolking voor het behoud van de exportpositie van de landbouw, zijn gigantisch. Bestuurders op landelijk, provinciaal en gemeentelijk niveau moeten hun verantwoordelijkheid nemen en de belangen van de Nederlandse burgers en hun natuurlijk kapitaal behartigen.

Het is nodig dat de Nederlandse boeren en hun belangenbehartigers hun moreel kompas hervinden en het rentmeesterschap (weer) omarmen. 

Net als andere sectoren en bedrijven moet landbouw gehouden worden aan de principes van ‘people, planet, profit’. En net als andere sectoren moet de landbouw veranderen om toekomst te hebben in Nederland, Europa, en de wereld.

Data van de GGD’s en interviews met artsen in Nederland bevestigen dat de luchtkwaliteit in Nederland veel schade aan de gezondheid veroorzaakt. Meer dan in andere provincies en gecorrigeerd voor intensiteit van verkeer en roken worden in de zogenoemde ‘veeprovincies’ (Noord-Brabant, Limburg, Gelderland en Overijssel) hogere percentages waargenomen van gezondheids-problemen die hiermee kunnen samenhangen.

Dit geldt voor acute tekortkomingen in de longfunctie bij volwassenen, astmatische kinderen, longontsteking, COPD, het aantal invasieve luchtwegtumoren, en sterfte door ziekten van de luchtwegen.

Aandoeningen van luchtwegen

De wettelijke normen voor fijnstof en stikstofdioxide in Nederland beschermen niet tegen gezondheidsschade en zijn fors hoger dan de advieswaarden van de Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO). Behalve met aandoeningen van de luchtwegen is fijnstof ook in verband gebracht met andere risico’s, zoals hoge bloeddruk en beroertes. West-Brabant, Gelderland en Limburg scoren ook in deze statistieken hoog. De vee-provincies hebben ook een bovengemiddeld aantal nierdialyse-patiënten.

Lees ook:Stikstofcrisis biedt kansen voor een duurzamer Nederland

Hoewel de Q-koorts-epidemie tussen 2007 en 2010 in Nederland de grootste was die ooit ter wereld is beschreven, lijkt deze door velen alweer vergeten. Het is een voorbeeld van een zogeheten zoönotische uitbraak, veroorzaakt door het wonen in de nabijheid van een geitenhouderij. De patiënten met Q-koorts kwamen vooral uit het zuidoosten van het land. Tussen 2007 en 2009 raakten 50.000 tot 100.000 Nederlanders besmet. 

Op dit moment zijn naar schatting 95 van deze patiënten overleden en ervaren chronische Q-koortspatiënten verminderde kwaliteit van leven. Een schatting van de totale kosten gedragen door de Nederlandse bevolking als gevolg van de Q-koorts bedraagt gemiddeld 500 miljoen euro. De langere-termijnkosten van Q-koorts zijn echter nog steeds onbekend.

Antimicrobiële resistentie door gebruik van antibiotica in vee is een steeds groter wordende zorg voor de volksgezondheid. Nederland staat waar het antibioticagebruik in vee betreft op een middenpositie in de EU. Sinds 2014 echter neemt gebruik van antibiotica niet verder af. Ook zijn er bedrijven met een antibioticumgebruik dat vele malen hoger is dan het gemiddelde voor de betreffende sector – dit komt voor bij alle diersoorten. 

Bij vleeskalveren is het gebruik van antibiotica nog steeds te hoog. Van melkgeiten en schapen wordt het antibioticumgebruik nog niet geregistreerd. In Noord-Brabant en Limburg moet structureel actie worden ondernomen om het binnenkomen van MRSA – resistente bacteriën ontstaan door antibioticagebruik in varkens – in ziekenhuizen terug te dringen.

Overbemesting en nitraat

Een verdere aanwijzing voor toenemende antimicrobiële resistentie in Nederland is het feit dat in 2016 ten opzichte van 2015 meer ‘uitbraken’ in zorginstellingen gemeld worden van bacteriën die zelfs resistent zijn tegen de antibiotica die als laatste redmiddel worden gebruikt. Artsen geven aan dat we waarschijnlijk nog voor dertig jaar antibiotica hebben. We gebruiken nu reeds reserve-antibiotica.

Met deze wetenschap kunnen we niet anders dan concluderen dat opeengepakt vee houden ongezond is voor het vee en voor de mens die in Nederland gedwongen dicht op het vee leeft. Het is duidelijk dat Nederland naar veel minder vee moet.

Lees ook:‘Niet de overheid, maar de boeren hebben de regie’

Intensieve veeteelt zorgt ook voor vervuiling van het oppervlakte- en dieptewater door overbemesting, met als gevolg te hoge concentraties nitraat. Te veel nitraat in drinkwater kan leiden tot de bloedaandoening methemoglobinemie maar ook tot darmkanker. De hoeveelheid nitraat in drinkwater is in Nederland beneden de norm die de WHO hanteert, minder dan 50 pm/l. De literatuur geeft echter aan dat kanker kan ontstaan beneden de lagere EU-norm, 25 pm/l.

Het te hoge nitraatgehalte in oppervlaktewater geeft in Nederland regionaal problemen met de drinkwaterwinning. Ondanks de Nitraatrichtlijn sloegen waterbedrijven in 2017 alarm geslagen over de bedreiging van de drinkwaterwinning door mest. Zuivering wordt steeds duurder en complexer. In Nederland wordt op ruim tweehonderd punten grondwater gewonnen voor drinkwater. Op 89 van die punten zijn tussen 2000 en 2015 hogere doses meststoffen gemeten dan wettelijk toegestaan. Er zijn de afgelopen jaren 21 waterwinpunten gesloten omdat het water zo vervuild was dat zuiveren te kostbaar werd.

Gifstoffen in grondwater

Doordat het lang duurt voordat meststoffen het grondwater bereiken en dat water weer opgepompt is, verwachten de drinkwaterbedrijven nog decennialang ‘mestgerelateerde problemen’ te ondervinden.

Ook de toepassing van chemische gewasbescherming heeft negatieve gevolgen voor de waterkwaliteit en biodiversiteit in Nederland. Bij de drinkwaterwinning worden vaak te hoge hoeveelheden gifstoffen in het grond- en oppervlaktewater aangetroffen. Mijn werk met de chemische industrie leerde me dat Nederlandse akker- en tuinbouwers gemiddeld twee tot drie keer meer gewasbeschermingsmiddelen gebruiken dan collega’s in andere landen. Een verklaring hiervoor is er niet.

Lees ook:Ja, er is onzekerheid over de metingen, maar niet over de conclusie

De hoop is dat de stikstofcrisis bestuurlijk verantwoordelijken, boeren en hun belangenorganisaties tot inzicht doen komen dat Nederland en zijn bevolking een andere landbouw verdienen. Een landbouw die in evenwicht is met het land, het natuurlijke kapitaal en de volksgezondheid. Een landbouw die niet voorbijgaat aan de noden van de toekomstige Nederlanders.

Correctie

In dit artikel stond eerder door een fout van de eindredactie dat dat Q-koorts een zoötomische uitbraak was. Dit is veranderd in zoönotische.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/10/16/wat-intensieve-landbouw-ons-echt-kost-a3977016

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Mijn Commentaar  :

1.  In de (in het artikel weergegeven) opsomming door Koen van alle majeure schadefactoren voor economie en gezondheid (van mens en dier) als gevolg van de intensieve landbouw in NL mis ik node de broeikasgas-componenten CO2 en Methaan.

2.  In plaats van het voeren van (ook landbouw-) beleid op onderdelen - vaak volgend op incidenten - zullen de landelijke, provinciale en gemeentelijke overheden op korte termijn een integrale inventarisatie moeten maken van de voornoemde schadelijke invloed van de intensieve landbouw.

3.   Pas daarna kan een totaalvisie worden ontwikkeld en aan de hand daarvan beleidsmaatregelen worden ontworpen en geïmplementeerd.

4. Daarmee wordt eveneens voorkomen dat de (hoofd-) verantwoordelijke beroepsgroep zich steeds weer opnieuw geconfronteerd ziet met ad hoc wetgeving op onderdelen.  

5.  Het zal daarbij onontkoombaar zijn, dat de ontwikkeling en uitvoering van het NLse landbouwbeleid niet zoals nu, standaard aan beroepsgroep-gerelateerde personen wordt uitbesteed.

6.   Niet alleen de economische, gezondheids- en milieuschade door intensieve landbouw zal in de beleidsvorming (en handhaving) tot uitdrukking dienen te worden gebracht, maar ook de middel- en lange termijn schade die Nederland oploopt en bijdraagt als gevolg van de invloed van voornoemde negatieve factoren op de globale menselijke habitat. 

Revealed: rightwing push to ban criticism of Israel on US campuses

The Guardian - Back to home  

Revealed : 

Rightwing push to ban criticism of Israel on US campuses...

Documents seen by Guardian show fresh attack on university debate under the guise of prohibiting antisemitism

Ed Pilkington in New York


Thu 17 Oct 2019


Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. First amendment advocates see the potential spread of such laws as a major threat to free speech on campuses. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters


Rightwing activists are attempting to spread new laws across Republican-controlled states that would ban criticism on public university campuses of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territory.

Pro-Israel and conservative lobbyists are encouraging state lawmakers to outlaw antisemitism in public education, from kindergarten through to graduate universities. But the proposed definition of antisemitism is so wide that, in addition to standard protections against hate speech towards Jews, it would also prohibit debate about the human rights violations of the Israeli government.

First amendment advocates see the potential spread of such laws as a major threat to free speech on campuses.

Among the activities that would be prohibited by the new laws are human rights investigations focusing specifically on Israel. Also banned would be any speech “demonizing Israel by … blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions” or “delegitimizing Israel by … questioning Israel’s right to exist”.

The push began at a conference in August held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, Alec, a conservative network which has a long history of propagating rightwing policies at state level through model bills. The group, dubbed a “bill mill”, has spearheaded attacks on trade unions, opposition to Obamacare, voter suppression measures and legislation blocking efforts to address the climate crisis.

The meeting at Alec is disclosed in emails obtained under a freedom of information request by David Armiak, research director for the watchdog Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and shared with the Guardian. They show that several Republican state lawmakers joined pro-Israeli lobbyists in Austin, Texas to discuss disseminating new restrictions on speech relating to Israel on campuses across the heartlands.

The private meeting was led by Randy Fine, a Republican from Florida who was instrumental in passing in May the first state law outlawing antisemitism in public education. A week later he emailed fellow participants under the subject line: Anti-Semitism Bill Discussed at Alec.

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Fine has faced controversy in the past over his aggressive opposition to public debate about Israel. Earlier this year he called a local Jewish constituent a “Judenrat” because the man had attended a forum titled: Palestine/Israel, Opening the Dialogue.

The term “Judenrat” was used in the second world war to castigate Jewish collaborators with the Nazis.

Also attending the meeting at Alec were lawmakers from South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as representatives of two pro-Israel lobbying groups. “It was great to see you at the Alec conference last week in Austin and to briefly share the work we did in passing HB 741, the strongest antisemitism bill ever passed in the United States,” Fine wrote to them.

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 Former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, speaks at the American Legislative Exchange Council in 2013. Photograph: M. Spencer Green/Associated Press

The Florida Republican encouraged peers in other state assemblies to work with one of the lobbying groups, the Israeli-American Coalition for Action, which he said had been “instrumental in providing outside support as I pushed the bill”. In a separate email to the group, IAC for Action’s Joseph Sabag said that he and his legal team had taken Fine’s Florida bill and “refined it into a model that can be brought elsewhere. I urge you to contact me or Rep Alan Clemmons and take advantage of our policy support if you are considering filing a bill.”

Clemmons is Alec’s national chairman. A Republican representative from South Carolina, he introduced a similar antisemitism definition into a budget bill in his state in 2018.

Sabag told the Guardian that it would be incorrect to suggest that IAC for Action was encouraging state lawmakers to adopt the definition. He said his organization “provides legal analysis and policy resources in response to requests from legislators who wish to draw upon our subject matter expertise. Antisemitism is a hot issue right now, so of course there are many who are naturally interested.”

He also denied that Alec was involved in the legislative push. “No such bills have been presented to them for model consideration, and they’ve held no policy discussions on the matter or taken any position.”

The emails seen by the Guardian, he said, “emerged out of an after-hours private gathering of friends and colleagues, not an Alec function and Alec held no such forum or discussion at its conference”.

The Guardian asked Alec to comment, but received no reply.

The emails give a clear indication of the motive behind the push for antisemitism bills – countering criticism of Israel on campuses.

Fine writes that under the new laws “antisemitism (whether acts by students, administrators or faculty, policies and procedures, club organizations etc) [will] be treated identically as how racism is treated. Students for Justice in Palestine is now treated the same way as the Ku Klux Klan – as they should be.”

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is a leading pro-Palestinian student activist group that campaigns in at least 80 campuses for an international boycott of Israel in protest at its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It has been at the forefront of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in the US that has already prompted a number of states to pass new laws penalizing such boycotts of Israel to the dismay of free speech advocates.

Sabag was asked by the Guardian about the comparison drawn by Fine between SJP and the violent white supremacist group the KKK. He said: “SJP is one of America’s most prominent anti-Israel propaganda groups and has material connections to organizations designated by the US Justice Department as terrorism co-conspirators. In the course of promoting BDS, or national-origin based discrimination against Israel, SJP members typically employ classic antisemitic themes and blood libels.”

He added: “They also employ gross misrepresentations of Zionism, Israel’s Jewish national character and government policies. This messaging strategy aims to facilitate the development of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish perspectives among unsuspecting and unknowledgeable audiences.”

Raphael Eissa, a National SJP Steering Committee member, dismissed Sabag’s depiction. He said that SJP was a “an independent grassroots network of everyday students and recent alum” that regularly endures “coordinated fear mongering campaigns and racist PR tactics”.

The Guardian spoke to a student member of SJP at University of California, Berkeley who insisted on anonymity because of the harassment she had experienced on campus. Last November she was one of the SJP organizers of a vigil to mourn jointly the 11 Jewish victims of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in – the deadliest attack against Jews in America – and three Palestinian children who were killed that same October weekend from an Israeli airstrike.

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 A man pauses at the memorials set up for each of the 11 people killed at the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Jared Wickerham/EPA

“We wanted to make a statement about solidarity between our two communities, that we were all in mourning,” said the student, describing herself as an anti-Zionist Jew from a strongly Zionist family background.

After SJP advertised the vigil on its Facebook page, the student said she came under a barrage of attacks on social media accusing her of being antisemitic. She said she found the charge upsetting and ironic.

“As a Jewish student, I deeply care about antisemitism because it affects me and my family personally, and because it informs my concern about oppression of Jews and Palestinians and all people – it’s why I do what I do.”

In the face of such opprobrium, the Berkeley branch of SJP cancelled the public vigil and held it privately off-campus.

The push for new state laws comes at a time of increasing antisemitic attacks in the US and around the world. The latest FBI figures for 2017 recorded a 37% increase on the previous year in antisemitic hate crimes in the US, up to 938 incidents. Other databases put the figure substantially higher.

In the context of this rising violence, much of the text of the Florida antisemitism bill is non-contentious. It outlaws a number of anti-Jewish tropes such as “accusing Jews as a people of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust”.

But critics say such uncontroversial material sits alongside clauses in the bill that would censor debate on Israeli government action.

Liz Jackson, a staff attorney with Palestine Legal that represents campaigners for Palestinian rights in the US who is herself Jewish, said: “It’s riding off the universally agreed idea that antisemitism is bad and must be stopped at a time of a frightening resurgence in white supremacist violence. It’s extremely cynical to masquerade as fighting antisemitism when you are, in fact, shutting down criticism of Israel.”

The clauses relating to Israel in the definition of antisemitism now being disseminated to several states emanates from a 2005 text from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). Ken Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate who was a lead drafter of the EUMC text, said it was intended to facilitate reporting of antisemitic attacks across Europe.

“It was never intended to suppress discussion of ideas on campuses.”

Stern said that attempts to silence opposition was happening on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian divide on US campuses. “It’s a battlefield right now.”

But, he added, he was concerned “about the attempt to curtail free speech among students – the whole idea is to encourage them to wrestle with new ideas, particularly those they find disturbing”.

Sabag dismissed first amendment fears about the new antisemitism bills. “To suggest that such laws violate first amendment rights is an outright falsehood that serves the purposes of anti-Israel and antisemitic forces. The Florida law addresses criminal and discriminatory conduct that is not protected by the first amendment, and it includes explicit provisions that the law is not to be construed in any way that would violate free speech.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/16/conservative-activists-want-to-outlaw-antisemitism-in-public-education-why-is-that-a-bad-thing

Israel has never had any intention of honouring either the 1947 Partition Plan or 1967 borders

October 10, 2019 at 5:32 pm | Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, International Organisations, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, UN,

Thomas Suárez

Author of "State of terror : How terrorism created modern Israel"

sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if re-elected in last month’s General Election, eliciting outrage from world leaders. However, that “promise” to usurp not just the West Bank, but all of Palestine, is century-old news, an ongoing promise being kept, and no international outrage has ever really mattered in any case.

A well-worn chapter of Israel’s creation myth explains its conquests thus: When in November 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into two states (General Assembly Resolution 181), Israel’s founders embraced the offer with gratitude, whereas the Palestinians scoffed at it and attacked the fledgling “Jewish state”.

The result of this alleged Palestinian intransigence? The “fundamental fact”, as the pro-Israel spin-doctors at CAMERA put it, is that had the Palestinians accepted partition, there would have been a Palestinian state since 1948, “and there would not have been a single Palestinian refugee”.

READ: Incoming EU foreign policy chief stresses importance of ‘two-state solution’

This is more than bizarre rationalisation for seven decades of imperialism and ethnic cleansing; it is historical invention. The Zionist movement never had any intention of honouring any agreement that “gave” it less than all of Palestine. Mainstream leaders like the “moderate” Chaim Weizmann and iconic David Ben-Gurion feigned acceptance of partition because it handed them a weapon powerful enough to defeat partition: statehood.

Irgun broadside condemning Partition, 1947 [Thomas Suárez]

When Britain agreed to become Zionism’s benefactor, codified with the ambiguous 1917 Balfour Declaration, its negotiators knew full well that the Zionists planned to usurp and ethnically cleanse Palestine, and that the Declaration’s assurance to the contrary was a lie. As Lord Curzon complained, Zionism’s propagandists “sang a different tune in public” — a tune that the major media continue to hum today.

By 1919, activists like Weizmann were already exasperated at Britain’s failure to establish a Zionist state from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan— as a start — and so pushed for “a comprehensive emigration scheme” of non-Jews to get the ethnic cleansing over and done with. The public lie remained safeguarded; British Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen assured Weizmann that the true plan is “still withheld from the general public”. Nor was the public informed when the USA’s King-Crane Commission went to the region that year and discovered for themselves that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.” The Commission Report was buried.

It was in 1937 that the turmoil caused by dispossession first led the British to propose partitioning the land. Ben-Gurion saw partition’s hidden potential: “In the wake of the establishment of the state,” he told the Zionist Executive, “we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.” He made the same promise to his son Amos.

When Ben-Gurion, Weizmann and others met in London in 1941 to discuss future plans, the cynical disconnect was chilling. Would “Arabs” have equal rights in the “Jewish state”? Of course, but only after there were none left. Would partition be acceptable? Certainly, if the line were the River Jordan (meaning 100 per cent of Palestine for Israel), expandable into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan itself. One attendee challenged the Zionists; the industrialist Robert Waley Cohen accused them of following Nazi ideology.

WATCH: Ex-general likens Israel to Nazi Germany

By 1944, the British knew that opposition to partition had “hardened throughout all shades of Jewish [Zionist] opinion,” and new resolutions among the settlers’ leaders placed “special emphasis on the rejection of partition.” But partition’s failure would become the Palestinians’ problem. The British would go home.

Ben-Gurion described statehood as a “tool”, not an “end”, a distinction “especially relevant to the question of boundaries,” which would instead be determined by “seizing control of the country by force of arms.” Scarcely any pretence was made outside the UN’s walls: Zionist Organisation of America President Abba Silver publicly condemned any mention of Partition and demanded an “aggressive and militant line of action” to take all of Palestine. The Jewish Agency’s militias were busy doing precisely that, frenetically establishing strongholds in areas that the UN was expected to allocate to the Palestinians.

Abba Hillel Silver, speaking at the UN on behalf of the Jewish Agency, arguing for a Zionist state

“The peace of the world,” warned future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin warned the UN in the summer of 1947 — after Zionist terrorism had already reached Europe and Britain — will be threatened if “the Hebrew [Biblical] homeland” is not given in full to the Zionists. “Whatever might be signed or pledged” at the United Nations, the Jewish Standard warned, would be annulled by the “power and passion opposed to Partition” of “uncompromising resolve.”

This mass fanaticism to “restore” an ancient kingdom and be its imagined population was the result of what might fairly be described as brainwashing. Already by 1943, US intelligence warned that Zionism was nurturing “a spirit closely akin to Nazism, [to] regiment the community [and] resort to force” to achieve its goals. Similar warnings of Zionism’s fascistic stranglehold over Jews came from individuals in the midst of it, among them J.S. Bentwich, Senior Inspector of Jewish Schools, and Hebrew University president Judah Magnes.

READ: Trump’s anti-Semitic comments have a history in Zionism

The day before Resolution 181 was passed, the CIA warned again that the Zionists will ignore partition and “wage a strong propaganda campaign in the US and in Europe” for more territory. Then as today, though, Americans were kept uninformed: “Americans,” noted US intelligence figure Kermit Roosevelt in 1948, do not realise “the extent to which partition was refused acceptance as a final settlement by the Zionists in Palestine.”

Ironically, it was because the UN never believed that the Zionists would honour partition’s borders that it “gave” them a disproportionately large land area, hoping this might delay their inevitable aggression. But barely was the ink dry when the mayor of Tel Aviv —the presumed capital of the new state — announced that his city “would never be the Jewish capital”. It would be Jerusalem, a direct breach of the UN Partition resolution, which had designated it as an international zone. The Jewish Agency also said that “a number of national institutions” would be in Jerusalem.

Henry Kattan, speaking at the UN on behalf of the Arab Higher Committee, arguing for Palestinian independence.

The duplicitous attitude toward their UN “victory” was barely veiled. Whether the “liberal” Haaretz or the Zionist newspaper Haboker, the message was indistinguishable: “The youth of the Yishuv must bury deep in their hearts the fact that the frontiers have not been fixed for all eternity,” as Haboker put it. However long it takes, the rest will be “returned to the fold”.

Israeli statehood assured, CIA warnings grew more ominous: Zionist operatives were now impersonating US military and American Airlines personnel. Former US Senator Guy Gillette was openly working for the terror gang Irgun and pushed for blanket recognition of Israeli sovereignty over any lands that its militias could conquer.

Jerusalem remained Israel’s most urgent concern. Whereas land under “Arab” rule could eventually be usurped, a Jerusalem administered by the UN might not. And so when UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte composed a new plan for peace in the autumn of 1948, the terror gang Lehi warned him against a “non-Jewish administration” there. However, Bernadotte kept Resolution 181’s international zone, and the next day Lehi, under future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, assassinated him.

By the end of 1948 Israel had stolen more than half of the land it had “agreed” to leave for the Palestinians, and refused to budge. This was the origin of the misnomer “1967 borders”; in truth they are the ceasefire line. Partition was a charade, and Palestinian negotiators were right to dismiss it, but their honesty was, from the Machiavellian standpoint, a tactical blunder which the Zionists were counting on. In short, Israel has never had any intention of honouring either the 1947 Partition Plan or the 1967 borders. So-called Greater Israel across all of historic Palestine and beyond has always been Zionism’s objective.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20191010-israel-has-never-had-any-intention-of-honouring-either-the-1947-partition-plan-or-1967-borders/