Israel mows the lawn

08-01-2014 • http://www.lrb.co.uk, Mouin Rabbani

The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process … And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with … a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress … The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.

In 2006 Weissglass was just as frank about Israel's policy towards Gaza's 1.8 million inhabitants: 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' He was not speaking metaphorically: it later emerged that the Israeli defence ministry had conducted detailed research on how to translate his vision into reality, and arrived at a figure of 2279 calories per person per day – some 8 per cent less than a previous calculation because the research team had originally neglected to account for 'culture and experience' in determining nutritional 'red lines'.