Blame the Victims: Greek Cypriots and Palestinians

By George Gregoriou
The US used its military power to impose its policies on other countries, from 1793 to 1993, 242 times (140 times before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917). It intervened in Greece (1940s), Korea (1950s), Vietnam (1960s), Chile, Grenada (1983), Panama (1988), Nicaragua (1979), Iraq (1953, 1991 & 2003). It installed military juntas or right-wing governments in Iran (1953), Greece (1967), Chile (1973), etc. This is a short list, though Washington spent $7.5 trillion on militarism from 1940s to 1990s. Every time, the other side was at fault.

The communists were at fault in the Greek Civil War, Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam, Andreas Papandreou for US-installed junta in Greece (1967), the overthrow of Allende in Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship (1973), Noriega in Panama (he was on Bush¹s CIA payroll), the Contra war in Nicaragua was the fault of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Aristide in Haiti, Makarios for the Turkish invasion in Cyprus. And, of course, Milosevich and Saddam Hussein, for Yugoslavia and Iraq, respectively. The US even turned on its former allies (Al Queda, Talibans, Ossama bin Ladin, and Saddam) with vengeance.

Demonizing is the prelude to beating up on someone. The flag, patriotism, enemy threats, and militaristic posturing are raised to a high level at home, for mass consumption. Facts? Forget about facts. What matters is success, Washington¹s policy in place. Failure and defeat is not an option for a superpower. Against all odds, US leaders stay the course, invent new and better mouse traps to win, until the policy leads to a major disaster. Vietnam is a recent classic case. Iraq is next. There is no shortage of victims.

Short of direct military intervention, Washington has another option: leave the problem unsettled. It to the benefit of the US. Others are dying or suffering. Not Americans. Not that it matters. Poor people fight and die in wars. Corporations make money, lots of money. The Greek Cypriots and the Palestinians are cases in mind. Two regional bullies inflict pain on the weak. Washington provides the money and guns, and political cover at the UN. What are the benefits to the US? Turkey and Israel are the staunch allies, agents of the US. Strategically located, they serve their own interests in the region and US hegemonial policies to control the Eurasian corridor (Middle East to the Caspian Sea) where major oil and natural gas resources, the bloodlines of US imperialism and global capitalism, are located. This relationship is soŒincestuous¹, one has to ask: who calls the shots?

The demonized person in Cyprus was Makarios, the “Castro of the Mediterranean” or the “Red Priest.” Why? He opposed the partitionist policy of the Turko-Anglo-American axis. To impose its own solution on Cyprus, Washington needed a new regime in Greece. It imposed the US-NATO junta in Athens (1967) and gave it the green light to overthrow Makarios in 1974, and Turkey to invade and partition Cyprus. A de facto partition was imposed by Turkey. The occupation and ethnic cleansing has been in place since 1974.

For 33 years the Greek-Cypriot refused to capitulate to the Turkish occupation and ethnic cleansing. 180,000 Greek Cypriots were forced to leave the invading Turkish forces. The occupied north was colonized by 130,000 settlers from Turkey. Every attempt by the pro-Turkish axis to legitimized the “facts on the ground” (a two-state solution through the UN), was rejected by the Greek Cypriots. The latest, the Kofi Annan Plan, was rejected by 76% of the Greek Cypriots in April 2004. All proposals for a settlement were for a two-state solution and political equality (50-50) between the 18% Turkish Cypriot minority and the 80% Greek Cypriot majority, a permanent Turkish military presence on the island, and a permanent partition of the island along ethnic lines. President Papadopoulos was demonized for the collapse of the Annan Plan in 2004. This earned the Greek Cypriots the reputation as the bad guys, the obstacle to a “fair and practical settlement” (fair to the axis powers). Today, the Annan Plan is the only offer still standing, to be resuscitated with a new makeover. The alternative is no solution, that is, a permanent partition of Cyprus.

The Palestinian conflict follows the same pattern. It is the Israeli solution, or no solution and the 26 foot wall. Israel is a colonized/settler state of persecuted Jews from Europe, Eastern and Western, and waves of immigrations from all over, including Brooklyn and Jackson Heights. At the Balfour Declaration (1917), the population of Palestine was 4 Arabs to 1 Jew. The waves of immigrants, mostly poor, financed by wealthy Jews to return to Palestine, changed the ratio, though the Palestinians were always the vast majority. FDR allowed only 982 Jews to come to the US (out of 13 million Holocaust victims) and kept them penned behind barbed wire in a camp. Others were stranded in Cyprus, waiting to be transported to Palestine.

The UN partition of Palestine in 1948 was 55% (Israeli), and 45% (Palestinian). In the ensuing conflicts, the Israelis control 78% of the land. 700,000 Palestinians were forced to leave from what is Israel to day. The land ratio changed in the 1967 and 1973 wars. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, that is 100% of the partitioned land between the Jews and Palestinians. The US governments poured over $100 billions since the late 1940s, not only for the survival of Israel, but to maintain the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza since the 1967 and 1973 wars. Today, there are c. 400,000 to 500,000 settlers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Who gets the blame for the lack of peace? It used to be the Palestinian Authority. Now it is Hamas. That is, the terrorists who opposed the occupation. In a way, terrorism is privatization of violence, as opposed to state violence. State violence, by states allied to the US, is legitimate. State or private violence against imperialist interests is illegitimate. Hence, Palestinians, PLO or Hamas, are guilty, of terrorism and the lack of a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Hamas electoral victory (1/25/06) was expected. Fateh was involved in $700 million financial scandal, ruling fatigue through patronage and cronyism, splits within the Fateh party, and a failure to deliver on the Oslo peace process. Hamas, on the other hand, since its creation in 1887, offered social services to the poor, and opposed the Oslo peace process agreement.

The best plan for peace offered to the Palestinians was the Barak Plan. It provided 82% of the Palestinian land to be the Israeli state and 18% for the Palestinians, that is, to house 3 1/2 million Palestinians on a territory smaller than the island of Crete, six times as many people in Crete, and divided into dozens of little islands (to use the Crete analogy), with Israeli settlements and security zones throughout the so-called “Palestinian” state. The 26 foot high concrete wall, 400-mile-long when completed, would add another 10% of the Palestinian land under Israeli occupation. The northwest town of Qalqilya (70,000), for example, is surrounded by 11 miles of the wall, with only one exit. The once bustling main street now ends in the walls¹ wasteland, with the economy in ruins.

There is rubble everywhere in Palestine. Rubble is houses, roads, and the debris of daily lives, the rubble in words. This rubble all over the Palestinian territories has been going on for half-a-century. There is no town in which the houses are not bulldozed regularly. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) “does not exist to bring security to the citizens of Israel (as Sergio Yahni, an Israeli Refusenik put it), “it exists to guarantee the continuation of the theft of Palestinian land.” A Palestinian mother (witnessing a tear gas bomb exploding behind her) put this way: “For us the silence of the West is worse than their bullets.”

What one witnesses is rubble everywhere, children playing in rubble, shopkeepers selling used bicycle parts, families living in a room behind metal doors, the floor being the size of two bathtubs, the ceiling and walls fallen down (individuals born there), and abandoned buildings. These are images of shantytowns, with 60% unemployment, next to Israeli settlements with modern houses and amenities. These living conditions and the thousands in Israeli prisons are a sort of education, a strange sort of a university–very hard for us to imagine.

The Hamas victory is a slap in the face of the White House and its policy to control the Middle East, a NO to the Oslo peace process and the road map. It also an “excuse” for the Israel to impose its own settlement plan unilaterally (already being implemented), with Washington¹s support. It is a punishment for the Palestinians who democratically elected the jihadist Hamas which will not play by Israeli-US rules. The election of Hamas will not change the dynamics of power nor the balance of forces between Isrelis and Palestinians. John Berger (novelist, author of BBC TV series) put it this way: ³The inequality is between those who have the full arsenal of the latest technology to defend what they believe to be in their interest (apache helicopters, Merkava tanks, F-16s, etc.) and those who have nothing, save their names and a shared belief that justice is axiomatic. The stance of undefeated despair works like this. (See the Toufic Haddad & John Berger articles in ISR, March-April 2006).

The parallel between Turkey in Cyprus and Israeli in Palestine! Two regional rogue states allied to US. The result: tragedy and human suffering. Who is at fault? The victims. They saw no!

George Gregoriou
Professor, Critical Theory & Geopolitics
The Wm Paterson University
E-Mail: gregorioug@wpunj.edu