The Road Map to Nowhere:
Israel/Palestine Since 2003
by Tanya Reinhart

From Amazon:

An urgent and searing exposé of the "peace process" by a prominent Israeli thinker. The Road Map to Nowhere is a devastating and timely book, essential to understanding the current state of the Israel/Palestine crisis and the propaganda that infects its coverage. Based on analysis of information in the mainstream Israeli media, it argues that the current road map has brought no real progress and that, under cover of diplomatic successes, Israel is using the road map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories. Exploring the Gaza pullout of 2005, the West Bank wall and the collapse of Israeli democracy, Reinhart examines the gap between myth—the Israeli leadership's public affairs achievement that has led the West to believe that a road map is in fact being implemented—and bitter reality. Not only has nothing fundamentally changed, she argues, but the Palestinians continue to lose more of their land and are pushed into smaller and smaller enclaves, surrounded by the new wall constructed by Sharon.

This is a good overview of the last three years of the Israeli destruction of the Palestinians. It's not based on secret documents but on published accounts in the Israeli press. Unfortunately the most telling accounts are in the Hebrew only press. The published English versions, such as Haaretz, are often whitewashed accounts. A must read.

Road Map To Nowhere

This is the final chapter of Road Map to Nowhere – Israel/Palestine since 2003 The Struggle: Expanding the Prison Cells With Israel turning the West Bank into a system of prisons, the most immediate question is how this process can be resisted, stopped and reversed. As Noam Chomsky has said, in many areas of the world today the struggle is to expand, or sometimes even just to maintain the size of the prison cells.[1] For years now the Palestinians have lived in a prison system monitored by Israel, but, as we have seen, Israel’s policy under Sharon and his successors is to shrink the area of the cells still further. Now, the focus of the struggle is on preventing the completion of this prison system – on pushing away the narrowing prison walls. Largely unknown and unreported, since 2003 a new form of popular resistance has developed along the route of the wall in the West Bank. Palestinian farmers whose land is being robbed, together with Israeli opponents of the occupation, stand day after day in front of the bulldozers and the Israeli army. Along this route, the story of the other Israel-Palestine is being born. It deserves a book of its own, but I would like to tell here just some of its inspiring history, focusing on how it has developed on the Israeli side.

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Road Map to Nowhere
Eric Hazan interviews Tanya Reinhart

Your book covers the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in the last three years, a period dominated by Ariel Sharon's leadership. You argue that during this period it became evident that in Israel, decisions are taken by the military, rather than the political echelons. Can you elaborate? Israeli military and political systems have always been closely intertwined, with generals moving from the army straight to the government, but the army’s political status was further solidified during Sharon’s ascendancy. Senior military officers brief the press (they capture at least half of the news space in the Israeli media), and brief and shape the views of foreign diplomats; they go abroad on diplomatic missions, outline political plans for the government, and express their political views on any occasion. In contrast to the military stability, the Israeli political system is in a gradual process of crumbling. In a World Bank report of April 2005, Israel is found one of the most corrupt and least efficient in the Western world, second only to Italy in the government corruption index, and lowest in the index of political stability. Sharon personally was associated, together with his sons, with severe bribery charges, that have never reached the court. The new party that Sharon founded, Kadima, and which now heads the government, with Olmert as Sharon's successor, is a hierarchical agglomeration of individuals with no party institutions or local branches. Its guidelines, published in November 22 2005, enable its leader to bypass all standard democratic processes and appoint the list of the party’s candidates to the parliament without voting or approval of any party body. The Labor party has not been able to offer an alternative. In the last two Israeli elections, Labor elected dovish candidates for prime ministry Amram Mitzna in 2003, and Amir Peretz in 2006. Both were initially received with enormous enthusiasm, but were immediately silenced by their party and campaign advisors and by self imposed censorship, aiming to situate themselves “at the center of the political map”. Soon, their program became indistinguishable from that of Sharon. Peretz even declared that on “foreign and security” matters he will do exactly as Sharon (but he will also bring a social change). Thus these candidates helped convince the Israeli voters that Sharon’s way is the right way. In the last years, there has never been a substantial left-wing opposition to the rule of Sharon and the generals, since after the elections, Labor would always join the government, providing the dovish image that the generals need for international show. With the collapse of the political system, the army remains the body that shapes and executes Israel’s policies. During the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon (not covered in the book), it became common knowledge in Israel that the military is leading the government, with Peretz, now Defense minister, often appearing on tv looking like a puppet operated by the generals surrounding him.

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