Incrementalism

The Israeli policy has long been to build and expand Israeli settlements (colonies) on Palestinian land. Arab land is confiscated, Arabs evicted, and Arab homes bulldozed. These settlements then constitute a "reality on the ground," designed to guarantee permanent Israeli occupation. Thus, President Bush in his Middle East address, 7/17/2007, stipulated that peace talks must reflect "current realities," i.e. settlements. The settlement policy has been enabled by the favored US/Israeli peace process of Incrementalism, which affords time for building settlements and also ensures that the goal of peace is never attained.

As reported in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," US negotiator Dennis Ross insisted that the 1993 Oslo agreement included a promise by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to prevent violence. (p. 137) Even though the CIA and Israeli intelligence provided "assistance and training," and "heavy-handed" means were used, including torture and assassination, Arafat was never able to achieve the zero violence required. (p. 138-139) This of course was the whole point of the incrementalist policy! Meanwhile Israeli settlements kept multiplying and were connected by Israeli-only roads, creating the apartheid state. Swisher describes "Dennis Ross's slow moving incrementalist mediation," (p. 164), and this indeed led to the downfall of Arafat. His people had yearned for peace, but peace was not in the US/Israeli game plan. President Bush's "Road Map" is just another incrementalist policy devised so as to never reach a destination. Thus, it was not surprising that the Palestinians voted in Hamas in 2006; the Fatah party of Arafat and Abbas had only achieved settlement expansion.