Supreme Court Decision on Property Seizure: State Sanctioned Descrimination

My take on the Supreme Court's decision allowing local governments to seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development:

It's understandable when a local government siezes private property to make way for a public work like a highway. The recipient of the land is the government and by extension the public. But, as a result of Supreme Court's ruling, anyone with big finances and strings to pull can, and will, be able to appropriate prime real estate for their own purposes. This decision creates a mechanism by which the state becomes a tool for the transfer of property from one private individual to another, preferred, private individual.

Once upon a time blacks rode in the back of busses, were forced onto undesirable real estate, on the basis of the color of their skin. Today, someone can be forced to give up their seat based upon the size of their bank account. Result: the ultimate winner isn't "common good", it's the person who will profit from the appropriated land. And, we enter an era of officially sanctioned descrimination.

Gaza Pullout

The Israelis and Palestinians can’t come to terms on the fate of the greenhouses to be left behind after Israel pulls out of Gaza this August. These greenhouses are a major source of income for the settlers (and a major business on national terms as well - greenhouse produce from the Jewish settlements in Gaza accounts for 20% of total agricultural exports from Israel). The greenhouses are also a significant source of employment for the Palestinians, several thousand of them work in them.

What's good economically for the Palestinians is ultimately good for Israel as well. Employed Palestinians are much more likely to be happy and satisfied Palestinians, and much less likely to occupy their time joining the active combat ranks of Hamas. Economic development is so crucial to the peaceful survival of both parties, it's unthinkable that the two sides won't arrive at some sort of compromise that will ensure the future operation of the greenhouses, and the immediate, hopefully seamless, transfer to the Palestinians. But, relations being suspect and paranoid between the two groups, no agreement has yet been reached, and the Israeli pullout is now less than two months away.

The Palestinians have their pride on the line. Leaders have said they don't care what happens to the greenhouses, just as long as the Israelis get out. The also very proud, angry right wing of Israeli society - the group that includes the settlers in Gaza - simply doesn't want the Palestinians to profit in any way from the work of the Israeli settlers - out of spite, these settlers would rather destroy the greenhouses than leave them to be worked and profited from by the Palestinians after they leave.

Of course, money often speaks louder than ideology, and the Israeli government has proposed paying the settlers higher compensation for their abandoned lands if the greenhouses are left in a workable state that can immediately start earning profits for the Palestinians. The related issue involving housing was simple - earlier this week the Israelis agreed to destroy all of their houses, schools, synagogues and evacuate their cemeteries (Palestinians have no use for these; the Israelis are rightly fearful of desecration). The Palestinians will be paid to clean up the rubble (the point being to get the Israelis out as quickly as possible: if Israel were responsible for the cleanup, soldiers would have to remain in Gaza long after the pullout date). This is a snub the settlers can agree to: as a last move, leave the Palestinians our mess to clean up.

But the settlers are caught in their own world of irreality. They refuse, or are incapable, of seeing how short sightedness on the greenhouses issue can only make life more difficult for Isarel and its relations with the Palestians. Some, who still refuse to accept the upcoming evacuation, still plant flowers adjacent to the high concrete walls that isolate them from the Palestinian population. Will they leave these flowers behind, or uproot them as well?

But the settlers aren’t the only ones to blame here, by any means. The Palestinians have adopted anger as the national passtime. Free moments are spent discussing how Israel is the root of all of their problems (similar conversations occur even in the most remote corners of the Arab world). When a watermain breaks in Gaza City, it is surely due to Israeli sabbotage. The Palestinians have selective memories, however. They seem to forget that their attempt to destroy Israel and its Jewish population, first in the war of Independence in 1948, next in the six-day war of 1967, resulted in their defeat. The Israelis did not initiate this tragedy and, with neighbors bent on their annihilation, they have had no choice but to control their borders as tightly as possible to ensure that future attempts at their destruction would never come to pass.

The Israelis are taking a huge, if inevitable risk in returning Gaza to Palestinian control. Without direct involvement of the Israeli military inside Gaza, the Palestinians will have much more latitude to bring in weapons under cover and launch close range attacks on Israeli settlements near the border. But Gazans have much to lose. Their attacks will surely bring retribution from the Israelis, a re-invasion of Gaza, and the accomplishments of the summer of 2005 will be erased, clocks will be reversed and the current, interminable, bloody stalemate will resume. Both sides will need to swallow hard if the pullback is to lead to a better future, an important marker on the road to peace.