Some occupations are more equal than others.



The preamble to the US-sponsored Road Map to Middle East Peace, recently accepted, albeit with reservations, by the Israeli government, contains a reference to an Israeli "occupation" beginning in 1967, when Israel came to rule Judea, Samaria and Gaza. President George W. Bush, who has shown himself to be a more or less consistent fellow, was quite straightforward and candid on what he had in mind about a year ago. During his important June 24, 2002 speech addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict, President Bush said, "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop."



Dr. Arieh Eldad, Knesset member from the rightist National Union party, wrote a letter last month to the American Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, outlining what he sees as some fundamental flaws with the Road Map. In his letter, Dr. Eldad writes, "The term ?occupation? cannot apply to territory that was itself under Jordanian occupation and whose status was legally disputed and undetermined. In itself, this mistaken definition of the territories in question undermines... much of the legal basis of the proposals contained in the Road Map."



Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for his part, has rejected the American demand for a freeze on construction and growth in Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. "I don't call them ?settlements?, but rather communities," Sharon said during US Secretary of State Colin Powell?s last visit to the region, adding, "We also won?t force young mothers to have abortions."



While we all have a dream of peace between Arabs and Jews in Israel, and while reasonable people can disagree about the final shape that peace will take, there is no reason that Jews need to be barred from carrying on normal lives - including expanding their towns in Judea, Samaria and Gaza - as a prerequisite for it to be achieved. The demand that Jews - and note, it is only Jews, not Arabs - halt construction in territories under Israeli control since 1967 prejudices the outcome of negotiations. It implies that the final arrangement will involve some form of transfer of Jews out of their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Whether or not that is so - and to what extent - is yet subject to dispute between the sides, despite Prime Minister Sharon?s recent pronouncements on the need to "divide the land".



What compounds the injustice of the American demand is that it is treated as a counterweight to the PLO being forced to call a halt to terrorism against Israelis. That is, Jews going about their business on lands that were state-owned prior to 1967, and are still so now, is seen as just as egregious as Arab terrorists murdering innocent civilians on buses, in cars, in the streets and at banquet halls. It is an Orwellian equation - living is killing.



Furthermore, the obsessive focus on Israeli control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza - misnamed "the occupation" - obscures the much more insidious, and unchallenged, authentic occupation of a formerly sovereign state just to Israel?s north.



The Syrian occupation of Lebanon began in 1975, under the guise of a Syrian armed intervention to quell a PLO-instigated Lebanese civil war, but it extended and deepened long after the PLO was driven out of Lebanon by Israel and free Lebanese forces between 1982 and 1985. On October 13, 1990, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon was completed when Syrian soldiers took over the Lebanese presidential palace at Baabda. "Since that fateful day, Lebanon has been run as a fully owned subsidiary of the Syrian regime," explains Muhammad Mugraby, an international lawyer and human rights advocate from Beirut. It is widely recognized that every government decision, every military initiative, every diplomatic move and every economic plan made by the Lebanese government is subject to Syrian veto - when it is not at Syrian behest to begin with. To this day, report Lebanese exiles living in the West, Christian Lebanese suffer intimidation, imprisonment and widespread discrimination by the Syrian puppet regime.



Syria has completely taken over Lebanon. It uses Lebanese territory to maintain its terrorist proxy army, the Hizbullah; it uses Lebanon for drug trafficking; it drains the resources of Lebanon for its own sake; it has installed a government to do its bidding; and it uses police state tactics to crush opposition. Yet, for all this, there are but three United Nations resolutions that can be construed to call for an end to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.



Why are there no Road Maps for ending the Syrian occupation of Lebanon? Where is Operation Lebanese Freedom? Is not the open takeover and utter subjugation of a pre-existing national sovereign worthy of more active international condemnation and diplomatic activity than a Jewish family adding a nursery on to their home in Gaza?

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Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor at Israel National News.com, and frequently writes for National Review Online. His commentaries have been published internationally and translated into several languages. He can be reached through his homepage, www.nrk-online.com.