Sun, April 18, 2004
No peace in our time
By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor
Israeli leaders know the best time to wring favours and funds from Washington is during presidential election years. Even so, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 10th visit to the White House last week produced extraordinary results.
President George Bush, breaking with three decades of U.S. policy, international law, numerous UN resolutions and even his own "road map for peace," strongly endorsed the Israeli leader's unilateral plans for the West Bank and Gaza.
Bush agreed to Israel's permanent retention of major Jewish settlement blocs on strategic high ground in the occupied West Bank. These, plus new Jerusalem suburbs, contain nearly 450,000 Jewish settlers. To Sharon's delight, Bush rejected four million Palestinian refugees any right of return to Israel and declared that Israel need not go back to its pre-1967 War borders.
As a "concession," Sharon offered his "disengagement plan" to pull 7,400 Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip and close some marginal West Bank outposts. In short, Sharon was trading unwanted, indefensible settlements for the West Bank's choicest land and water.
Bush called it "courageous."
'Temporary' Berlin Wall
Sharon and Bush will now proclaim a just, lasting Arab-Israeli peace, though Palestinians -- dismissed en masse as "terrorists" -- were not consulted.
The "temporary" Berlin Wall being built by Sharon will seal off Jewish settlements from Palestinians, turning densely populated Arab areas into seething ghettos, packed with enraged, unemployed people.
Bush's gifts to Israel provided a potent boost to Sharon's troubled political fortunes. The president's claim to be bringing democracy to Iraq will now be buttressed by the equally preposterous claim to be a Mideast peacemaker.
Middle America, innocent of foreign affairs, will likely swallow this nonsense. Bush's Christian fundamentalist backers, who yearn for the recreation of Biblical Israel, will be ecstatic.
When extremist Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad inevitably react with violence to Israel's land expropriations, wall-building, and assassinations, Bush will be able to claim he and Sharon are brothers-in-arms fighting terrorism.
The administration's pro-Sharon neo-conservatives, who engineered the calamitous Iraq war and continue to dominate U.S. foreign policy, have now achieved their long-sought goal of thwarting the Oslo peace process, keeping hold of the best part of the West Bank and Golan and blocking any viable Palestinian state.
Apartheid-style enclaves
The Jewish settlements -- really mid-sized cities -- that Bush has allowed to remain in the heart of the West Bank will chop up remaining Palestinian territory into between three and five non-contiguous enclaves surrounded by Israeli security forces and cut off from the outside world. Israel will thus retain the useful land while dumping Arab population centres.
Sharon has long sought such apartheid-style Bantustans in the West Bank. No truly viable Palestinian state could exist on such fragmented territory. Denied any hope of a real state, the Palestinian intifada will intensify, and grow more violent.
Bush's claim that Israeli settlement-cities deserved to stay because they were "facts on the ground" was not only illogical but gave Israeli settlers a green light to keep expanding.
The president's total embrace of Israel's far right is a misfortune for everyone -- Palestinians, Americans and Israelis. By allying himself with Israel's expansionist right wing, Bush ensures there will be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
This dismaying policy change further accelerates the Bush administration's marginalization and exclusion of Israel's pro-peace moderates and left, who bitterly oppose the radical settler factions that form Sharon's political core support. Moderate American Jewish groups seeking to nurture peace with Palestinians have also been cold-shouldered by the White House.
The Bush-Sharon love fest will unfortunately confirm the Muslim world's belief the U.S. has become their principal enemy, and that Israel's far right pulls the Bush administration's strings.
Hope turns to tragedy
Undermining Israel's moderates and enraging Muslims everywhere will certainly fuel more anti-American terrorism, wreck hopes for Mideast peace, generate more anti-Semitism and further damage U.S. interests in the Islamic world.
What a tragedy. Bush and Sharon had the power to bring a just, lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead they have ensured there will be no peace in our time.
As Israeli thinker Uri Avnery tartly noted, "Bush and Sharon made peace between them. But Israel must make peace with the Palestinians."
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What does anyone think of this opinion. Personally I enjoy his commentary but I think this time he shows his own bias,..or does he?
Has U.S foreign policy been swayed so much that this cynicism will become the norm or is it nothing more than a poor sport Palestinian sympathizer pissed of that the U.S and Israel are taking control?
Is this an accurate prediction of what's to come or not?