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3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Yes, Bush is naked, what of
it? By Tony Karon
US
President George W Bush's announcement of a new
Middle East summit is being dutifully reported as
a move to "revive" the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process, designed to culminate in a two-state
solution. But the meeting, if it ever comes about,
will be nothing of the sort. US officials have
already made clear that the gathering's purpose
will be "to review progress toward building
Palestinian institutions, look for ways to support
further reforms,
and
support the effort going on right now between the
parties together".
Mushy? Of course it's
mushy. The Bush speech simply restated the key
term of the administration's long-dead "roadmap" -
before there can be peace talks, the Palestinians
will be required to destroy Hamas. In other words,
there will be no peace talks, just a lot of
wishful thinking. As White House Press Secretary
Tony Snow put it, "I think a lot of people are
inclined to try to treat this as a big peace
conference. It's not."
The Hans Christian
Andersen fairy tale The Emperor's New Clothes
might accurately describe current US policy on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - except for one
important detail. In the fairy tale, the emperor's
courtiers are careful never to let on that they
can see their monarch's nakedness; in the case of
US Middle East policy, there is what playwright
Bertolt Brecht might have called an epic gap
between some of the actors and their lines.
Plainly, very few of them believe the things that
the script requires them to say.
In this
absurdist take on the old fairy tale, whenever
anyone points out that the emperor has no clothes,
they are simply told "duh!" before the players get
back acting as if it's fashion week in the palace.
The parlor game in all of this might be
deciding which of Bush's courtiers is the most
craven and cynical. The competition is fierce, but
here's a handicapping of the race:
1.
The Israelis The Israeli leadership
recognized Hamas' takeover of Gaza's security as
an opportunity - but not, as they still tell
gullible journalists, to pursue a peace agreement
with Palestinian "moderates". Quite the contrary,
it has been viewed as a free pass to fend off any
conceivable US pressure to conclude, or even work
toward, a final-status agreement with the
Palestinians. All they now have to do is make wan
gestures of support for Mahmoud Abbas, president
of the Palestinian National Authority, while using
the fact that he speaks for half or less of all
Palestinians to prove their case that, as ever,
"there is no Palestinian partner for peace".
According to the respected Israeli
political correspondent Aluf Benn, there is now a
cast-iron consensus across the Israeli political
spectrum that withdrawal from the West Bank is
inconceivable for the foreseeable future. "In this
atmosphere," Benn writes, "it is clear that any
talk about a 'two-state solution' and [Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert's] declarations at the Sharm
el-Sheikh summit about 'new opportunities' and
'accelerating the process toward a Palestinian
state' are bogus. This diplomatic lip service,
disassociated from reality and real expectations,
is meant to assuage the Americans and the
Europeans and deflect pressure on Israel."
Such duplicity is fine with the Bush
administration and various European powers, Benn
writes, precisely because they are doing the same
thing: "The international community is
participating in the show, and gradually is losing
interest in the conflict." When it comes to
pursuing any kind of deal to end Israel's
occupation of the territories it captured in 1967,
the Bush administration's policy can be summed up
in three words: look reasonably busy.
Israel's long-standing, but constantly
shifting, argument has been simple enough: it has
no Palestinian partner. First that was thanks to
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader
Yasser Arafat's duplicity; then it was Palestinian
President Abbas' weakness; next, it was Hamas'
victory in the January 2006 elections (that the
Bush administration had sponsored), followed by
the decision of Abbas to join it in a "unity"
government; now, with Hamas left to starve and die
in blockaded Gaza, and Abbas setting up his own
unelected government on the West Bank, we're back
to Abbas' weakness as an explanation.
The
Bush administration has faithfully echoed Israel's
zigzagging evasion of talks with the Palestinians,
a course that began when Ariel Sharon was elected
prime minister in February 2001. Even as, in op-ed
after op-ed in US papers, Hamas signals its desire
to engage, and even as Israel continues to
negotiate a prisoner exchange with Hamas, Israeli
leaders insist that negotiations with the
organization are impossible. Hamas, after all, has
waged a terror war against Israel and adamantly
refuses to recognize the Jewish state.
Few
now remember that Israel used the same argument to
avoid talking to Arafat's Fatah and the PLO.
Fatah, too, had engaged in terrorism against
Israelis (and still does occasionally) and refused
to revise its charter to recognize Israel until
1998, five years after Arafat and Israeli prime
minister Yizhak Rabin had their historic handshake
on the White House lawn. Non-recognition of Israel
is the default starting point for Palestinian
nationalism, as Hamas deputy head Abu Marzook
recently made clear in the Los Angeles Times, not
because of some religious absolutism but because,
for Palestinians, Israel's creation in 1948 meant
their violent dispossession. Hamas believes it is
being ordered to legitimize this dispossession
before negotiations can even begin, and it refuses
to do so.
The fact that Fatah did
eventually recognize Israel - and got so little in
return - has cost the organization dearly on the
Palestinian street. Nine months into the Western
financial blockade that followed Hamas' election
victory, a survey conducted by the Western-funded
Palestinian Center for Social and Political
Research found 54% of Palestinians dissatisfied
with Hamas' performance in power and only 40%
ready to vote for it again. Nonetheless, when
asked whether Hamas should recognize Israel to get
the siege lifted, 67% said no.
The
Israelis will continue to play along with the US
fantasy that a peace can be concluded with a
self-appointed Palestinian autocracy while war is
waged on the elected Palestinian government.
However, they know perfectly well that Abbas is in
no position to deliver - and that's fortunate to
their way of thinking. After all, from the time
that Sharon became prime minister, a peace
agreement with the Palestinian leadership has not
been what Israel had in mind.
His
election-campaign promises involved putting an end
to the Oslo peace process. He left no doubt that
he believed the sort of comprehensive peace
envisaged at Oslo was impossible. In an interview
shortly after his election, he called instead for
"a long-term, gradual solution that will enable us
to examine the development of the relations
between us and the Palestinians over time".
Curiously enough, this is exactly the
position Hamas leaders have taken on the issue.
They opt for long-term "truces" aimed at calming
relations between the two peoples, rather than
final agreements. That outlook earns Hamas the
label "rejectionist"; Bush called Sharon "a man of
peace".
Buoyed by the environment in
Washington after September 11, 2001, Sharon led
the Americans on a giddy dance. First, he got
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