According to the Bush administration, settling Iraq was to be a prelude to settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict via the Bush “road map.” Although yet to be formally released, a draft of the road map was deposited in the British House of Commons library by the Foreign Office on April 13. The following are highlights of and commentary on the draft.
There has been a real fear in recent months that the right-wing government of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon might take advantage of the international focus on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to increase its repression in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Few people realized, however, that one of the first casualties would be a young American.
Bush Working to Ensure Sharon’s Re-election By Stephen Zunes January 21, 2003 Editor : Tom Barry, Interhemispheric Resource Center ( IRC ) 0301sharon.pdf [printer-friendly version] On January 29, Israeli voters will be facing perhaps the most crucial vote in their nation’s history between the right-wing incumbent prime minister Ariel Sharon of the Likud Bloc and the more moderate Amram Mitzna—a former general and mayor of Haifa—from the Labor Alignment. The re-election of Sharon—who has refused to negotiate with the Palestinian leadership, pledged never to withdraw from the bulk of occupied Palestinian territories, and whose Likud Bloc is on record opposing Palestinian statehood—would set back any prospects for peace in the near future. By contrast, Mitzna has pledged to support a withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the bulk of the occupied territories in exchange for security guarantees on terms quite close to proposals made by the Palestinian delegation at the conclusion of the January 2001 peace negotiations in Taba, Egypt. These talks—which came far closer to reaching a final peace settlement than the U.S.-sponsored talks at Camp David six months earlier—were broken off by Sharon upon his coming to office the following month. Some Israelis, for religious or nationalist reasons, oppose the necessary compromises for peace. Other Israelis, for moral or pragmatic reasons, support the necessary compromises for peace. The majority of Israelis, however, are in the middle. Historically, Israeli voters have tended to lean towards the peace camp if they feared Israel’s close relationship with the United States and the resulting largesse of aid was threatened by a particular policy and lean towards the right if they felt Israel could get away with it. A blank check from the United States for the Israeli government to do whatever it pleases, therefore, significantly hurts the peace forces within Israel. By contrast, pressure from the United States has traditionally enhanced the position of Israeli moderates, since it enables them to convince the Israeli public that failure to compromise would jeopardize their country’s close relationship with the United States. In many respects, this upcoming election parallels the 1992 election between the incumbent Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who, like Sharon, opposed talks with the Palestinians or territorial compromise and the Labor Party challenger Yitzhak Rabin, who supported the principle of territorial compromise in return for security guarantees. Seeing that peace was impossible as long as the Likud was in power, the senior Bush administration undertook a series of measures designed to encourage Israeli voters to support the more moderate Labor Party against the hard line Likud incumbents. Such efforts were successful, leading to Rabin’s election and the direct negotiations with the Palestinians that Shamir had opposed. As a result of the Oslo Accords, there were some major, if uneven, advances in the peace process until Sharon cut off negotiations in early 2001 and re-occupied Palestinian cities in 2002. By contrast, the current Bush administration appears to be doing just the opposite, undertaking a series of measures designed to encourage Israeli voters to support the hard line Likud Bloc against its more moderate Labor Party challengers. For example, the senior Bush administration—led by then-Secretary of State James Baker—publicly put forward a series of broad peace proposals, supported by much of the international community, prior to the Israeli elections. These proposals were responded to generally favorably by the Palestinians and other Arab parties as well as by the Israeli Labor Party, while being rejected by the incumbent Likud government. This helped make clear to Israeli voters that the peace process would move forward only by voting for Labor, resulting in Shamir’s ouster. This time around, however, the Bush Administration has blocked release of a similar roadmap for peace put together by the “quartet” of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. Rejecting requests by the other members that such an outline for a peace plan be made public to help Israeli voters choose, the United States insists that it will not be released until after the vote. This has been widely interpreted in Israel as an endorsement of Sharon’s re-election. As another example, just prior to the 1992 Israeli election, the senior Bush administration withheld approval of an Israeli request for a $10 billion loan guarantee until Israel put a freeze on their illegal settlements in the occupied territories. This threatened withholding of aid was a clear signal to the Israeli electorate that the Likud was taking positions so far to the right that it was losing Washington’s favor, thereby becoming a major factor in the defeat of the Likud. (Due to pressure from Democratic challenger Bill Clinton, Bush went ahead with the loan guarantees without the requisite freeze on settlement activity, but only after Rabin’s election.) This time, the current Bush administration has indicated its willingness to approve a $12 billion loan guarantee requested by Israel’s rightist government along with substantial increases in military aid for Israeli occupation forces, thereby giving a clear pre-election signal of U.S. support for the current Likud government’s policies. As long time Israeli peace and human rights activist Gila Svirsky observed, For decades, we in the Israeli peace movement have been struggling to get Israelis to compromise on the issue that feeds the conflict with the Palestinians. And then our work for peace gets doused twice: once by a prime minister who believes brutality will convince the Palestinians to give up, and then by a U.S. president who supports him on this. Bush has become a big part of the problem. He has to make up his mind: either he’s for peace, or he’s for Sharon. He can’t be both. Similarly, Israeli commentator Gideon Samet, writing in Haaretz, has noted that the United States has become “more Israeli than the Israelis…. Continuing to rage, raining abuse on ‘the other,’ and demonizing the Palestinians.” He adds, “With favors like that from our friends, we don’t need enemies.” (Stephen Zunes < zunes@usfca.edu > is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project (online at www.fpif.org ) and is the author of the recently released book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism < www.commoncouragepress.com .) Weekly multilateralism / unilateralism analysis via our Progressive Response ezine. 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The recent dissolution of the National Unity Government in Israel should not come as a surprise to anyone closely following the Israeli political scene. The reason the unity government lasted so long was that it was comfortable for all parties involved. By keeping his opposing political party under his government umbrella Prime Minister Sharon was granted a much-needed degree of legitimacy in both internal and external politics. On the other hand, Labor party cabinet members found political relevance in their participation in Sharon’s government where, otherwise, their lack of ability to provide Israelis with an alternate national strategy would have consumed their few remaining political credits among Israeli voters. Israeli democracy will be sorely tested in the weeks to come, and to pass this test a bold, peace-oriented leadership must step forward.
As Israel jumps from one self-made crisis to the next, the State of Israel itself is in an alarming condition.
Following the end of the 1967 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government decided to knock down the barriers separating Eastern Jerusalem and annex the eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. Expecting immediate American pressure to withdraw from the conquered territories, the government rushed in and took control. The pressure never came. That expectation was based on past experience: In 1956 the U.S. forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Desert back to the international border, in three months. In 1967, though, surprisingly, no such demand was made. On the contrary–the Americans allowed Israel to start a construction lunge, building neighborhoods in Eastern Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, in Sinai, and in the Golan Heights. Not only was there no pressure to withdraw, but Israel received a generous three billion dollars of funding annually, which went mainly to subsidize the American weapons industry.
The BUSHARON Global War By Lev Grinberg July 8, 2002
The Middle East has always been a place where illusion paves the road to disaster. In 1095, Pope Urban’s religious mania launched the crusades. In 1915, Winston Churchill’s arrogance led to the WWI bloodbath at Gallipoli. Illusion tends to be a deadly business in those parts. And once again, illusions are about to plunge the Middle East into catastrophe.
The Bush administration has sharply criticized Israel’s latest attack on a densely populated neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, calling it a “heavy handed action that will not contribute to the peace.”
Last night’s long-awaited speech by President Bush was to set the pace for the Palestinians and Israelis to step back from the vicious and bloody cycle of violence that has gripped them for nearly two years. Instead, President Bush and his administration have publicly adopted the Israeli agenda of battering the Palestinians into submission. President Bush’s delusion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be “talked away” in a series of speeches is not only a poor example of leadership but places U.S. interests in the region at seriously high risk.