Republican Right and congressional liberals join together to show support for Sharon government despite reports by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch detailing gross human rights abuses.
In the time since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and the subsequent Palestinian uprising, details have emerged that challenge the Clinton administration’s insistence—reiterated by leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as by much of the mainstream media—that the Palestinians were responsible for the failure to reach a peace agreement and for much of the violence that has engulfed Israel and Palestine since then.
Palestine has scarce resources to face the enormous challenges in a struggle that has now continued for over five decades. Operating with a scarcity of resources is true of our Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that make up civil society, and our local and national institutions. For this reason, it is imperative that all available resources be mobilized in efforts that have the greatest potential political, social, and community return.
In light of the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, the time has come for corporate boardrooms of companies involved in that region to reassess their role, even if that role has been to remain silent for all these years. The corporate world must channel its influence to end the Israeli occupation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a dangerous point that has the potential to disrupt business activity, especially U.S. business interests throughout the Middle East. Long-term U.S. national strategic interests in the region are also at risk–namely the cost of and uninterrupted flow of oil. Millions of U.S. corporate and citizen tax dollars spent on building the Palestinian economy were lost in this latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian civil and national infrastructure.
I did not pick this title lightly. There comes a time when even a historian, well versed in patient, hysteria-free observation of historical processes, feels his hair stand on end as he realizes how bad, how really bad, things are getting.
Both in the U.S. and in Israel, government policy and actions do not reflect popular sentiment. Two recent surveys–one by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and another by the Dahaf Institute in Israel–found that the American and Israeli public support more even-handed approaches to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
U.S. press coverage of Israeli attacks on the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian towns on the West Bank often treat the U.S. government as either an innocent bystander or an honest broker in the current conflict, often without giving a full sense of the importance of the U.S. role as a supplier of arms, aid, and military technology to Israel. In its role as Israel’s primary arms supplier, the United States could exert significant potential leverage over Israeli behavior in the conflict, if it would choose to do so.
What is the difference between State terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference we’ll understand also the evilness of U.S. Middle East policies and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combating terrorism. Israel’s State terrorism is defined by U.S. officials as “self-defense,” while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.