The BUSHARON Global War By Lev Grinberg July 8, 2002
The BUSHARON Global War
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Middle East & North Africa
President Bush the Martyr
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.
Bush’s Speech a Setback for Peace
Bush’s Speech a Setback for Peace by Stephen Zunes June 26, 2002 0206israelspeech.pdf [printer-friendly version] President George W. Bush’s speech on Monday represents a setback for Middle East peace. On the one hand, it is reassuring that after thirty years of rejecting the international consensus that peace requires the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, an American president now formally recognizes that need. The bad news is that while President Bush correctly views Israel’s right to exist as a given, Palestine’s right to exist–even as a truncated mini-state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip–is conditional first and foremost on the removal of Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. This despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is more hardline than Arafat on all outstanding issues of the peace process–final borders, Jewish settlements, the status of Jerusalem, and refugees. In fact, Arafat’s positions have been more consistent with international law and UN Security Council resolutions than the policies of any Likud or Labor-led Israeli government. But President Bush still insists that it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who must replace their elected leadership in order for the peace process to move forward. The Bush administration’s distorted priorities could not have been more glaring when in the course of his speech, the president mentioned terrorism eighteen times but did not mention human rights or international law even once. Nor did he mention the peace plan of Saudi Prince Abdullah–endorsed by the Palestinian Authority and every single Arab government–which offered Israel security guarantees and full normal relations in return for withdrawal from the occupied territories seized in the 1967 war. The Abdullah peace plan is largely a reiteration of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, long considered by the U.S. as the basis for Middle East peace. While President Bush mentioned these resolutions briefly in his speech, he failed to challenge Israel’s false claim that the resolutions do not actually require it to withdraw from virtually all of the Arab lands conquered 35 years ago, an interpretation rejected by almost the entire international community. The Palestinians are insisting on statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is just 22% of historic Palestine. They have already recognized Israeli sovereignty over the remaining 78%. But not only did President Bush fail to demand a total withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces, he called for merely a freeze on additional Israeli settlements, when international law–reiterated in UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465–clearly requires Israel to abandon the existing settlements. The Palestinians have such a strong case, in fact, that the Bush administration has chosen to focus instead upon their weakest link: their corrupt and autocratic leadership and the terrorist reaction to the occupation. While many Palestinians are deeply disappointed in Arafat’s leadership, President Bush’s insistence that the United States has the right to determine who shall lead the Palestinians will only breed enormous resentment in the Arab world. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, upon hearing President Bush’s speech, was quoted in Israel’s largest daily Yediot Aharonot as declaring that “making the creation of a Palestinian state dependent upon a change in the Palestinian leadership is a fatal mistake…. The abyss into which the region will plunge will be as deep as the expectations from this speech were high.” As the occupying power, the onus for resolving the conflict rests upon Israel, not the Palestinians. Just as occupation and repression can never justify terrorism, neither can terrorism justify occupation and repression. (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 serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project ( www.fpif.org ) and is the author of the forthcoming book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press).) to receive weekly commentary and expert analysis via our Progressive Response ezine. This page was last modified on Wednesday, April 2, 2003 12:36 PM Contact the IRC’s webmaster with inquiries regarding the functionality of this website. Copyright 2001 IRC and IPS. All rights reserved.
Fallacies of U.S. Plans to Invade Iraq
In the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, there were leaks to the media about alleged evidence of a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the hijackers of the doomed airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Subsequently, however, both the FBI and CIA have declared that no such meeting occurred. It is unlikely that the decidedly secular Baathist regime–which has savagely suppressed Islamists within Iraq–would be able to maintain close links with Bin Laden and his followers. Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal, his country’s former intelligence chief, noted how Bin Laden views Saddam Hussein “as an apostate, an infidel or someone who is not worthy of being a fellow Muslim.” Much of the money trail for Al Qaeda comes from U.S. ally Saudi Arabia; none has been traced to Iraq. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi; none were Iraqi. Admitting that there was no evidence of direct links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the best that CIA Director George Tenet could come up with in testimony before Congress was that the “mutual antipathy” the two have for the U.S. “suggests that tactical cooperation between the two is possible.” Most observers consider this to be an extraordinarily weak justification for war.
Congress Ignores Human Rights Groups In Pro-Israel Resolution
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.
The U.S. Role in the Breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
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.
USAID Boycott Off Target
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.
Corporate America and Israeli Occupation
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.
The Homeland is in Danger
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.
U.S. and Israeli Governments Out of Step with Public According to New Polls
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.