Posted on 27-5-2003

Middle East Littered With Landmarks
By Alan Marston

Israel's war-criminal turned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his cabinet has approved a U.S.-backed "road map" for peace that is touted as formally committing Israel, for the first time, to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Should the world rejoice? I think not. Spun as yet another landmark for Middle-East peace, a jaundiced eye will see on the political landscape of that tiny part of the world another floor added to the monument to greed, perfidy and deceit, a blood-soaked edifice that casts a shadow over all other `landmarks'.

I believe that Sharon deliberately provoked the Palestinians in September 2000 in order to serve his own career and he has many allies in maintaining the cycle of violence indefinitely into the future, for one blindingly obvious reason, except to those whose personal interests block their vision. Although Israel would lose in any court of law in the world in respect of its actions toward Palestine and it's people, it will never be beaten in the field of military violence as long as every US administration since WW2 continues to arm and finance the Israeli army to carry out its role as the USA's corporate `enforcer' over the Arabic countries of that oil-rich region.

In the world of violence, the USA is king. It has many loyal subjects, none so more than Israel for without the US backing Israel would have to do more than talk about peace and democracy, it would have to live it.

Bush wants to be re-elected, he has that in common with every politician in the world and Israeli politicians are ultra-sensitive to any need manifested by any US President and any member of his inner-circle. Covering the real needs and deals is a deep layer of PR, which in the modern era is an acronym for bullshit.

Bullshit word #1, reservations.
The Israeli cabinet decision was accompanied by reaffirmation of Israeli `reservations' about the plan, which the United States has said would be addressed as it was being implemented, and rejection of any right for Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. In short, business-as-usual for Israel and the US and repression-as-usual for the Palestinians. Even then the it required voting down right cabinet ministers and members of Sharon's rightist Likud party, by a vote of 12-7 with four abstentions, after a stormy six-hour debate. In a separate vote of 16-1, the cabinet rejected any influx of Palestinian refugees into what is now the Jewish state, a proviso that shows the true import of the so-called road map to peace.The `road map' does not refer to a specific Palestinian "right of return" but calls instead for a "fair and realistic solution to the refugee issue" in the proposal's final phase.

Bullshit word #2, realistic.
When one has a gun to one's head, then one must be realistic. "This is a positive thing," Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television. "But we believe that for there to be an effective implementation of the road map, then Israel must help create a conducive environment by freeing detainees, halting settlements and military raids and closures." I believe this statement signals the fact that Palestinians have bent over backwards so far, that all but those who are `realistic' and have a rubber backbone, have broken their back if they, by being unrealistic, haven't been killed or exiled already.

The plan's initial steps include an end to violence, an easing of Israel's grip on the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of Jewish settlement outposts erected since March 2001 and a freeze in settlement expansion. Any semblance of justice would dictate that the borders go back to that pre-1967. But that didn't stop the neo-realists like Russian representatives joining others in the now discredited UN in `hoping Israeli reservations would not hamper its rapid implementation'."We consider it of fundamental importance that the government of Israel, for the first time in history, has officially accepted Palestinians' right to create their own viable, sovereign state," a foreign ministry statement said.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, surely some-one needing involvement in any peace-plan, as it has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, responded to the cabinet move by calling the road map "a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian cause and resistance."

Whose the realist?