Complete capitulation
How can Arabs trust US when it blatantly supports Israeli positions? Even a US president as smart as Barack Obama does not seem to get it. He has this week sent his Vice President Joe Biden on a Middle-East trip with the same old blinkered message for the Israelis, which immediately causes suspicion and anxiety in the Arab world.
A grinning Biden stood beside Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of their talks and promised that Washington was committed to the security of Israel and determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Biden however did not bother to say anything about the security of the Palestinian people.
Nor — and this is the elephant in the room of US policy toward Iran’s assumed nuclear ambitions — did he allude in the slightest to the fact that Israel is already an undeclared, unmonitored and unrepentant Middle East nuclear-armed power.
How can the Americans expect the Arab world to take seriously their protestations that they are intent on brokering a just and lasting Palestinian settlement, when their opening position is so distorted by such blatant partiality toward the Israeli position?
Of course Israelis deserve security but so too do the Palestinians and the wider region. Pandering to the US Zionist lobby and their friend Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, while ignoring the half century of misery endured by the Palestinians, is no way to set out this peacemaking stall.
And as if this were not pusillanimity enough, the Israelis have chosen Biden’s visit to confirm they are about to build 112 more settlements, illegal under international law, at Beitar Illit on the West Bank.
The Israeli Defense Ministry says the construction is essential to fill “a potentially dangerous gap between steeply raked apartment buildings.”
This is a complete inversion of reality, since it is the illegal settlements themselves, which constitute the real danger to a successful conclusion of any Palestinian peace deal.
The Israelis know this perfectly well. By continuing to build not just in East Jerusalem, where they have refused to implement their moratorium, but on the West Bank as well, they are creating the circumstances which will cause an already weakened Palestinian leadership under President Mahmoud Abbas, to draw back even perhaps from the indirect talks which have only recently been endorsed by the Arab League.
Netanyahu represents hard-line Zionists who dread the challenge of peace because they have prospered so much under US protection during the long years of conflict.
Obama may have been sincere last year when he delivered his Cairo address, but he has since been forced to back down on his call for an end to illegal settlement building.
For whatever dark reason, he has been unable to use the levers of US financial power to ease the Israelis toward a genuine commitment to peace negotiations. In effect, even though a Palestinian settlement is the golden key to the ending of so many of the ills that beset the Middle East, including terrorism, he has handed it over to the Israelis without condition. So while Netanyahu warmly shook Biden’s hand, he stamped on his foot at the same time.
Comments
ABU ABDULLAH
Mar 10, 2010 14:17
Report abuseSHAIKH AZHER YOUSUF
Mar 10, 2010 15:37
Report abuseThere is hadith that our prophet (SAW) said Momin is fooled only once, I suspect we are true believers or not, a quality which this hadith describes.
SALVATORE PIUTTOSTO
Mar 10, 2010 15:44
Report abuseEHUMERT
Mar 10, 2010 15:48
Report abuseIn fact no peace process will work as long as the US govt. is hijacked by the zionists and I don't see it happening soon.
Us would never care about Palestinians as long as Muslims rulers are American puppets.
MIKE MCDERMID
Mar 10, 2010 16:22
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