George Bush's announcement of a "vision" for peace in Palestine has all the trappings of a Shakespearean tragedy. There is the dark, tragic king, stricken by the specter of war. There is a villain — an "erring barbarian" Moorish (read Arab) prince who must be dislodged. In the backdrop looms the phantom of an Israeli leader relentless in his appetite for a "pound of flesh." And, there is a reluctant Falstaffian emissary destined to proceed on a mission condemned to failure even before it begins.
The similarities of the soliloquy in the Rose Garden do not end there. Shakespeare painted one of his principal characters, King Lear, as one blinded with a lack of insight, understanding, and direction - an apt description of Bush's comprehension of the Palestinian problem. And, like Bush calling for the ouster of Arafat, Lear too calls for a banishment. "Out of my sight!" says Lear to Kent, to which the latter responds, "See better, Lear, and let me still remain."
So did Yasser Arafat dismiss Bush's call for his ouster, hinting that he would stand for reelection, and asserting the right of the Palestinian people to elect their own leaders: "This is what my people will decide."
Ironically, Bush's call to unseat Arafat may only serve to perpetuate his rule. Legislator Hussam Khader, one of Arafat's most vocal critics within the Fatah movement, despairs that Bush's comments have guaranteed a victory for the Palestinian leader. "When he said 'I don't want Yasser Arafat, and I want a new leadership,' then he emotionally pushed the Palestinian people to re-elect Yasser Arafat. This is the worst thing he mentioned in his speech."
The worst thing? Worse even than Bush's unabashed support for Israel's intransigence, or placing the onus of peace solely on the already embattled Palestinian people? Worse, because the Palestinians, to quote Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, are required "to hold an election mandated by George Bush that produces an outcome mandated by George Bush, namely, the exit of Yasser Arafat."
It is the "worst thing" because his call on the Palestinians to oust their current leadership in return for a "provisional" state is tantamount to blackmail - to the disenfranchisement of Palestine. It is the gross interference in the affairs of a nation, undermining the basic tenets of international law and sovereignty.
The Palestinians were quick to point out that "the call by Bush contradicts the principles of democracy claimed by the United States. No one," reiterated Palestinian Minister Imad al-Falouji, "no one has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the Palestinian people."
What Bush conveniently forgets is that the Palestinian people did have an election in 1996, supervised by none other than his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and other monitors from the European Union. In this election, labeled by these observers as free and fair, Arafat was elected by 87 percent of the Palestinian vote.
Even at the G-8 summit, Bush failed to garner support for his call for Arafat's replacement. The Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien flatly refused endorsement, and MSNBC.com reports that "Canadian officials strongly hinted that vast differences existed between the host nation and Washington. 'Mr. Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people,' said the official."
Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, often recognized as the Sancho Panza to Bush's Quixote in the war of terror, voiced what MSNBC.com calls "strong reservations about sudden change and excessive outside intervention." To quote Mr. Blair, "It's for the Palestinians to elect the people that they chose to elect."
And following suit, Saudi Arabia, the strongest US ally in the region, opposed Bush's demand that Arafat be voted out. The Kingdom's intelligence chief, Prince Nawaf, is reported to have said: "The kingdom will not take part in this and will never accept it ... the kingdom is against this demand."
Surprisingly, the only support for Bush's "vision" came from Yasser Arafat himself. Arafat welcomed Bush's announcement, and stated the announcement had nothing to do with him whatsoever! Even under siege by Israeli tanks at his headquarters in Ramallah, the crafty old fighter chose to humor the US President.
Jonathan Freedland writes in The Guardian: "It may be refreshing to hear a US president come clean in his conviction that he has the right to pick other nations' leaders, but this demand exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's thinking."
The US President has unabashedly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Castro in Cuba, and Kim Jong Il in North Korea.
As Michael Moron writes for MSNBC.com, "in the second half of the 20th century alone, the United States directly aided and abetted in the overthrow of governments from Chile to Iran, from Vietnam to Grenada, and it tried but failed in roughly two dozen more cases."
The most recent failure being in Venezuela, where US funds were supplied through the "National Endowment for Democracy" to encourage a military coup for the removal of President Hugo Chavez, elected by 62 percent of the popular vote, because of his perceived threat of reform of the nations' oil industry. A popular citizen uprising promptly reinstated Chavez.
Perhaps the US president has been emboldened by his recent experiment in Afghanistan, where a Loya Jirga elected the US's handpicked nominee Hamid Karzai to the presidency. No matter that the UN envoy to that country complained that "voting for the Loya Jirga has been plagued by violence and vote-buying; there have been attempts at violence, manipulation unfortunately. Money was used, threats were issued."
No matter that the attempts of the ex-King Zahir Shah were successfully subverted. Mr. Karzai, a former consultant for the oil giant Unocal, is Washington's point man for facilitating US oil companies in laying their cross-country oil pipeline.
Bush would like to see a Palestinian election based on the Afghanistan model, with the replacement of Arafat by a Palestinian quisling who will be subservient to US-Israeli interests.
The Palestinian Authority, pre-empting Bush's announcement, had announced elections in January 2003. Perhaps they had hoped that Bush would call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces as a precondition. In the absence of a demand for the pullout, the environment is hardly conducive to any form of electioneering.
As Israeli forces entrench themselves in more and more Palestinian cities, Palestinian officials state that they will not be able to conduct elections until Israeli forces withdraw to pre-September 2000 positions. Currently, most cities are under curfew, and movement of citizens has been severely curtailed by Israeli checkpoints. Campaigning and other electioneering activities under the occupation will be impossible.
Geoffrey Aronson, director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, believes that electioneering will be an impossible task. "You can't hold free and democratic elections in the middle of a war," says Mr. Aronson. "People are confined to their houses 23 hours a day. How could they vote? How could they campaign? This is all pretend."
A large number of possible Palestinian candidates have been arrested during the uprising, including front line leaders like Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian legislator accused of organizing attacks against Israelis, who is being held in Israeli prison without trial.
Voter records need to be updated and computerized - a task virtually impossible since the Israeli forces have destroyed thousands of computers belonging to the Palestine Authority. Only days after Bush's announcement, the Israeli army exploded a ton of explosives in the PA's Security offices in Hebron.
There is also the question of allowing Palestinians living in Jerusalem to vote in the elections, following the pattern of the 1996 elections. This time around, Israel claims Jerusalem as its undivided capital, and could disallow residents of the holy city from participating in the election.
Given the environment of despair and disillusionment resulting from the Israeli occupation, and growing mistrust for the US position, there is a great possibility that Palestinian voters will turn to radical candidates for succor. Dr. Nabeel Shaath, Palestinian Minister of Planning, warns of the increasing popularity of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which could win a strong bargaining position in the Parliament.
It is in the vital interests of the radical parties to ensure that a "reformed" PLO - Arafat's organization - is defeated. Writing in Al-Ahram, Graham Usher suggests that "Hamas, together with Al-Aqsa and Islamic Jihad, is keenly aware that Bush's vision of a Palestinian state is predicated on it becoming so 'reformed' as to be able to fight national and Islamist movements like themselves."
In a show of strength, Hamas' leader, Sheik Yassin - officially under house arrest by the Palestinian authority - flouted his imprisonment by participating in an anti-US march in the Gaza strip, with six armed bodyguards at his side.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is also amongst those who have warned that Bush's call for Palestinian elections could backfire: "You could find yourself in a situation that the radicals are the ones that get elected."
How, one wonders, would the US and Israel handle a landslide victory for Hamas supported candidates, as a response to Bush's call for "new Palestinian leadership...uncompromised by terror?"
What if history is to repeat itself and Arafat is re-elected? Israeli political columnist Danny Rubinstein believes that this is the most probable outcome. "Arafat will be re-elected, no doubt about it. That is the reality that we have to deal with."
The New York Times reports that at the G-8 summit, "officials of nations, including Russia, warned that the threats could backfire and result in a resounding electoral mandate for Mr. Arafat."
How will Bush deal with this reality if, or rather, when it happens? The official US line is: "We respect democratic processes, but there are consequences."
Bush has an answer for what the consequences will be. He announced that if the Palestinians failed to make the changes he has demanded, the US will cut off all aid to them.
Other consequences could be greater support for Israeli incursions, supported with more US military aid.
Will the Israelis be given a green light to do Bush's bidding by "creative" means? Political assassinations have long been a part of Israel's Palestinian policy, and Arafat's besieged headquarters could well be the site for an explosion similar to the one in the Hebron security compound.
The absence of a balanced US policy in the Middle East has resulted in greater resentment amongst the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslim world. This resentment could manifest itself in more suicide bombings in Israel, and more sympathizers for "Al-Qaeda" networks around the world. More terrorist threats at home. Greater security and defense spending at a time when the economy continues to slump, corporate giants continue to tumble, and unemployment increases unabated. This could lead to a perpetuation spiral of violence - a recipe for disaster for all.
"The height of the expectations from this speech will be comparable to the depths to which the region will plunge," predicts foreign minister, Shimon Peres in a report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. "A bloodbath can be expected."
One would have liked to conclude a piece about a US President's "vision for peace" with an analogy to Shakespeare's "A Daniel come to judgment."
Unfortunately, in the absence of even a pretense of justice in the speech, one is forced to concur with Mary McGrory who points out that "[Bush] validated the wisdom of his original impulse to have nothing to do with the Middle East. His speech demonstrated he has nothing to contribute."
Or as Shakespeare says of Lear, "a zero without a figure."
[Yusuf Agha is a historian who also dabbles in Information Technology. He reads extensively and has an interest in the visual and performing arts. He has resided in the United States for over two decades, loves its people and the land, but is still trying to figure out whom the government represents.]