Palestinians can identify with the war in Iraq. By dint of history and their present situation, they put themselves in Iraqi shoes. Both are being subjected to the wrath of invading forces. Palestinians empathize with the relentless bombardment of Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities. Iraqis are victims, like them, of territorial siege, collective sanctions, a ferocious military assault by a greater power that has come to occupy and conquer.
The two have one more thing in common: They do not believe for one moment a word of the marauders’ promises. The war is not about the disarmament of Iraq. That was always a hollow pretext. No one with any real knowledge of the situation believed that Iraq, on its knees from two disastrous wars and from 12 years of punitive sanctions, presented any sort of “imminent threat” to anyone. The US has embarked on an imperial adventure in the Middle East. This is the true meaning of the war.
The occupation of Iraq, a major Arab country at the strategic heart of the region, will allow the United States to control the resources of the Middle East and reshape its geopolitics to its advantage. It is a criminal enterprise — unjustified, unprovoked, illegitimate, catastrophic for the Iraqi victims of the conflict and destructive of the rules of international law.
In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon keeps reiterating that his new government team will work for peace in the Middle East, yet has poured scorn on the Quartet’s Middle East road map for peace. Palestinians cannot possibly see that Sharon, who has devoted his life to the achievement of a “Greater Israel,” can break the 30-month intifada deadlock.
Sharon, who has vowed not to dismantle West Bank settlements and has offered Palestinians a state on only 40 percent of West Bank land, is not the man to make the concessions the road map requires. He has no intention to allow the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.
His actions belie his remarks about peace — 80 Palestinians were killed by Israel and hundreds more wounded in the first 18 days of this month, and 48,000 Palestinian houses damaged or destroyed in the past 30 months. Palestinians are thus extremely skeptical about statements made last week by Israel’s new foreign minister that his country is looking into the possibility of resuming talks with the Palestinians.
Silvan Shalom said he made Israel’s desires known to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a major player in the search for a Middle East peace along with Russia, the European Union and the United States. Shalom indicated that the Palestinian Authority’s recent appointment of Mahmud Abbas as prime minister might offer a chance for renewed talks.
The appointment of a premier is not a credible condition for restarting peace talks. If Israel was genuine in its desire for peace, it would have started talking long ago and with the elected Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Instead, Israel wants to bury what remains of the Palestinian leadership, either by reoccupying the Gaza Strip and a good part of the West Bank or by exiling Arafat or both.
The ultimate objective of the wholesale destruction of Palestinian and Iraqi societies is to change the map of the Middle East by destroying all enemies of Israel and the US.
