I shouldn’t jinx it by writing about it, but there’s something stirring there, like a thunderbird about to awaken. Over there, see? Over where? Over there in the Middle East, in Palestine, in the Holy Land, man, where five weeks after the death of Yasser Arafat, there’s a seeming flurry of activity on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with elections scheduled in the occupied territories for next month, elections that the Israeli government has quickly agreed to “facilitate,” and where, according to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arabs should not question Ariel Sharon’s “ability to move the peace process along.”
And, hey, let’s not forget the $20 million the US has pledged in direct aid to the PA, incontestably a substantial contribution toward the $4.5 billion Palestinians will need over three years for reconstruction and the development of infrastructure. Must be the stirrings of peace in our time, so let’s not jinx it all by adopting a pessimistic posture here.
The truth is that whether the new leadership that Palestinians will elect a few weeks from now turns out to be Old Guard, New Guard or a combination of both, this leadership will be faced by a quandary: They have no Israeli peace partner with whom to negotiate. The facts on the ground are hard and bitter, whichever way you look at them. A lot of commentators in the US, perhaps along with a few in the Arab world, were elated when Sharon, the principal architect of settlement activity in the territories, announced his plan to “disengage” unilaterally from Gaza, confirming their view that the hard-line, brutal Zionist was transforming himself into a De Gaulle in Algeria or a Nixon in China. Surely, they argued, a withdrawal from Gaza would create a precedent for the West Bank, and dispel the myth that the dismantlement of settlements is taboo. Surely it’s time, these stalwart commentators argued further, to stop demonizing the Israeli prime minister.
There’s more to it than that, folks. For Sharon disengagement from Gaza is a little price to pay for his projected takeover, or cantonization, of the West Bank, and the prevention of the emergence of an independent Palestinian state. In that long and now well-known interview he gave to the Ha’aretz newspaper, Dov Weissglas, Sharon’s colleague and confidante, who had been involved in the formulation of the Zionist prime minister’s policies, did not mince words. Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza, which they had conned President Bush and both houses of Congress to go along with, he said, was effectively a diabolical ruse intended to prevent, actually prevent, peace negotiations from taking place. It was further intended to secure carte blanche for settlement expansion in the West Bank (and this is already happening as we speak), to relegate the road map to the dustbin of history and, above all, to turn the idea of the establishment of a Palestinian state into a joke. As far as the Palestinian state is concerned, Weissglas said that given the improbable conditions Sharon attached to negotiations, “Palestinians would have to turn into Finns” before that goal was achieved.” He added: “Effectively, this package called a Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda.”
Moreover, this indiscreet, blunt Zionist gloated that all this was achieved with a US “presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”
So there you have it. I find irrelevant the question relating to whether the American president was deceived by these two when he signed that infamous letter of April 14 going along with all their demands, or whether he knowingly collaborated with Sharon’s diabolical scheme. What matters here is that the crafty Sharon, as he talks of anxiously awaiting the emergence of “peace partners” on the Palestinian side, feels fully empowered by Washington to take over the West Bank and defer Palestinian statehood for decades. But should you find the question relevant, here’s my answer: Bush may not be among the best and the brightest of men to have occupied the White House, but he is not a fool. I’m convinced that he did indeed knowingly, deliberately and calculatedly collude with Sharon and his team to preclude the emergence of a Palestinian state and give the green light to Israeli expansionist designs.
During his charm offensive in Canada two weeks ago, Bush gave a speech in the seaport city of Halifax, Novia Scotia, in which he put the responsibility for Middle East peace efforts on the Palestinians. In fact, according to Dana Milbank, the Washington Post correspondent who covered the president’s visit, Bush “indeed appeared to harden his position on the Middle East by omitting the obligations he had previously placed on Israel and saying peace in the region could be achieved only through democratic reforms by Palestinians.”
Here again the Bush administration finds itself at odds with its European allies on the issue. While Europeans had urged a US policy that put more pressure on Israel, the American president appears — contrary to his speech in June 2002, where he declared that “Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop” — to be heading in the other direction. In fact, a short time before his trip to Canada on Dec.1, or nine days after his election victory, Bush invited to the White House Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, a man so superhawkish that he has accused Sharon of being “soft on the Arabs.” Sharansky, like Sharon himself an illegal immigrant in Palestine, who hails from Russia, presented Bush with his tome, called “The Case for Democracy,” in which he argues that Palestinians should be “extended no legitimacy, concessions or funds until they adopt democracy.” Meanwhile, at a weeklong series of European forums at the Hague on Dec.9, Secretary of State Colin Powell, as if to endorse that same racist sentiment, rejected a call by Europeans, including Tony Blair, to seize the opportunity opened up by the death of Yasser Arafat and begin a fast-track final status negotiations on creating a Palestinian state. Instead he called for “reform efforts” in the Middle East — remember that master plan Washington has to “introduce” Arabs to free markets, democracy, human rights and heaven knows what else?
Europeans, not to mention hacks like us who write for the Arab media and know their part of the world better than outsiders do, have repeatedly expressed doubts that a master plan like that can be promoted in the Middle East before the conflict in Palestine was resolved, and the same free markets, democracy and human rights were extended to its inhabitants. Powell, while attending a conference in Rabat the following day, rejected that view. Fine. Now we know where everyone stands. Israel finds itself hell-bent on a complete take over of the West Bank, thus precluding Palestinian statehood, independence and freedom; the US finds it necessary to support that expansionist project; and the Palestinians, propelled by their human compulsions as a subjugated people, find themselves obligated to fight, fight and fight again against foreign intruders in their land. So let’s move on, ya’all. There’s no thunderbird out there.
