Something strange is happening in the American war against terrorism; just now the scales in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East are tilting in favor of Arafat. The intifada has been going on for a year now, with extensive use of suicide terrorism and without the Palestinian Authority’s showing the slightest sign of interest in breaking off relations with the main perpetrators, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
But still, British Foreign Minister Straw declared in an interview in Al Jaseera that Sharon is not the right person to make peace. Keep in mind that Sharon was just abandoned by some of the right-wing parties in his government coalition for evacuating a neighborhood of Hebron and easing restrictions against the Palestinians, while Shimon Peres continues to meet with Arafat’s representatives.
The declaration is one of the most humiliating subsections of the New Order: Bush himself called for the creation of a Palestinian state three times in the last month. There is a whole chorus backing him up, with European soloists. Supposedly, this corresponds to the post-Sept. 11 world the Bush administration is beginning to outline, but the initial effect is that Israel is sitting in a corner like a punch-drunk prizefighter, who can’t understand what’s happened.
Here’s a short list of this strange beating: A recent reprimand from the U.S. government (while it bombs bin Laden) of Israel for killing the Hamas terrorist who had organized various mass attacks, including that of the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv. “There’s no comparison with our terrorists,” they said at the Pentagon.
The second blow: Tony Blair’s invitation to Arafat to 10 Downing Street, almost the same as an invitation to the White House, with praise heaped on the Palestinian, and Blair’s plea for a Palestinian state, an echo of a similar plea from Bush. By the way, this happened the day before minister Rehavam Ze’evi was murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Another: Syria’s joining the U.N. Security Council – which sounds like a sick joke. The U.S. included Syria in the list of countries supporting terrorist groups, even if they now want it in the coalition. According to the Americans, Syria supports 11 terrorist organizations, one of which is Hezbollah, the inventors of anti-American suicide terrorism which killed over 200 Marines in Beirut in 1983.
A left: the Nobel Peace Prize to Kofi Annan, who actually compared the Holocaust to the suffering of the Palestinians at the wretched conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, with its overtones of anti-Semitism.
And a right: The U.N. forces – that should be controlling international legality along the borders of Lebanon from which Israel unilaterally withdrew – allowed the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers on patrol and even hid the videotape that one of its own soldiers took of the crime. A year later, their families still know nothing of their fate, but U.N. honcho Annan won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Another punch: Israel has been told a thousand times that there is no comparison between its terrorism and the terrorism America experienced. An astounding affirmation since international experts and texts all agree that Israel’s aim not even remotely defines terrorism, and that the only definition is found in its phenomenology. In other words: terrorism is a deliberate attack on civilians with the aim of killing them. True or false? Once for all: do the Americans share this definition?
And No. 7: Israel has had to give in on every point of the Mitchell and Tenet agreements calling for concessions and withdrawal after all violence has halted. The Israeli chief of staff did indeed fly off the handle and declare that he was against leaving the Abu Sneina neighborhood and removing the roadblocks. He said he was worried about attacks. The right wing resigned and the national unity government was crippled. As of this writing, they are still wrangling.
Israel has had one price after another to pay for the New Order. On a recent BBC broadcast, a variegated group of politicians and journalists all agreed on one point: The U.S. has to change its policy towards Israel. They were behaving as if giving the Jews their own, very necessary state was purely a tactical choice during the Cold War, one that can be thrown away like old clothes. From their point of view, U.S. support of Israel is not a moral choice to be made by a democratic country based on the only U.N. resolution never mentioned by the Arab world.
And now, let’s see also what President Bush has to say about the answer of the Israeli army to the murder of its minister: I’m just waiting for somebody to tell Sharon and Peres too that they must absolutely avoid entering the PA area, while the USA is entering Afghani territory.
