By Sara Flounders
Nov 9, 2007, 09:27
AxisOfLogic
The actions of the U.S. and Israeli governments speak much clearer than their words. They announced a possible “peace conference” on Palestine, originally slated for Nov. 26 in Annapolis, Md., but as of Nov. 7 it is still up in the air.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been traveling the Middle East promising that the meeting will arrive at a “process” for an eventual solution of a Palestinian state. In the past months Rice has made eight trips to the region for a continuing round of meetings with Israel and some pliant Arab political leaders, trying to jump-start this international meeting.
Indicating the difficulties facing such a gathering, the Annapolis meeting is still without an official confirmed date, participants or agenda. Faced with a disastrous war in Iraq, a protracted resistance in Afghanistan, an explosive upheaval in Pakistan and only a year left of Bush’s presidency, no government seems to want to accept the invitation.
Israeli media reports make it clear that the Bush administration will not press for a defining declaration or timetables. There are no concrete plans to take up decisive issues such as the return of refugees and final status of Jerusalem. The democratically elected Palestinian government, led by Hamas, will be totally excluded.
So what is the purpose of this grand Middle East peace gathering in Annapolis?
One answer comes from Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no rights for anyone but the multi-billionaire ruling family, which is totally dependent on U.S. military equipment and political backing.
The Saudi media is tightly controlled. So it was important when Arab News, the leading government-controlled Saudi newspaper, admitted on Nov. 1:
“The real motive behind the decision to convene the conference and the hectic activities now going on have been explained as an attempt to guarantee total Arab support for the U.S. stand over Iran’s nuclear ambitions....While pressure from the U.S. and Israel has succeeded in breaking the Abbas forces away from Hamas and creating a major split in the Palestinian leadership, Israel has offered virtually nothing to Abbas in return.
“It is apparent that President Bush wants to make the occasion a grand spectacle attended by world leaders representing the G-8 countries, the U.N., the Middle East Quartet and the Arab states though it will only sign an empty agreement.”
A similar observation came from the Palestinian resistance excluded from the meeting.
The leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, told a press conference in Damascus,
“There are preparations for an aggression against Iran that could include other parties—Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah. Therefore, America is distracting us with a false game and is preparing itself for the real one.”
Senior Hamas leader Muhammad Nazall in another interview said:
“The conference’s purpose is not Palestine, but to gain support for a strike on Iran. The U.S. administration needs to prove it is making efforts to solve the Palestinian issue, while all the while beating the drums of war against Iran.”
The Guardian of London on Nov. 4 explained it in essentially the same way.
Bush needs to “be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran.”
At a Nov. 3 meeting of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs, a body of former Egyptian diplomats, Secretary General Osama al-Razali Harb told the briefing,
“There is a great deal of suspicion across the political spectrum in Egypt that the United States had called the summit to prepare the ground in the Middle East for a confrontation with Iran.”
David Brooks in a New York Times Op Ed on Nov. 6 explained approvingly:
“It’s not really about Israel and Palestine; it’s about Iran.... It is slightly unfortunate that the peace process itself is hollow. It’s like having a wedding without a couple because you want to get the guests together for some other purpose. But that void can be filled in later. The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.”
A headline in the Oct. 24 Guardian summarized the opinion expressed in almost every capital and among politicians of every political leaning regarding the outcome of the proposed meeting.
It read: “At last, consensus in the Middle East: all agree these talks are bound to fail.”
The Israeli and U.S. tactic is to have talks to make it seem like something is going on when Israel has no plans to offer anything. It wants to split and then destroy the Palestinian movement.
Collective Punishment Of Gaza:
In all these discussions there is no mention and no coverage of the continuing strangulation of the population in Gaza. Despite its official withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power, both legally and practically.
Palestinians last year overwhelmingly elected a government with a majority from Hamas, a Muslim force seen as more intransigent toward Israeli occupation.
Since this democratic election, Israel, in an effort to break the Palestinians’ will to resist, has confiscated hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes from Palestinians that it is obliged to pass on, as per previous agreements.
Both the U.S. and the European Union have imposed their own sanctions and withdrawn aid. Commerce is shut down. Palestinian workers cannot travel to find work. Farm produce and even essential medicines, electronic parts, repairs for sanitation and sewage are all blockaded. The result is huge increases in unemployment, poverty and malnutrition.
Now collective punishment of the people of Gaza has reached a new level. Israel is choking off essential fuel supplies to its 1.5 million people. This shuts off not only transportation but also electricity and pumping of water for drinking and sanitation.
Gaza continues to resist as a blockaded, surrounded ghetto. Overhead Israeli rockets strike apartment houses and vehicles at will.
Israel always claims that its attacks are in response to Palestinian rocket attacks, but the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is more than 30 to one.
With the official border crossing at Rafah closed, Israeli forces claimed on Nov. 1 to have uncovered and destroyed seven more tunnels used by Palestinian militants to smuggle in essential supplies, arms and people. The tunnels can vary in length from 100 yards to half a mile. Hundreds of tunnels have been destroyed. But immediately work begins on others.
West Bank Cantons
Despite many Israeli promises to release the more than 12,000 Palestinian political detainees, a publicized release for the holy month of Ramadan totaled 90 prisoners. This was quickly reversed by the arrest of an additional 78 Palestinian civilians, including six children and two women. Detainees in the Negev Desert detention center confirmed that three new sections have been added to the camp.
In the beginning of November, as representatives of Abbas’s emergency government met with Israeli politicians on a “declaration of principles” to unveil at the Annapolis meeting, the Israeli army announced the expropriation of another 300 acres of Palestinian land near occupied East Jerusalem.
The land seizure was to build a bypass road that would effectively cut the West Bank in two and render a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. It will further secure the already massive Jewish-only settlements that bisect the West Bank. The road will open that area for an additional 3,500 housing units and dozens of businesses that have yet to be started.
There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, further dividing the land into apartheid-style cantons. Free movement and all normal economic activity are impossible.
Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions and continued construction of the separation wall are all continuing.
None of these issues will be resolved or even addressed in a U.S.-sponsored meeting. The only possibility for real peace in the Middle East is for the U.S. to get out.
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