US, ISRAEL FAN FLAMES OF WAR IN HOLY LAND

Zionists Prefer Bloody Civil War To Real Democracy in Palestine

By Richard Walker

Washington has caved in to Israel’s demands that U.S. officials follow what can only be called a divide and conquer strategy toward the Palestinians.

It is a cynical strategy that could well turn out to be another disastrous move by President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose poll ratings in their respective nations are at all-time lows.

In the wake of the infighting between Palestinians, followed by the Hamas seizure of the Gaza Strip, Washington and Tel Aviv decided that the best course of action was to back Fatah, which lost a landslide victory to Hamas in democratic elections in January 2006. Bush and Olmert have now chosen to place their trust in Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

As president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has formed a new government based in the West Bank, arguing he has the constitutional authority to abolish the unity government he led with Hamas since February.
Fatah under Abbas, and previously under Yasser Arafat, has a history of being a deeply corrupt organization. At the time of Arafat’s death it was alleged that Arafat had stashed away a personal fortune somewhere in the range of $100 million. Over the years the Palestinian people have complained that much of the aid that flowed into the Palestinian territories found its way into the pockets of Fatah members. Nevertheless, the United States and Israel are now prepared to provide Abbas and the Fatah Party with a large dose of capital.

Following a visit to Washington by Olmert, Washington leaders promised a starter package of $40 million. Israel, which has been illegally withholding approximately $500 million owed to Palestinians in tax transfers, may release half of that to Abbas. The only requirement for Abbas, as the Israelis see it, would be for his Fatah Party, under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority, to publicly recognize what Israel calls its right to exist.

However, extracting that recognition of Israel could prove difficult, especially if the rest of the Arab world and many Palestinians begin to view Abbas and Fatah as pawns of the United States and Israel, prepared to take money while 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza starve.

So far, Israel has sealed off Gaza to the outside world. Gaza is a tiny strip of land bordering Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean. It has an unemployment rate of 69%, and some observers have argued that it has become a virtual world for Israel’s military to experiment with new weapons, especially surveillance weapons of the type sold to countries concerned about homeland security. The sales of such weapons, of which Israel claims to be the foremost designer, have increased Israeli defense exports by billions of dollars.

In fence building alone, Israel has become a leader. One Israeli company has a contract costing several billion dollars to build a border fence between Mexico and the United States.

The newly announced divide and conquer policy of Bush and Olmert will likely be opposed throughout the Arab world, which has long argued that a solution should be found by Israel talking to Hamas and the unity government it had formed with Abbas and Fatah. European governments had privately signaled a desire to engage with Hamas but Israel and the United States resisted, arguing that Hamas is a terrorist organization like Hezbollah in Lebanon, even though Hamas offered an extended ceasefire and asked for talks with Israel.

CONDEMNING ISRAEL

For deeper insight into how Israel sees no benefit in a settlement of the Palestinian issue, one has only to read a recently leaked “confidential” document that was ignored by the U.S. media. It was the “End of Mission Report” from Alvaro de Soto, the retiring UN envoy in the region.

In it, de Soto condemned the violence of Hamas and the corruption within Fatah but he reserved his sharpest criticisms for Israel and the United States. In harsh words, de Soto condemned “the killings of hundreds of civilians in sustained heavy incursions and the destruction of infrastructure, some of it wanton, such as the surgical strikes on the only power plant, as well as bridges in Gaza.”

He added that, while Israel insisted on Palestinians adhering to international principles, the Israeli government flouted them by making it impossible for the Palestinian government to deliver basic services to the Palestinian people.

Regarded by many throughout the UN as a moderate, de Soto used sections of his report to focus on Israel’s power to influence the UN and the United States. He felt that in his time at the UN, Israel had been allowed “unparalleled access to the UN secretariat at the highest levels,” and it was not because Israel had skilled permanent UN representatives. It was due to what he called a “seeming reflex,” whereby in any situation in which the UN had to take a position, the first reaction of UN staff was to ask first how Israel and Washington would react rather than what the right position was.

In his time as envoy, de Soto became convinced that a broad swath of Israeli opinion knew time was not on Israel’s side. However, Israel’s tendency was to deal with immediate and not long-term issues such as the need for a final settlement of the Palestinian issue.

On the issue of Israel’s constant demand for recognition, de Soto had this to say:

Similarly unrealistic is the demand for the recognition of Israel, which sometimes slides into forms of words such as “recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” despite the fact that a consensus in Israel itself on its Jewish character is absent, and despite Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and colonization of large chunks of it. As Colin Powell said: “You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start.’” Unfortunately, the international community, through a policy hastily laid down, has gone along with Israel’s rejectionism, making it very difficult to climb down even if Israel decided to do so.

Just before he began his role as UN envoy in the Middle East, de Soto bumped into former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, who told him to be strong because “those guys can smell weakness a mile away.”

De Soto soon discovered it was sound advice and interpreted it as follows:

What James Baker was warning me against, clearly, was the tendency that exists among U.S. policy-makers, and even amongst the sturdiest of politicians, to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences. It has become vividly clear to me these past two years that the same ensuing tendency toward self-censorship—treating Israel with exquisite consideration, almost tenderness—exists at the UN partly for our own reasons—the legacy of the Zionism-racism resolution, and the resulting political and budgetary cost for the UN, and Israel’s demonstrated capacity to undermine U.S.-UN relations.

Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer who now writes for AFP so he can expose the kinds of subjects that he was forbidden to cover in the controlled press.

(Issue #27 July 2, 2007)