Rice holds talks with Israeli PM
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has finally arrived in the Middle East two weeks into Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. It took her so long to get there one could be forgiven for thinking she must have made the journey on a pogo stick.
She wasted no time at all in letting us all know that her task is to mouth meaningless platitudes while the Israeli campaign continues. I have say having watched her perform this task in front of the 9-11 Commission I think Bush has chosen the perfect person for the job.
She opened with a perfectly pitched:"It is time for a new Middle East, it is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail; they will not."
The secret of a really good meaningless platitude is that it should be huge in ambition and almost devoid of all detail. The above easily qualifies, whilst including that word "prevail", implying the long, hard struggle. She's a master at this.
However, the danger of vapidity is that your side might think you are being unsupportive, so at this point journalists are briefed concerning: "What Condi meant."However, our correspondent says there is no suggestion that she will tell Mr Olmert that Israel must halt its military operations, or that she will make any public criticism of Israel's actions.
Phew! Up until that point Olmert must have been worried sick.
What's truly mind-boggling about watching any American representative stepping into Middle Eastern politics is the sheer totality of their spectacular lack of awareness that they are, themselves, a huge part of the problem.
Condi is rather proud to let us know that "public" criticism of Israel is not going to happen, no doubt hoping that we'll read from this that behind closed doors she'll give them Hell.
We heard from Dov Weisglass some months back about how he and Condaleezza Rice usually react when Israel mistakenly kills innocent Palestinians whilst attempting a targeted assassination.If something happens - an unusual military operation, a hitch, a targeted assassination that succeeded or one that didn't succeed - before it becomes an imbroglio, she calls me and says, `We saw so-and-so on CNN. What's going on?' And I say, `Condi, the usual 10 minutes?' She laughs and we hang up.
Yes, you read that correctly. Before they've even finished scraping the innocent bodies from the street, Condi has "laughed and hung up".
Ten minutes later, after I find out what happened, I get back to her and tell her the whole truth. The whole truth. I tell her and she takes it down: this is what we intended, this is how it came out. She doesn't get worked up. She believes us. The continuation is damage control."
It's astonishing that Condi "She believes us" Rice doesn't see that her one sided attitude to this dispute makes her part of the problem, not the solution.
And this myopic vision seems to pervade the entire US administration. Condi has, no doubt, been despatched to the Middle East with a list of a thousand things that the Lebanese must do, not the least of which is ensuring the conditions of UN Resolution 1559 are fully met with. This calls for the dismantling of Hizbullah.
We are currently witnessing the difficulty the Israeli army - the fourth largest army in the world - are having attempting to take control of four small border villages from Hizbullah. The problem with UN Res 1559 is that it allots that task to the Lebanese army who are spectacularly unsuited to fulfil it.
And here's the rub, Hizbullah were created as a result of Israel's twenty year occupation of Lebanon. Before Israel invaded, Hizbullah literally did not exist. Therefore they were created as a direct result of Israel's actions.
However, in Condi's world - the world where criticism of Israel is forbidden - we will only treat the symptoms of everything and ignore the causes.
For anyone to enter into serious negotiations in the Middle East and not bring up the subject of Israel's illegal four decade occupation of Palestine renders the entire operation a total waste of everyone's time.
Condi may mouth that, "It's time for a new Middle East", but she'll never fulfil her task playing by those same tired old rules.
One has to wonder if she even wants to.
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1 comment:
Kel,
Nice piece. That bit about Condi "laughing" is quite shocking.
The unbridled bias in the US media and the administration (if those two even need to be distinguished) that Israel only "responds" to terrorist action is do deeply ingrained here, a guy like Bill Maher even believes this must be so. And your right, I have heard nary a word about the fact of Israel's occupation of Lebanon and how that spawned Hezbollah -- nothing. To the media, it's the here and now. Nothing has ever happened in the past. In fact, there is no past, primarily because recognition of it would serve neither the US nor Israel very well at all.
I did a bit about this regarding Maher:
Information Resistance
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