Six Lost Years

As the Baker Report and Tony Blair call for Bush to re-engage with the Israeli-Palestine dispute as a matter of urgency, Jimmy Carter has called the present administration's handling of this dispute "the most serious cause" of the moderate Arab world's turn against us.

It is hard to fault his logic. When Ariel Sharon - the man the Palestinian public most feared and regarded as a war criminal - was elected Israeli Prime Minister, Bush chose to disengage with the Middle East and give Sharon free reign. It implied American complicity in all of Sharon's policies.

Sharon, the man who had been responsible for the massacre at Qibya and who had been forced to stand down after the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, had been elected Israeli Prime Minister some four months after he had visited al-Haram ash-Sharif and sparked off the Second Palestinian Intifada resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

There was no more controversial figure in Middle Eastern politics at the time and Bush's decision to back Sharon's refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians set off a pattern of behaviour where the US backed every and any action that the Israeli's took, culminating in Bush ripping up international law by insisting:

"But the realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly over the last several decades, and any final settlement must take into account those realities and be agreeable to the parties."

With these words Bush sought to allow Israel to keep some of "the realities on the ground", by which he meant the illegal Israeli settlements, despite international law which states that the passage of time will not change their illegality.

According to Bush the passage of time does, indeed, change their illegality.

Indeed, the bias of this administration towards the Israelis has lost the US much of it's influence in the region, with even Saudi Arabia threatening Bush with isolation over his support for Sharon:

At one point Bandar even carried a message to Bush from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia which stated, "What pained the Crown Prince more is the continuance of American ignorance of Israel upholding policies as if a drop of Jewish blood is equal to a thousand Palestinian lives.

He went as far as to say, "Therefore the Crown Prince will not communicate in any form, type or shape with you, and Saudi Arabia will take all it's political, economic and security decisions based on how it sees it's own interest in the region without taking into account American interests anymore because it is obvious that the United States has taken a strategic decision adopting Sharon's policies."

Powell apparently followed Bandar out of the Oval Office, cornering him saying, "What the fuck are you doing? You're putting the fear of God into everybody here. You scared the shit out of everybody!"

To which Bandar replied, "I don't give a damn what you feel. We are scared ourselves."

This one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestine conflict reached it's nadir when Rumsfeld referred to "the so-called Occupied Territories" and appeared to be blissfully ignorant of international law:

My feeling about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict. In the intervening period, they've made some settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won.

The term "so-called Occupied Territories" implies that Rumsfeld does not agree with the numerous UN resolutions which clearly state that the territory is occupied. However, it was his concept that "the victor takes the spoils" that caused most offence and revealed an administration oblivious to international law. It is clearly stated in the preamble to UN resolution 242 that the victor may not keep the spoils of war:

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.

This is further emphasised in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which reads:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

So the attitude of the Bush administration towards this dispute has not only been biased it has been blatantly illegal.

With the publication of the Baker Report, Carter and Blair hope that the peace process can be rejuvenated:

His [Carter's] goal for the book, as he'll later tell a scrum of camera-wielding press, was simple and jaw-droppingly ambitious: "just to rejuvenate the peace process, which has been completely absent for the last six years."

Six lost years: It's a theme he comes back to over and over. "I consider that this administration in Washington now," he says to a Borders questioner, "has really failed or defaulted on its obligation" to orchestrate negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And this isn't just a problem for those two peoples. The absence of effort by the United States to resolve the conflict, Carter says, has been "the most serious cause" of the moderate Arab world's turn against us.

However, with Bush saying that Sharon could keep territory that international law forbids, and with Rumsfeld refusing to accept that the territory is occupied at all, there was no hope ever under this administration that a negotiated settlement could ever be reached, which is why Bush backed Sharon's plans for unilateral withdrawal without negotiation with the Palestinians.

The Bush administration, whilst talking of peace, has actually been attempting to enable an Israeli land grab.

Baker, Carter and Blair are right to call for a new push to achieve a settlement in the Israeli-Palestine dispute; but they must surely realise that this administration's motives are as ugly as they are illegal and that what they have in mind is not a settlement of the dispute as much as a total Palestinian surrender to the demands of the occupying army.

It is to this end that we are currently punishing the Palestinians for daring to elect Hamas, for daring to elect a government that will not bow to this call for surrender.

The Quartet has already bought into the Israeli logic that the Palestinians must be punished for electing Hamas, they would be foolish in the extreme if they accept that George Bush wants an equitable outcome to this sixty year war.

I'm all for the US re-engaging in this dispute, indeed it is vital that they do so. However, those calling for re-engagement must never lose sight of the fact that this American administration has not only taken sides, but it is seeking to engage in blatant illegality.

Let's be very careful before we put this particular fox in charge of the hen house.

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tag: Bush, Israel, Palestine, Baker report, Quartet, starvation, boycott, Geneva Conventions, Olmert, European Union, Jimmy Carter, Apartheid, Hamas, George H. W. Bush