Dec 28, 2002 Op Eds

December 28, 2002 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

Who would have believed, a year ago, that it would be the beardless features of Saddam Hussein we’d have to hate rather than the unshaven Osama bin Laden? When did it take place, this transition from “the evil one” (Newsweek) to the Beast of Baghdad? As usual, our newspaper and television journalists connived at it all. Wasn’t it their job to point out that something funny was going on? Wasn’t it the task of reporters to say: hang on, I thought the enemy was Bin Laden — you’ve just changed the picture? But no. Osama faded from our screens, to be replaced by Saddam. Our enemy no longer lived in Afghan caves, but on the banks of the Tigris. And instead of graphics of Afghan mountains and Al-Qaeda networks, we got stories of weapons of mass destruction and human rights abuses in Iraq.

I recall a similar phenomenon more than a decade ago. Saddam had been our hate figure ever since he invaded Kuwait, but we had driven the Iraqis out of the emirate and, all of a sudden, Gen. Colin Powell turned up in northern Iraq — the Kurdish bit we had decided to save rather late in the day — talking about “Iraqi officials”. I was at Powell’s press conference that day, and I asked him why he no longer mentioned Saddam. And he just shrugged his shoulders and went on talking about “Iraqi officials”. Saddam had been airbrushed out of the US administration’s script — just as he was written back in, center stage, earlier this year.

So I owe it to Professor Robert Alford of the City University of New York Graduate Center, who enlightened me about the mystical transition the Americans accomplished. A series of tables he has drawn up show something remarkable: that the “Iraq” story started growing — and the Osama saga diminishing — just as the Enron scandal broke. Back in January, Enron was receiving 1,137 “mentions” in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and Iraq only 200. Iraq stories grew almost 100 percent by early spring as Enron mentions declined by 50 percent to 618. After a dip in early summer, Iraq soared to 1,529 mentions, with Enron down to 310. Remarkable, isn’t it, how you can clear a messy economic scandal off the front pages by renaming your hate figure?

Of course, it’s also a good idea to change hate figures when your closest ally, Israel, is in danger of producing one in the form of Ariel Sharon. If we hadn’t had Bin Laden and Saddam to worry about, we might all have been taking a closer look at Sharon, the man who greeted the slaughter of one Hamas man and nine children in Gaza as “a great success”. We might also have been taking a closer look at his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 when — as is now clear — more than a thousand male survivors of the original massacre were handed back by the Israeli Army to the Phalangist mass murderers. But the failure of a few survivors to prosecute Sharon in Brussels scarcely made a headline.

Then there was the Middle East peace conference that was going to take place this summer. Colin Powell announced just that in the spring. But it never happened. The “peace” conference vanished, just like Bin Laden. And we never even asked why. In a new world of secrecy, we don’t bother to do that. And oddly, that’s what this past year has produced: a kind of lethargy about the tragedy of the Middle East, a failure to respond to real injustice and occupation and misery. Instead, we are allowing ourselves to wander off to war in Iraq.

So let’s go back — post-Enron — to the UN arms inspectors. They got into Iraq and — horror — didn’t find a single microbe. Then we had to get our hands on Iraq’s weapons manifesto. And when it arrived — all 12,000 pages — we complained there was too much of it.

The Americans — who would have screamed foul if Saddam had handed over a mere 10 pages — announced that it was a “blizzard”, a deliberate attempt to obscure what we all knew to be true but couldn’t actually find out; that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. At which point, the Americans simply hijacked the whole document because — so we were informed — they had better security with photocopying machines and faster translators. This, remember, from the country that failed to warn us about Sept. 11 because — yes — the interpreters couldn’t translate Arabic fast enough.

It was also the year of “regime change”. Not just Saddam’s, but Yasser Arafat’s too. Arafat must go, his corrupt regime replaced by a state-of-the-art democracy amid the ruins left by Israel’s air raids. Or so we were told. Bush’s decision that Arafat had to pack up ensured that the old man would be re-elected the following month. But when the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to the “so-called” occupied territories — presumably thinking that the soldiers all over the West Bank were Swiss — it looked as if the US administration had lost its grip on Middle East reality.

So let’s talk oil. Bush was an oil man. Vice president Cheney was an oil man. Condoleezza Rice was an oil lady. And we owe it to The New York Times’ most right-wing columnist, William Safire — well connected to both the Bush administration and, personally, to Ariel Sharon — to learn what all this means. In a remarkable article in October, he gave the game away about our forthcoming war in Iraq. “The government of New Iraq,” he wrote, “... would reimburse the United States and Britain for much of their costs in the war and transitional government out of future oil revenues and contracts...” The evolving democratic government of New Iraq “would repudiate the corrupt $8 billion ‘debt’ Russia claims was run up by Saddam...”

Far more disturbing for President Putin of Russia, according to Safire, would be “the heavy investment to be made by the US and British companies that will sharply increase the drilling and refining capacity of the only nation [Iraq] whose oil reserves rival those of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico”.

I wonder if we will remember that when we go to war in the next month or so? Certainly we won’t be talking about Enron. (The Independent)

The war must go on!
By Tariq A. Al-Maeena
Arab News, 12/28/02

The month of December saw several faiths this year celebrating their religious holidays. Muslims celebrated the end of the month Ramadan, and Christians reveled in Christmas cheer. And as they gathered with their loved ones, their close families and friends, how much thought was being given to the drums of war beating ever so loudly by the US government?

Barely had the initial reports from the UN inspectors reached the UN offices in New York, when the US government, along with Tony Blair trotting obediently in tow, declared that war must go on. And this in spite of several appeals by the top UN inspector that there was not yet any proof that Saddam was indeed building these awful weapons of mass destruction that would destroy Washington and London, let alone Iraq having any remote capability of launching them!

And notwithstanding the fact that US and British warplanes have been patrolling the skies over Iraq ever since the Gulf War with little or no resistance from the Iraqis, US officials and a host of unnamed sources within the Pentagon, were busily portraying Iraq as the potential purveyors of Armageddon, with no more facts to base such claims on than the sensory perceptions within a few feet of their noses.

Then why is there this continuing urgency by President Bush et al to push alarm buttons in the directions of Iraq? Is it in pursuit of more blood, now that things have settled down in Afghanistan? The US defense budget has certainly taken a dramatic hike upwards, so wouldn’t now be a good time for the Pentagon generals to try out their own weapons of mass destruction?

Is it for the rich oil fields that lie under Iraq? So what if the price is collateral damage‚ in the form of a few million innocent Iraqis? Bombs do go astray, you know. The French and the Russians would then have to negotiate with the conquering powers for the lease rights on such rich territory. Could this all be thirst for oil?

Or is this a personal vendetta between Bush Jr. and Saddam? After all, Bush Sr. elected to have Saddam walk. Is it to prove to the American public that Bush Jr. has cojones? And please don’t read me wrong. Saddam is a bad guy. But then so are Mugabe, Sharon, and a host of other cruel and murderous tyrants. But I don’t see the US war machine busily engaging itself towards those countries.

The US media in pursuit of advertising dollars is busily engaging itself for the upcoming drama by a host of nightly news specials determined to define and simplify the Iraqi nation as one more threatening than Al-Qaeda. And in quite a few cases, those very unnamed sources‚ have even been quoted in the US press inferring that Al-Qaeda is being spawned by Iraq. Such bull and balderdash is apparently being sold in heavy doses to the unsuspecting American public.

The US government is today wearing the hat of the world’s top cop. Such a position carries along with it great moral responsibility and need for restraint. But what good is having all that power if you cannot use it? The present administration, ever so trigger happy, is content to go at it alone if it has to. This approach has generated distrust of their motives, and any international goodwill generated as a result of the 9/11 attacks is fading fast in the face of such rowdiness and political mayhem.

And a news item on one of the wire services recently summed it all up. After a formal strategy session on Iraq had broken up in the White House Situation Room, two senior officials continued to argue about how the world’s only superpower ought to act. The Pentagon’s man said that if America has clout, it must use it: “This is the era of American hegemony,” he argued. “We don’t need allies.” The State Department’s man countered that it is not enough to impose America’s will on the world. “You live in a different world than I do,” was the blunt reply.

A different world indeed! Iraq today is surrounded by legions of US forces that heavily dot the map of the region. Yet the Iraqis are no more a threat to Washington than Santa Claus on his sled!

This is an immoral war! An unjustified war! And the evidence up to date has validated every moral and conscientious objection to the evil that propels this pursuit of human destruction. When bombs leave their pods or bays, they make no distinction between the innocent or otherwise.

Look over and around to your loved ones this holiday season. If the images of some of them blown up and in shreds appeals to your sense of humanity, crippled or maimed as surely hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children will become, then indeed the war must go on!

— Tariq A. Al-Maeena, clsencounters@hotmail.com

Lawlessness
Arab News, 28 December 2002
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The United States is a land of lawyers, who will sue over anything and everything, from the obvious, such as injuries sustained in a car wreck to loss of earnings because someone with a head cold did not warn another person and so passed on the condition. This would seem to betoken the fact that America is a land of laws, rights that can be enforced in the courts. Indeed, most Americans will tell you that it is the protection enshrined by the constitution and the laws that have flowed from it that makes the US “The Land of the Free”.

Odd then, that the United States is now behaving in complete contravention of all the values that it supposedly holds so dear. Ever since the Palestinian intifada broke out, successive US administrations have countenanced Israeli repression. George W. Bush, however, has gone further than any of his predecessors, in not only supporting the military thuggery of Ariel Sharon but in refusing to have Israel censured by the UN, even when Israeli soldiers have gunned down unarmed UN officials.

In their war against Al-Qaeda and international "terrorism," the United States seems to have abandoned its supposedly treasured values of freedom and justice. The detention conditions of Taleban and Al-Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba rightly caused outrage. Investigators discovered that these men were humiliated and brutalized, forced to live in mesh-floored cages that might have been considered unsuitable for a battery hen, let alone a human being. As a result of visits by outsiders to Guantanamo Bay, conditions were improved, though not by much. The US authorities, however, had learned a lesson. Even though access to the Cuban base was restricted, because it was officially US soil, there were legal obligations to permit inspections. Elsewhere, detention centers for terrorist suspects have been set up in secret and on foreign soil, so that there is no automatic right for concerned US legislators or officials to come and inspect conditions.

Nevertheless, the authorities press on with legal niceties. They say that the suspects they are holding, even those detained during the fighting in Afghanistan, are not prisoners of war. Therefore, they are entitled to none of the rights enshrined for captured combatants in the Geneva Conventions. If, however, these people are being treated as suspected criminals, in US law, they have other rights, not least the right to a lawyer and also an early trial. Yet none of this is happening. When top administration officials say that post-Sept. 11, the gloves have come off, the majority of Americans seem to approve. Terrorist suspects should be interrogated, maybe even knocked about, until they reveal whatever it is they know. If, as seems statistically likely, there is a significant number of entirely innocent people caught up in the US international dragnet, tough. The end now justifies the means.

In their fury at the attacks upon their homeland, today’s Americans are prepared to throw over values which they once considered fundamental to their way of life. The assumption of moral superiority, which has underpinned so much of what the American superpower has done in the world, is fast becoming inappropriate. In its brutalization of its perceived enemies, America is in grave danger of brutalizing itself.

Dear George Bush

By R. Omar

Al-Jazeerah, 12/27/02

Thankyou for your Eid greetings, we are indeed greatly indebted. And thank you for telling us, one more time, that your new war is not against Islam and Muslims. It was time that you reminded us that we should not take the B-52 bombers showering bombs on our cities so personally. Indeed, the six Iraqis who died on the first day of December are not to be counted among the dead; they were illegal combatants, working in an oil factory.

As Muslims, we are grateful to you for all the food packages that were sent down from the Afghan skies during the last year. Had we been the children of Israel, it would have reminded us of our great past when Manna and Salva was sent down by God. Let me assure you, Mr. President, American peanut butter tastes so good that our Afghan children became so keen to pick up the food packages that they could not even distinguish between the food packages and thousands of canister bombs that your B-52 bombers left behind in their wasteland. But, of course, it was their bad luck; we will just add them to the list of collateral damage. That way, we will not have to go through the tedious ritual of calculating the number of dead.

I am sorry to hear that things are not going well back home. Some unpatriotic Americans have started to ask questions about your war of terror, excuse me, war on terror. They ask for results for the 40 billion dollars you so graciously and hurriedly sanctioned for the great war. That little audio cassette that recently surfaced at the Al-Jazeera did not help much, I suppose. Although you have the Al-Jazeera’s Kabul correspondent firmly locked up in a cage at camp X-ray (and thank God, the international union of journalists has not made a peep about him), this little island of a network keeps coming up with trouble after trouble.

You were, however, more successful with Frau Herta D?ubler-Gmelin, the German Justice Minister who so rudely compared your new war policies to that of Adolf Hitler; thank goodness, she was quickly sacked by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for poisoning the relations. I must also congratulate you on quickly getting rid of Mme. Francoise Ducros, the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s Director of Communications, who so ungratefully called you a moron despite all the soft lumber that American companies so cheaply buy from Canada in order to help their economy.

Mr. President, it is heartening to know that the new Department of Homeland Security is finally off to a grand start. With an operational budget of $37.5 billion and nearly 170,000 federal employees, it should keep the homeland secure. Just let no American walk out of your great country without the protection of pilotless drones for streets of the world have become very dangerous for them.

Mr President, in your Eid greetings, you have rightly told us that the new year is full of promises. We look forward to the new ventures. Afghanistan is indeed becoming a little too dull and although great news is in store regarding Iraq, Hans Blix and his team of inspectors are taking too long. Please hurry up or else the current rating will start to go down and you know very well how difficult it is to whip up the hysteria once it has subsided.

You know that anthrax cannot be used again to create fear. (By the way, the little leak leading to the US military was plugged very well and I sincerely hope that all patriotic Americans will remember never to ask any questions about anthrax.) So, what are we going to do next time? How would you generate new waves of fear? I suppose those little Napoleons in thousands of homeland security offices would come up with something. Perhaps, you should ask them to start cooking something like the danger of a bio-engineered mosquito bringing a deadly virus. That would be something!

It is my sincere hope, Mr. President, that in the new year, you will not be so lenient with men who keep bothering you with their silly questions about Afghanistan. I was shocked to read a report by one Robert Fisk who sketched a graphic picture of little children being blown up in the deserts of Khost. He also had the nerve to draw world attention to the endless queue of mutilated civilians sitting outside the hospital in Herat, hoping to get an artificial leg. Likewise, people who keep mentioning international laws, protocols and agreements should be stopped from reminding the world that in your war of terror (excuse my slip again, Mr President), you have not even spared ambassadors. No one has the right to remind the world that Ambassador Mullah Zaeef is still locked up in a cage in Camp X-ray.

I am glad to know that early in 2003, Germans will take charge of the Afghan ordeal. It would be their boys who would risk their lives for this grand show which, we all know, will only last for as long as money keeps coming. But I am afraid, Afghans are rather notorious for their tenacity. There is little hope that what the Soviet Union could not achieve with 140,000 men, we can achieve without large-scale disasters soon erupting all over this unruly land. Those who keep saying that the Afghan adventure is headed for disaster should all be locked up with the “illegal combatants”. (By the way, that was an excellent invention for which its inventor should be amply rewarded.)

That reminds me to say that events like the appearance of those four pictures of C-130 planes carrying their human cargo to Camp X-ray should not be allowed to happen again. They do bring the specter of war crimes being launched in some court, somewhere in the world although you have rightly declined to sign the international charter which would put the American soldiers in risk. But the images of those shackled men, which recently flashed on millions of computer screens around the world, was not nice, to say the least.

I am also sad to know that some Edward Saids are still around. They keep talking about an impossible linkage: the suffering of Palestinians, so carefully crafted by a 2.1 billion dollar annual aid to Israel and numerous supplements. They have maps, numbers and pictures which they keep showing to the world. The appearance of a new great wall here, barbed fences there, burned olive orchards, destroyed homes, pieces of dead bodies scattered on streets, made-in-America gunships and helicopters bombing the refugee camps. Of course, your war is not against Muslims and certainly there is no link between the suffering of Palestinians and the catastrophes Americans continue to experience abroad. No, the world should accept the verdict of your “man of peace” who looks forward to his new term which will complete the task of fortification of Israel.

And finally, let me close by thanking you, once again, Mr. President, for the opportunity you so graciously provided to some of our Muslim brothers and sisters to come and visit you and Laura at the White House at the beginning of the month of Ramadan. That great occasion will always be remembered by them and their children and their children. They are eternally grateful to you and Laura. I am sure you also value their friendship because they the harbingers of an intellectual northern alliance you so desperately need at this time. With all the best wishes for your new year adventures.

Picking holes in Blair’s conference proposal
An Arab press review, By The Daily Star, 12/28/02

Ibrahim Nafie, editor in chief of Egypt’s leading official daily, Al-Ahram, and a confidant of President Hosni Mubarak, has picked holes in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan for a two-day conference on Palestinian reform he intends to host in London next month.
Other Arab commentators shoot down the “road map” for Palestinian-Israeli peace being drafted by the so-called “Quartet,” led by the United States and involving the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. Some ponder the prospects of the Egyptian government succeeding in getting delegates from Palestinian factions to sign what the Beirut daily Al-Mustaqbal dubs the “Cairo Declaration” foreswearing suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians.
“The London conference and the missing third side of the political settlement triangle” is the title Nafie chooses for his weekly opinion piece.
To push the Middle East peace process forward, he writes, the British prime minister invited the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, along with members of the Quartet, to meet in London in mid-January, explaining that Israel would not be invited to the conference, chiefly because of its planned Jan. 28 national elections.
Nafie says many questions have been raised as to Blair’s motives for extending his invitations. For instance, what might such a conference accomplish without Israel? What might London have to offer following the Quartet’s decision, in the wake of its meeting in Washington last week, to defer releasing its road map? Such questions quickly subsided when a spokesman for Blair announced that the conference would focus on assessing the progress already made in Palestinian reforms, and ways for the international community to help promote and accelerate them.
The implications are clear, according to Nafie.
“The proposed conference won’t be taking an overall sequential approach which I called in previous articles the triangle of pacification, reform and negotiation aimed at reaching a political settlement of the conflict in all its dimensions. The proposed (Jan. 12-13) conference will address only one of the three sides of the triangle that of reform. And judging from the conference makeup, as announced by the British premier, reform applies only to the Palestinians, something we have repeatedly guarded against. Putting it this way suggests that the problem is solely with the Palestinian side and that the peace stalemate should be blamed on Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions, policies and leaders. Winding up the process of Palestinian reform, according to this view, is bound to crown efforts for a political settlement with success.
“In my estimation, the planned London conference cannot be assessed in isolation of what took place last week at the Quartet’s meeting in Washington, when the United States imposed its view on Russia, the EU and the UN and postponed release of the road map (as demanded by Ariel Sharon) on the pretext of avoiding undue influence over an Israeli electorate on its way to the ballot box to choose its 16th Knesset.”
The closing statement of the Quartet meeting mirrored the US-Israeli viewpoint. After calling for “a settlement on the basis of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace,” it went on to urge all Palestinians, individually and collectively, to end all acts of terrorism against Israelis anywhere.
Nafie says the Quartet’s statement was clearly tailored to the Israeli position and flies in the face of international conventions and the principles of international law. The exhortation to Palestinians to desist from “all acts of terrorism against Israelis anywhere” contradicts the universally acknowledged right of resistance. Indeed, acts of resistance against occupation forces and Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories are explicitly sanctioned under the UN Charter; they cannot credibly be termed terrorist, he writes.
The Quartet’s statement remained silent on the Israeli Army’s reoccupation of Palestinian areas and its crimes against Palestinian civilians. Hours after the statement was released, Washington used its veto in the UN Security Council to block a Syrian-sponsored draft resolution that would have condemned Israel for the killing by its troops last month of three UN staff members in the West Bank and Gaza, and for the demolition of a large World Food Program warehouse in Gaza.
That’s the backdrop to the London conference, says Nafie, except that Blair’s invitation also “overlooks facts and violates the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights. The British invitation implies that the core problem and main obstacle to a political settlement of the Arab-Israeli problem lies in the PA’s structure, figures and performance. It makes no mention of the occupier’s destruction of Palestinian infrastructure. It does not say a word about the terrorism practiced by the occupation army, prompting Palestinian organizations to respond by launching armed operations in various places.
“The British prime minister’s invitation also suggests that reform of the PA will pave the way for a successful political solution, thus absolving the occupying power from responsibility for undermining the authority and credibility of the PA leadership among Palestinians and promoting the sway of resistance groups and factions that favor armed struggle over negotiations.”
Nafie says he would have expected the British prime minister “to urge Israel to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people and to release and transfer forthwith the funds due to the PA, which it has been withholding for a long time.”
“There is no question that PA reforms are crucial and serve the interests of the Palestinian people first and foremost. But the problem cannot be solved in the way the British prime minister formulated his invitation. The problem can be addressed at root level by linking reform to two other dimensions that are extremely important. Palestinian reform would be pointless without the dimensions of pacification and negotiation.
“I had previously written about the three sides to the triangle namely, pacification, reform and negotiation. I listed pacification ahead of reform because it should come first in the sense that it opens the way for reform. I proposed that pacification involve the Palestinian and Israeli sides through the cessation of acts of violence by both sides, with the Arab countries collectively guaranteeing calm on the Palestinian side and the US guaranteeing calm on the Israeli side. My idea was that negotiations would be in tandem with pacification and reform.”
Egypt, Nafie says, is engaged in “intensive efforts to reconcile the diverse Palestinian factions in pursuit of the restoration of calm. It has hosted talks between Fatah and Hamas and has engaged diverse Palestinian organizations and groups in bilateral consultations. One had hoped that Washington would also play an effective role in checking Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s aggressive policies. Sadly, the US not only failed to restrain Israel, but judging by the closing statement of the Quartet meeting and its subsequent veto at the Security Council, Washington has in effect acted to encourage Israeli excesses.”
The Egyptian editor says many in the Arab world “suspect that Blair’s proposal of a London conference at this time is linked to concentrated American and British efforts to prepare the atmosphere for a blitz on Iraq. They suspect that the conference is meant to make believe that some progress is being made on the way to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
The problem is not one of “making believe that progress is being made,” Nafie concludes. “It is that of an Arab people being slaughtered, morally and physically, day and night, in plain view of world public opinion. As for Blair’s invitation to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to attend the conference, it is difficult for me to see what purpose it might serve.”
Sultan Hattab, in the Jordanian daily Al-Rai, compares the road map for peace envisaged by the US-dominated Quartet to “a phantom that keeps coming into sight and fading away without anyone being able to lay a hand on it.” If and when the road map sees the light of day, he says, it can only conk out eventually like the Mitchell Commission Report and the Tenet Plan.
Hattab urges the Palestinians and Arabs to bite the bullet and henceforth refuse to negotiate on any bases other than UN General Assembly resolutions 181 (partitioning mandated Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state) and 194 (upholding the Palestinian refugees’ right to repatriation and/or compensation) and all other General Assembly and Security Council resolutions pertaining to the status of Jerusalem.
Rajeh al-Khoury, of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, concurs that the Palestinians are “clinging to thin air” by looking forward to a road map for peace, which will be all-American with little input if any from the Europeans and Russians “considering that the UN, as the fourth partner, is simply a tool in Washington’s hands.”
If the road map eventually turns out to be nothing more than a plan to implement the US vision of a Palestinian state being set up alongside Israel, “this means that the new Israeli government to be formed after the elections, which opinion polls expect to be more right-wing and extremist than the present one, will not easily accept that the road map be brought down from the shelf” not before America’s electoral season gets under way in late 2003 and buries the stillborn road map for good.
Accordingly, Khoury says he cannot understand why Palestinians are so eager to end their intifada, lay down their arms, stop their resistance and turn into Israelis in everything but name, in exchange for Israeli troops returning to the September 2000 lines.
Writing for the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, the PA’s one-time minister for parliamentary affairs, Nabil Amr, looks to the intra-Palestinian dialogue chiefly between Fatah and Hamas that is being held in Cairo under Egyptian government auspices.
As the Arab pioneer of negotiations and peace with Israel, he says, Cairo is best-suited to bring Palestinian groups together to agree a platform and strategy for peace with the Jewish state. “The Palestinian pilgrimage taking place to Cairo is in fact a prologue to a new choice, one in which Cairo proved its postwar negotiations credentials.”
Amr says delegates participating in the intra-Palestinian dialogue “in the capital of political solutions” should realize that failure of their talks would undermine Egypt’s status as peace broker. Hence, they will need to be extremely forthright. For instance, Hamas delegates should be clear as to what they expect from the dialogue. Surely, they did not head to Cairo to win its endorsement of their suicide bombings or to ask for its expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Egypt or to block the march of US troops on Iraq.
Amr says while the Fatah-dominated PA “should realize that the shortest route between two points is a straight line” which implies that the shortest route to a Palestinian state is “to decide” and not remain hostage to slogans “Hamas, which raised the level of bloodshed in the conflict-versus-solution equation, is undoubtedly aware that the said level has a ceiling it cannot go above and that the ceiling is in fact being lowered. In view of developments surrounding the Iraq crisis, the ceiling is liable to drop to a point where it crushes all those sheltering underneath it and by this I mean all the Palestinians as a people, as well as the Palestinian cause.”
Commenting on the same subject in Al-Hayat, Jihad Khazen, says a new meeting is “set to take place in Cairo in a few day.”
“It is an open secret that we can set aside all items on their agenda, leaving Fatah’s demand of a (Hamas) ‘freeze on military operations.’ These four words ‘freeze on military operations’ will determine the difference between failure and success.”

Will US democracy go the way of Islamic revolution?

By Muna Shuqair

The Daily Star, 12/28/02

US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s plan to democratize the Arab world featured data that sought to outline the poor productivity, low GDP, sluggish growth, high unemployment, oppression of women, and other political, social, and economic ills that afflict the Arab world today.
No one disputes the accuracy of these facts which were originally published last July in a United Nations Development Program report and they came as no surprise. The causes of backwardness in the Arab world have been known to the man in the street for a long time.
The main issue, however, is not restricted to backwardness, but also involves the timing and objectives of the American initiative.
It would be wrong to question any initiative coming out of Washington simply because it’s American. The plan and the smallish amount of money ($29 million) earmarked for it is not the real issue. What is, however, is the way Americans perceive the Middle East.
Other than ensuring the free flow of oil, Israel’s security, protecting its client regimes from communist encroachment, and more recently confronting terrorism, successive US administrations have never shown concern for conditions in the Arab world.
Over the years, not a single US administration even tried to strike a balance between the Arab world and Israel. Not a single administration showed concern for Arab poverty, unemployment, dictatorship or the oppression of women.
Responsibility for this has to be shared by the Arab regimes, their peoples, the political upheavals that have been a regular feature in the Middle East for many years, frequent wars between the Arabs and Israel, and Western support for Israeli aggression and expansionism.
The US in particular has to shoulder some of the blame for Islamist extremism. Because the US has contributed so much to perpetuating the state of hopelessness that pervades younger generations. The US encouraged young Arabs to seek solace in Islam first as a safe haven, then as a psychological impetus for liberation, and finally as a destructive force aimed at terrorizing the enemy.
Were the Americans unaware of Arab backwardness when they supported corrupt regimes, and ensured the stability of dictatorships at the expense of reforms?
Why was American support absent when the Arab world was facing an enemy intent on occupying their land? Why was American awareness absent when Arab governments were spending billions of dollars on weapons that they only stored or used against each other?
President George W. Bush failed to realize that progress and freedom complement each other and cannot be separated, and therefore his administration must do its bit to free the Arabs from the pressures holding it back and the interests tying its hands.
Political freedom is a prerequisite for economic and social freedom. When the United States turned its back on the suffering of the Arabs especially the Palestinians by supporting Israel, it helped channel the forces of progress toward one objective: to confront Israel, not for the sake of war, but to try and avoid the evils of Israeli occupation, aggression and expansionism.
America’s latest initiative was calculated primarily to serve its own interests. The Americans believe that democratizing the Arab world and Americanizing Arab youth will help defeat terrorism. While democracy indeed has a part to play in defeating terrorism, justice and equality play an even bigger part. It is vital to eliminate vengeful feelings born of injustice and oppression.
America, for all its new-found awareness, has nevertheless failed to realize that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside. No power can elicit change if it does not fulfill the requirements of reality. Democratic change has to be a result of political, economic and social developments within the Arab world.
When the Berlin Wall fell, most political thinkers believed that a tide of liberalism was going to overcome all the dictatorial and totalitarian regimes in the world. What happened was that change was restricted to the Soviet Union and East Europe. The Arab world was untouched, because the changes that took place in Europe did not affect Arab society enough to change it from the inside.
American efforts to democratize the Arab world remind us of Iran’s attempts to export its Islamic revolution. Despite Iran’s proximity to the Arab world, the high regard with which Arabs held the revolution and the explosion of Islamic fervor that followed it, Tehran’s attempts to export it failed. Such changes could only take place as a result of inherent Arab requirements and conditions.
Imposed democratization can succeed only if the intended recipients regimes and peoples agree to it. Only then can the measures outlined by Powell succeed.
Powell announced his initiative, however, at a time when most regimes were anxious for their security and stability from the very democracy Powell was promoting and at a time when US credibility was at its lowest point among Arabs, thanks to its unstinting support for Israel.

Muna Shuqair is a Jordanian political writer.

Ending hope will lead to a destructive explosion, as Israel's agents plan

By Bassam Abu Sharif

The Daily Star, 12/28/02

George Tenet came to the Middle East several times and drew up his famous paper on a cease-fire between Palestinians and Israelis. Former Senator George Mitchell faced endless pressure to objectively report the situation on the ground. After months of observation, study, conclusions and submission to pressures, Mitchell and his team put forward their recommendations. Palestinians accepted these recommendations (in spite of the injustice to their rights). Israel opposed the recommendations, so the US administration retreated. Shortly after, the US sent General Anthony Zeeni in an effort to push matters forward. The Israeli government received him with a wave of assassinations, resulting in vengeful reactions.
In spite of the fact that Palestinians kept a cease-fire and tranquility for over three months, the US administration did not act to implement all recommendations because Israel was raising obstacles and refuses to put a halt to settlement activities and expropriation of Palestinian lands. Even when Colin Powell visited the region and met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Israel raised obstacles.
I have seen with my own eyes (a documentary film that I keep) how an Israeli tank headed toward Powell’s car. American security men pushed him into his armored car for fear of the Israeli tank moving towards him.
This is not the first time that Israeli soldiers humiliate visiting dignitaries.
In spite of all this, the US administration did not move to declare a committed position to the resolutions of international legality, nor with its own positions. It kept the forceful and killing grip of occupation free to act in the West Bank and Gaza.
The results are 2,705 Palestinian dead, out of which 534 children (less than 18 years old) and 134 women, with more than 42,017 wounded.
The US Administration dispatched William Burns to proceed with its efforts and to absorb Arab protest.
After all these visits, the US administration concluded with a plan it called a road map. The Palestinians accepted it in principle. Several dates were designated for adopting its final version. These dates were continuously postponed to the extent that its allies in Europe were dissatisfied from the US position. The same applies to Russia, the UN and the Arabs.
A meeting of the “Quartet” was expected last week to endorse the document and draw the necessary mechanisms for its implementation. Once again, Israel created obstacles under several pretexts, most important of which are the Israeli elections.
Again, the US retreated.
To absorb the anger, President Bush decided to meet members of the Quartet to tell them that the document would be ready in January and that he would issue a statement criticizing Israeli settlement activity. Washington asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair to invite a Palestinian delegation formed by Yasser Arafat without his personal participation to a conference to be held in London in January 2003, to discuss the road map, particularly security and reforms.
I expect the US administration to go back on its commitments for January at the request of Israel, under the pretext of not being able to discuss implementation until the formation of a new government after the elections. This will mean, according to Israeli laws, three months. The Israeli government hopes this postponement will eventually lead to cancellation.
Israel is confident that war against Iraq will start during this period. It will result in subduing the Palestinian issue and set free the hands of the extremist government to annex more land and set up more settlements, and possibly begin implementing a plan to transfer tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank a plan that is ready for implementation.
Why does President Bush act like this? Why does the US administration fall back on its positions every time Israel objects to the administration’s policies, which in essence are supportive of Israel?
Closing the doors of hope before the Palestinians will lead only to explosions that will create earthquakes in the Middle East. It will create an atmosphere of hate and enmity against the US, with whom the Arabs and Palestinians want relations to develop toward a partnership based on mutual respect, defense of justice and a deepening of democracy, public liberties and human rights.
The Palestinians will not forfeit their rights and will continue resisting Israeli occupation with all available means. Palestinians will not give up their rights as expressed in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. It is unjust and dangerous for the US to close the doors of hopes for independence and establishment of a Palestinian state on lands occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
Palestinian acceptance of a state on this part of Palestine is a historic compromise that no Palestinian dared to accept, other than this generation of political figures and leaders under Arafat.
Ariel Sharon says Ehud Barak generously offered a solution that Arafat rejected at Camp David, an offer which will not be repeated.
I assure you that if the US keeps the door of hope closed, the world will not find anyone to accept what this generation of Palestinian leaders has accepted.
Bush took an oath to serve the interests of the US people. Why is he acting in contradiction to these strategic interests in the Middle East?
Everyone knows that any new US president starts learning when he enters the White House, particularly in foreign policy. No president can extend this learning period, for it can cause catastrophes. The US is the foremost and richest power in the world, and any mishandling of world affairs may result in human misery. This is why the president depends on advisers at all levels, and has a Department of State that is full of professional diplomats.
President Bush’s closure of the doors of hope in front of the Palestinians is not only committing a grave mistake against Palestinians and Arabs but also against the American people’s vital interests in the Middle East.
The Palestinian people’s cause is a just cause, armed with all the necessary international resolutions.
Thirty-five years have passed since the UN adopted its resolutions with Israel not heeding them. Why does the US president not order their implementation, the same way he is doing with the resolutions on Iraq? The Palestinian people are being subjected to war crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces. Why doesn’t President Bush order the dispatch of international or US troops to protect the Palestinians on one hand, and provide security to Israel on the other?
The explanation could be what fringe US presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche said. Even if what Larouche declared is not 100 percent correct, President Bush has to look well into his own house, in service of the American people’s interests and so that the US will not end up as the victim by Israel.
Larouche says: “President Bush is facing a very dangerous plot from Israel’s agents in the US administration. The plans to strike Iraq and the ending of Saddam Hussein’s regime is an old plan that was presented to President Clinton in 1996 when he refused it. These agents went back to embroil President Bush in the same plan which Israel drew up in 1996. The same team is drawing … erroneous policies in the Middle East in general, and Palestine in particular, all in the service of Israel. The network’s members filling the most sensitive positions of the Bush administration include: Elliot Abrams (NSC), Richard Armitage (State Department), John Bolton (State), Douglas Feith ( Defense Department), Fred Eagle (Committee for Defense Policies), Zalmi Khalil Zadeh (White House), Peter Rodman (Defense), Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense), Paul Wolfowitz (Defense), David Wormsser ( State), Dov Zakiem (Defense), and Richard Perle.”

Bassam Abu Sharif is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

No Pipe Dream: US Unocal Corp executes its $3.2 billion Trans Afghanistan gas pipeline
Gulf News, 28-12-2002
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The long awaited $3.2 billion Trans Afghanistan gas pipeline, signed by Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat may well be on its way to fruition with the signing of the framework agreement yesterday, defining legal mechanisms for setting up a consortium to build and operate the pipeline. It promises to bring prosperity not just to the brave triad but also to every country and consortium that invests in the deal. But there is the one major fly in the ointment - so far, the gas pipeline has no single, solid financial backer.

The pipeline which was launched in 1997 by U.S. energy giant Unocal Corp was scuppered a year later when then U.S. President Bill Clinton attacked Al Qaida bases in eastern Afghanistan, raising security fears. Unocal, which had worked closely with Afghanistan's Taliban regime and neighbouring Pakistan, swiftly abandoned the deal, and has since shown no interest in participating in the project. The only investor that has made any overture has been the Japanese conglomerate Itochu, apart from the U.S. which said it would support the project as long as it was commercially viable.

On that count, there are no doubts. Turkmenistan has the fifth largest gas reserves in the world. Supply is therefore not an issue. The 1,500-km long pipeline would carry natural gas from energy rich Turkmenistan's Dauletabad-Donmez fields that hold more than 2.83 trillion cubic metres of gas, to end users like energy starved Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the trickiest but most valuable consumer, India. Until now, the Indians have been reluctant to back either the Dauletabad pipeline or the alternative Pars-South gas pipeline backed by the Iranians, who were in Islamabad last week vigorously attempting to win Pakistan's support.

The Ashgabat contract may have sealed the Iranian pipe dream. With yesterday's signing, Turkmenistan looks set to get its alternative route for gas exports, denied to them by the Russians, while Afghanistan and Pakistan are hoping to rake in the much needed transit fees - an annual $300 million to Afghanistan alone. The Asian Development Bank has however queried some of the financial aspects of the deal, and unless Afghanistan returns to some semblance of normality soon, the Iranians could still be in with a chance.

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