---

 

Europe versus America

By Edward Said

Jordan Times, 11/25/02

 

 

 

ALTHOUGH I have visited England dozens of times, I have never spent more than one or two weeks at a single stretch. This year, for the first time, I am in residence for almost two months at Cambridge University, where I am the guest of a college and giving a series of lectures on humanism at the university.

The first thing to be said is that life here is far less stressed and hectic than it is in New York, at my university, Columbia. Perhaps this slightly relaxed pace is due in part to the fact that Great Britain is no longer a world power, but also to the salutary idea that the ancient universities here are places of reflection and study rather than economic centres for producing experts and technocrats who will serve the corporations and the state. So the post-imperial setting is a welcome environment for me, especially since the US is now in the middle of a war fever that is absolutely repellent as well as overwhelming. If you sit in Washington and have some connection to the country's power elites, the rest of the world is spread out before you like a map, inviting intervention anywhere and at any time. The tone in Europe is not only more moderate and thoughtful: it is also less abstract, more human, more complex and subtle.

Certainly Europe generally and Britain in particular have a much larger and more demographically significant Muslim population, whose views are part of the debate about war in the Middle East and against terrorism. So discussion of the upcoming war against Iraq tends to reflect their opinions and their reservations a great deal more than in America, where Muslims and Arabs are already considered to be on the “other side”, whatever that may mean. And being on the other side means no less than supporting Saddam Hussein and being “un-American”. Both of these ideas are abhorrent to Arab and Muslim-Americans, but the idea that to be an Arab or Muslim means blind support of Saddam and Al Qaeda persists nonetheless. (Incidentally, I know no other country where the adjective “un” is used with the nationality as a way of designating the common enemy. No one says un-Spanish or un-Chinese: these are uniquely American confections that claim to prove that we all “love” our country. How can one actually “love” something so abstract and imponderable as a country anyway?)

The second major difference I have noticed between America and Europe is that religion and ideology play a far greater role in the former than in the latter. A recent poll taken in the United States reveals that 86 per cent of the American population believes that God loves them. There's been a lot of ranting and complaining about fanatical Islam and violent jihadists, who are thought to be a universal scourge. Of course they are, as are any fanatics who claim to do God's will and to fight his battles in his name. But what is most odd is the vast number of Christian fanatics in the US, who form the core of George Bush's support and at 60 million strong represent the single most powerful voting block in US history. Whereas church attendance is down dramatically in England, it has never been higher in the United States whose strange fundamentalist Christian sects are, in my opinion, a menace to the world and furnish Bush's government with its rationale for punishing evil while righteously condemning whole populations to submission and poverty.

It is the coincidence between the Christian Right and the so-called neo-conservatives in America that fuels the drive towards unilateralism, bullying and a sense of divine mission. The neoconservative movement began in the 70s as an anti-communist formation whose ideology was undying enmity to communism and American supremacy. “American values”, now so casually trotted out as a phrase to hector the world, was invented then by people like Irving Kristoll, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and others who had once been Marxists and had converted completely (and religiously) to the other side. For all of them the unquestioning defence of Israel as a bulwark of Western democracy and civilisation against Islam and communism was a central article of faith. Many though not all the major neo-cons (as they are called) are Jewish, but under the Bush presidency they have welcomed the extra support of the Christian Right which, while it is rabidly pro-Israel, is also deeply anti-Semitic (i.e., these Christians — many of them Southern Baptists — believe that all the Jews of the world must gather in Israel so that the Messiah can come again; those Jews who convert to Christianity will be saved, the rest will be doomed to eternal perdition).

It is the next generation of neo-conservatives such as Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld who are behind the push to war against Iraq, a cause from which I very much doubt that Bush can ever be deterred. Colin Powell is too cautious a figure, too interested in saving his career, too little a man of principle to represent much of a threat to this group which is supported by the editorial pages of The Washington Post and dozens of columnists, media pundits on CNN, CBS and NBC, as well as the national weeklies that repeat the same clichÈs about the need to spread American democracy and fight the good fight, no matter how many wars have to be fought all over the world.

There is no trace of this sort of thing in Europe that I can detect. Nor is there that lethal combination of money and power on a vast scale that can control elections and national policy at will. Remember that George Bush spent over $200 million to get himself elected two years ago, and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York spent $60 million for his election: this scarcely seems like the democracy to which other nations might aspire, much less emulate. But this is accepted uncritically by what seems to be an enormous majority of Americans who equate all this with freedom and democracy, despite its obvious drawbacks. More than any other country today, the United States is controlled at a distance from most citizens; the great corporations and lobbying groups do their will with “the people's” sovereignty leaving little opportunity for real dissent or political change. Democrats and Republicans, for example, voted to give Bush a blank cheque for war with such enthusiasm and unquestioning loyalty as to make one doubt that there was any thought in the decision. The ideological position common to nearly everyone in the system is that America is best, its ideals perfect, its history spotless, its actions and society at the highest levels of human achievement and greatness. To argue with that — if that is at all possible — is to be “un-American” and guilty of the cardinal sin of anti-Americanism, which derives not from honest criticism but for hatred of the good and the pure.

No wonder then that America has never had an organised Left or real opposition party as has been the case in every European country. The substance of American discourse is that it is divided into black and white, evil and good, ours and theirs. It is the task of a lifetime to make a change in that Manichean duality that seems to be set forever in an unchanging ideological dimension. And so it is for most Europeans who see America as having been their saviour and is now their protector, yet whose embrace is both encumbering and annoying at the same time.

Tony Blair's wholeheartedly pro-American position therefore seems even more puzzling to an outsider like myself. I am comforted that even to his own people he seems like a humourless aberration, a European who has decided in effect to obliterate his own identity in favour of this other one, represented by the lamentable Bush. I still have time to learn when it will be that Europe will come to its senses and assume the countervailing role to America that its size and history entitle it to play. Until then, the war approaches inexorably.

 

---

Is China the reason for America’s obsession with Iraq?

By Patrick Seale

The Daily Star, 11/25/02

 

Why Iraq? How to explain the Bush administration’s obsessive fixation on Saddam Hussein and the manufacturing of crisis after crisis? Numerous explanations have been advanced and widely debated over the past several months. One view, heard very often, is that the United States’ main interest is to win control of Iraq’s vast oil reserves so as to reduce its dependence on Saudi Arabia. Another interpretation is that Israel and its American friends have incited the US to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam in order to “reshape’ the region and protect Israel’s supremacy. Another less plausible argument, given the US penchant for propping up dictators, is that America’s ambition is to transform Iraq into a “model democracy’ for the whole Arab world.
Yet another explanation is that America, still in shock from Sept. 11, wants at all costs to avoid another mass-casualty terrorist attack. Its fear is that terrorists will somehow gain possession of weapons of mass destruction, perhaps from some “rogue state,’ and will use them. Hence America’s determination to disarm Iraq, a country it smashed in 1991 but which, in spite of punitive sanctions and repeated bombing, has remained defiant, challenging America’s own supremacy in the Gulf . Some people even go so far as to view the US-Iraqi quarrel in oedipal terms, claiming that Bush junior is anxious to destroy a leader who survived the assaults of his father in the Gulf War. The trouble with such explanations is that they suggest that America is a monolith. But, as everyone knows, there are numerous competing forces and factions, each with its own agenda, inside and outside the administration, all of which exert some power in the shaping of American foreign policy.
It is worth remembering, however, that before the devastating events of Sept. 11, America’s main strategic preoccupation was not with Iraq, or terrorism, or Islamic radicalism, but with the rise of China as a rival superpower. After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Soviet “empire’ in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, American strategists identified China as the only credible long-term “enemy,” the only power that might eventually challenge America’s global hegemony. It was argued then that China was America’s “strategic adversary” and that, of all the world’s trouble spots, the Taiwan Straits was likely to provide the flashpoint for a third world war.
Much has changed in the last couple of years. The US and China have made efforts to improve their relations. In 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization with America’s blessing, and Jiang Zemin, China’s outgoing Communist Party Secretary-General, paid a visit to George W. Bush at his ranch in Texas. Annual two-way trade is now over $100 billion with the US absorbing a quarter of China’s booming exports.
But the underlying rivalry persists, and is unlikely to go away. There were harsh criticisms of China in “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” the Bush administration’s basic declaration of policy published last September. “China’s leaders.” the document states, “have not yet made” the fundamental choices about the character of their state.” There followed several disapproving remarks about China’s growing military capabilities, its one-party rule, its human rights record, its lack of openness, its neglect for the rule of law ­ and of course its threat to absorb Taiwan by force.
A striking feature of the “Bush doctrine” is America’s determination to fight off all rivals and remain the world’s pre-eminent power. As the above-mentioned document stated clearly: “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”
Some analysts believe the contest with China is the real reason the United States is so anxious to impose its military will on Iraq. To contain China, the US needs to take sole control of the strategic Gulf area, which contains more than 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves ­ a resource China desperately needs as it seeks to consolidate and expand its already formidable economic power.
There is no doubt that China is the emerging superpower. Experts believe that by 2010, in less than a decade, it will have outstripped Japan, America’s key ally in Asia, to become the world’s second economic power. China’s stock market, capitalized at about $540 billion and consisting of 1,212 companies, is Asia’s second largest, after Japan’s. A second prediction is that China will catch up with the United States between 2015 and 2020.
The central fact about modern China is that two decades of economic reforms, begun under Deng Xiaoping and continued by Jiang Zemin, have sucked in some $450 billion of foreign money and produced remarkable economic and social change. This year, foreign direct investment in China will exceed $50 billion ­ a total greater than anywhere else in the world, including the United States. With average workers’ salaries around $150 a month, China has become a low-cost production base for hundreds of foreign firms. It is rapidly manoeuvring itself becoming a formidable production platform for the world.
Next year, China will account for more than 25 percent of the world’s steel consumption. Its annual exports, already totaling some $250 billion, are expected to grow by 15 percent this year, while its gross domestic product is expected to reach 8 percent.
All is not rosy, however. Unemployment is acute, with 100 million people on the move and looking for work at any one time. Official corruption is endemic and the breakneck pace of growth has widened the gap between rich and poor. New social forces are now demanding a share of political power.
Almost every statistic about China is awesome, beginning with its 1.3 billion population. To help release the natural commercial talents of the Chinese, billions of dollars are spent annually on the infrastructure of commerce ­ roads, high-speed trains, telecommunications networks, airports and seaports. By 2020, it is predicted, 100 million Chinese will holiday abroad every year. The world will, in fact, soon radically alter its image of China. Already, a powerful middle class of some 375 million people has emerged, largely living in China’s coastal cities, and anxious to rival the West’s consumer society.
Some 60,000 Chinese are studying in the United States and will return to contribute to their country. Jiang Zemin’s son, Jiang Minheng, 48, studied in the US, worked for Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley and now heads China Netcom. He is known as the “prince’ of China’s information technologies. The son of outgoing Prime Minister Zhu Rongi also studied in the US and works for a US-Chinese banking group, while his daughter, after a spell with JP Morgan, now works for the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China.
Such is the background to the 16th Congress of China’s Communist Party, held in Beijing this month, from Nov.8-14, which appointed Hu Jintao, 59, as China’s new leader, replacing Jiang Zemin, 76, who has ruled for 13 years. Described as a bland but brilliant party apparatchik with a talent for political survival, Hu will have the dual task of expanding and streamlining China’s already huge economy but without touching the political superstructure of Communist rule.
Two things are becoming increasingly clear about modern China. The first is that the ruling Communist Party has diluted its Marxist ideology. It has virtually given up the notion of “class struggle’ and replaced it with rampant capitalist development. Private entrepreneurs, once the class enemy, now account for 20 percent of the party’s 60 million members.
The second is that China’s new middle class has now virtually taken power, and Hu Jintao is a product of this. The son of a tea merchant, he graduated as a hydraulic engineer from Beijing’s prestigious Quinghua Polytechnic University. He joined the party in 1965, spent much of the 1970s working on a hydroelectric project in western China, before being sent to Beijing in 1981 to attend a school for rising party cadres. In 1984 he became head of the Young Communist League and the following year was named as party secretary of the poor, mountainous province of Guizhou in south-west China. Then came promotion to party secretary in Tibet where, in 1989, he ferociously crushed dissent, thus convincing the then ruler Deng Xiaoping that he was cut out to be a potential leader.
Unlikely as it may sound, Hu Jintao may be the real reason George Bush would like to see off Saddam Hussein.

Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst

 

 

---

 

 

Why attack Iraq? Why now?

Fahed Fanek

Jordan Times, 11/25/02

 

WHY DOES President George Bush want to attack Iraq? Does he want to disarm the country?

UN weapons inspections are far more effective, not to mention cheaper, than military action if this were the case. Or does the American president want to replace President Saddam Hussein's regime with a pro-US government, thus reviving the colonial tradition exercised by Britain and France in centuries past?

While Bush seems totally preoccupied with Iraq, he has yet to answer two pressing questions: Why Iraq? Why now? Why go after Iraq while there are other countries far more advanced as far as acquiring nuclear weapons is concerned? In addition to India and Pakistan, there are also Iran and North Korea. Do oil and Israel have anything to do with it?

Why did the US not attack Iraq before, despite the fact that UN weapons inspectors left the country as far back as 1998? Why not finish dealing with terrorism now and leave Iraq for later? America risks unravelling the coalition against terror and creating an atmosphere favourable for the recruitment of thousands of new terrorists by attacking Iraq now.

America used to be the guardian of international law and order. It played pivotal roles in creating the League of Nations after World War I and the UN after World War II. It played a major part in drafting the UN Charter, which was intended to solve international disputes and conflicts peacefully and discourage warfare except for self-defence.

Why has America turned into an outlaw state, with its leader so eager for war and destruction? Is it right to use weapons of mass destruction in order to prevent the proliferation of these very same weapons?

In the absence of any military, political, legal and moral grounds for war, the only explanation that remains is that Bush is being driven not by America's interests and national security, but by a belief in the inevitability of a clash of civilisations. If this is indeed the case, then the conflict will be unending and will not be restricted to traditional warfare. It will involve other means that neither America nor the rest of the world have an interest in experiencing.

One of the most important pretexts the US is using to wage war on Iraq is — as Bush said in his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 12 — to uphold the authority of the world body by compelling Baghdad to implement Security Council resolutions.

This is a noble objective, and we Arabs would only be too happy to back the US if it were determined to apply this principle to all countries, and not only to Iraq. Up to the present moment, the Security Council has issued 1441 resolutions, including 90 that have been rejected by concerned countries. The US has done nothing to force those nations to abide by the said resolutions for the simple reason that they are all its allies.

On the contrary, the US has frequently used its influence and its power of veto to prevent the Security Council from censuring these countries. In fact, Washington continued providing them with the military and financial aid that allowed them to renege on international resolutions.

For example, the Security Council has issued a string of resolutions since 1975 demanding that Indonesia withdraw from East Timor. The Indonesians only complied almost 25 years later, in 1999. Resolutions 353 ordering Turkey to withdraw from Cyprus has been on the books since 1974, but has still not been implemented. The Security Council has ordered Morocco to withdraw from the Western Sahara, but this resolution too has never been acted upon.

The biggest renegade against international resolutions, however, is Israel. The Israelis never complied with the resolution that ordered them to withdraw from south Lebanon until the Lebanese forced them out. They disobeyed the Security Council orders not to annex Greater Jerusalem (resolutions 267, 271 and 298). They have flagrantly violated the council's call on them to respect the Fourth Geneva Protocol and cease deportations, house demolitions, land appropriations and collective punishment. Illegal settlements built on occupied Arab land have not been dismantled despite the international demands expressed in resolutions 446, 452 and 465. Besides, Israel has never implemented resolutions 242 and 338.

To reward Israel for these violations, the US provided it with additional aid to fund building a network of “by-pass” roads linking illegal Jewish settlements to Israel proper. In a blatant demonstration of racism, Arabs were forbidden to use these roads.

Articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter forbid member nations to use force to implement resolutions unless specially authorised to do so by the Security Council.

 

---

 

Waiting for an Israeli de Gaulle

By Josh Ruebner

Jordan Times, 11/25/02

 

REFLECTING THE prevailing mood of decolonisation that was then sweeping the Third World, French Premier General Charles de Gaulle announced to his fellow citizens on Nov. 4, 1960, that France's colonial enterprise in Algeria was unsustainable. De Gaulle mustered the courage to tell his people that foreign domination of another people is wrong and that he would henceforth work to reorient relations between France and Algeria “from government of Algeria by metropolitan France to an Algerian Algeria. That means an emancipated Algeria... an Algeria which, if Algerians so wish — and I believe this to be the case — will have its own government, its own institutions, its own laws.”

If only there emerged an Israeli de Gaulle who would tell Israeli citizens with unvarnished honesty that its brutal military occupation of Palestine is immoral and unsustainable, and who would have the perspicacity to work for an emancipated Palestine, then perhaps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not seem as intractable as it does today.

Former Labour Party Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had the credentials to be such an Israeli de Gaulle. His impeccable military background and life-long dedication to the security of Israel certainly convinced many Israelis to follow him in the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians. Although Rabin's oft-stated opposition to Palestinian statehood reflected a certain disingenuousness regarding what it would take to create a just and lasting peace, towards the end of his life there was evidence that his thinking was evolving to the point where he was beginning to understand that Israel's colonial infrastructure in Palestine would have to be dismantled and Palestinians would have to achieve something more than nominal autonomy in order to put an end to the conflict once and for all.

Perhaps because of this evolution in Rabin's attitude, a Jewish fundamentalist assassinated him moments after he declared at a peace rally in Tel Aviv that “the way of peace is more preferable than the way of war”. In an ironic historical twist, Rabin was murdered 35 years to the day after de Gaulle pledged to work for an emancipated Algeria. Whether Rabin would have eventually pledged to work for an emancipated Palestine and would have led his country out of its disastrous military occupation must be left to conjecture.

Ever since the assassination of Rabin, Israelis and the Palestinians have waited for the emergence of another candidate to be the Israeli de Gaulle and extract Israel from its colonial entanglement with Palestine. Perhaps a viable candidate to play this role has finally emerged in the figure of Amram Mitzna, who won a three-way race to head Israel's Labour Party. The contest, held earlier this week, positions Mitzna at the forefront of the Labour Party's slate of candidates for the next Knesset which will be elected in January 2003. If Labour receives the most votes in the election, Mitzna stands to become Israel's next prime minister.

Mitzna, a former Israeli army general who played a prominent role in Israel's crackdown against the Palestinians during their first uprising against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s, certainly has the credentials to speak authoritatively to the Israeli public about its security needs. However, Mitzna is not solely a military man; although yet to hold a national political position, he has already demonstrated an aptitude for governance, winning high praises from many as mayor of Haifa, an ethnically-mixed city of Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.

According to recent Israeli public opinion polls, Mitzna and the Labour Party face an uphill battle in their attempt to outpoll the Likud Party and its leader — likely to be either current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and earn the right to form the next government. What is clear is that to overcome their deficit in the polls, Mitzna and Labour will have to offer the Israeli electorate an alternative to the Likud's repressive, iron-fisted, security-based policy towards the Palestinians. Any attempt by Labour to replicate the Likud's “security” platform will be rejected by the Israeli populace which in recent years has come to view the Labour Party as being soft on security issues. If the campaign revolves solely around the question of which party can crack down harder on the Palestinians, Israelis would likely view Mitzna as a “mini me”, relative to Likud's Dr Evil: Sharon or Netanyahu.

Instead, to stand a chance in the upcoming general election, Mitzna and Labour must distinguish themselves as much as possible from the failed Likud policy of settlement expansion and military reoccupation of the West Bank. Indeed, Mitzna appears to be taking this road and articulating policy positions which have the possibility of putting an end to the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict: unilaterally dismantling illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and ending Israel's military occupation there; returning to the negotiating table with the Palestinians based on the substantial progress that was made between them at Taba, Egypt, in January 2001; and, if negotiations do not succeed, unilaterally dismantling outlying settlements in the West Bank and marking Israel's border with an independent Palestinian state.

Although currently down in the polls, due to the unpredictability of the Israeli political system, no one should yet rule out the possibility that Mitzna and the Labour Party will be able to engineer a victory. (In 1996, Netanyahu dug his way out of a 25 per cent hole to eke out a victory against incumbent Prime Minister Shimon Peres.) And, if this happens, perhaps Israel's de Gaulle will finally have arrived.

The writer is co-founder of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI) and is a former analyst of Middle East Affairs for Congressional Research Service.

 

---

 

America’s role in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

By Jesse Derber

Al-Jazeerah, 11/25/02

 

About 60 years now we have come to the conclusion that the world is now too small and infinitely more dangerous for a moral power such as America to remain silent.  However, it is entirely impossible for a nation governed by men to be entirely moral and to do right in all cases.  The essence of American history is not perfection, but the consistent struggle for perfection.  This age, like all others, is no different.  It is only natural to make mistakes when a country has become as immersed as we have in foreign affairs, but it is inherently American to try to rectify those mistakes.  Therefore, I wish to prove to you that American support of Israel is a mistake. 

Many have noted that Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East.  Israel appears to be an oasis of freedom and justice in a land marred by jihads and tribal/ ethnic strife.  However, I believe that the idea of Israel being an oasis of democracy in the Saracen desert is merely a mirage.  In 1967, as many of you know, Israel used preemptive strikes to capture the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, both places where Arabs had been launching conventional raids against Israel.  Israel “occupied” these lands in order to create a buffer for their protection, and they built small chains of settlements in strategic areas.  Israel did not remove Arabs from these newly captured lands, but they would not enfranchise the Arabs like had already done with Arabs already living in Israel.  This means that there was a group of people that was now governed without consent by foreigners who were bent on establishing a nation based on the invaders' own racial and religious purity.  This is the absolute antithesis of the American ideals we have held so sacred for over 200 years, and the very same ideals we have successfully spread to many places of the world.  However, it was not until after the 1967 War when Israel established these decidedly un-American practices that the American nation decided to significantly support Israel.  I believe this was because of our continued sentiment for the Jews and what Westerners have done to them for two millennia.  We deeply felt for the Jews and wanted to recreate a homeland for them to live in peace and safety amongst themselves for all perpetuity.  However, while we were feeling that, we did not think or comprehend the truth that any such dream would only come about after subjugation of the inhabitants between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.  However, it is now time for us to use reason, because America should not be in the business of promoting racial and religious purity in the Middle East.  To those who would claim that Israel is a democracy, despite its disenfranchisement of those living in the West Bank and Gaza, and therefore worthy of American support, I think the following words of Abraham Lincoln will suffice as a rebuttal: “What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.  I say this is the leading principle- the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”

There are those, namely our President, who claim that Sharon is a “man of peace” and therefore so is Israel.  This is supported by the belief that the Jews have been terribly victimized by Palestinians’ murderers/ “martyrs” and thereby justifying any acts the Israeli government takes in order to protect itself.  However, there are points there that I would have some disagreement.  I do have some qualms about Sharon being described as a “man of peace.”  Consider the following statement he made to a General Ooze Merham during an interview in 1956 shortly after a military campaign:

I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian Child will be born in this area. The Palestinian Woman and Child is more dangerous than the Man, Because the Palestinian Child existence refers that Generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli Civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With One hit I've killed 750 Palestinians ( in Rafah, 1956). I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic Girls as The Palestinian Woman is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and Nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do. (Look for details at: http://www.iap.org/zionism2.htm ).  

I realize that he was a young man at the time and I would like to think that I give people the benefit of the doubt, but he doesn’t sound like a person who will grow up to be a great man of peace.  Apparently the man has opposed every single attempt at peace throughout his entire long career in politics.  Also, he’s been the target of accusations of massacring civilians during his army days, which I believe probably have some validity to them.  However, that could all be water under the bridge if he would redeem himself during his reign as Prime Minister and once and for all establish lasting peace and save the lives of countless Israelis and Arabs.  However, I believe that not to be the case.  Sharon and the Israeli government have accelerated the Jewish settlements in the West Bank in no longer primarily strategic positions.  This means that more voting power and therefore political power is shifting to the West Bank, which will only make it harder for there ever to be a peaceful solution to the problem.  Also, he seems to favor the escalation of conflict, which in the long run seems to favor Israeli expansion.  Just take the bombing of the Arab apartment building a few months ago, which the Israeli leaders had to know would only cause more terrorist attacks.  Neither side, especially the Israelis', at this point seem to yearn for peace, and therefore we should not support either side with billions of dollars or elite American military equipment. It is my firm belief that if a just peace can be established in Israel/Palestine that a lot of our problems in the Middle East will take care of themselves, without the use of American military force.  Therefore, let me propose a plan that would attempt to create a just peace, a peace without victory.  First and foremost, Israel must dismantle its settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the Arabs must relinquish their right of return.  This is the most difficult task to accomplish, but one I feel that is necessary at this point considering the amount of racial and religious hatred.  I think with proper coaxing the Arabs will be a little more willing to go along with this than the Israelis, but both sides need to be properly coaxed.  

America, unlike any other nation, has the power to force Israelis to withdraw.  First, we must give an ultimatum to the Israelis to withdraw within a specific date under punishment of losing American funds and military equipment. If this does not work, organize an international agreement to impose sanctions upon Israel if they fail to withdraw after another specified date.  Such sanctions I think could be achieved if the U.S promoted them.  I believe this pressure would force Israel to reasonably negotiate for a just peace.  

In order for both sides to accept such concessions, I think the international community should by economic means soften the blow to these concessions.  I think the U.S. along with the European Union and any other foreign entity should reimburse the settlers to the extent that they will have as much of an economic advantage settling in Israel as they originally had been settling in the West Bank.  Likewise, the international community should adequately reimburse the Arab “refugees,” especially if they want to return to the West Bank or Gaza.  Hopefully, it will minimalize the pangs of compromise that are necessary to peace.  Also, I think it would be best if the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were set up into two separate nations.  Civil War seems like a real possibility if the West Bank and Gaza become one nation, which will only multiply the miseries of the Arabs.  It appears that the PA and Hamas can agree on nothing except for their hatred for Israel, and if the common enemy is removed, I fear they will undergo civil war.  If the West Bank is governed by increasingly democratic PA and the Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas then Civil War could be averted.  Another reason why I think the creation of two separate Palestinian states would be beneficial is because I feel Arabs will more easily accept the state of Israel if they are divided into two separate states bordering Israel rather than one state divided by Israel.  However, if there will be independence for Palestinians, the Israelis fear that the West Bank and Gaza will revert to being launch pads for raids on Israel’s border.  That is why I think an international peace keeping force led by the U.N. would be a key component to peace.  They would be a buffer between Israel and Palestine and also would restrict the troop and arm movements into Palestine that Israelis so desperately fear. 

Also, a just peace will probably be best established on both sides of the conflict only under sufficient economic conditions.  That is why economic aid and loans for internal projects such as roads, airports, dams, and water works would help them reap the benefits of peace.  The most important of improvements would probably be water systems.  Before 1948, there was roughly a million Arabs living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, but now that number has quadrupled, which doesn’t even count the displaced Palestinian descendants and the now 6 million Jews crammed into the semi-arid land.  Massive saltwater treatment plants built on the Mediterranean shore with water being shared by both Arabs and Israelis would better help an establishment of peace.  

What’s most important for the American government to do is to propose and promote a fair plan (which I don’t believe we’ve done so far) that will be a great mutual benefit for both the Arabs and the Jews, but it is ultimately up to them to decide which path to choose. 

 

Editorial Notes by Hassan El-Najjar: 

Jesse Derber is a university student whose article is worth of publication for his passion for peace in the Middle. However, several points need to be mentioned in service to readers. First, the 1947 Partition resolution mentioned only one Arab Palestinian state, not two as Jesse suggested. The Palestinian-Israeli agreements signed showed that Israelis do not wish to see two Palestinian states. One is enough. Second, the rivalry between Palestinian organizations and political parties should not be exaggerated. It is not more than that between liberals and conservatives in many countries, including the US. Third, the right of the Palestinian refugees for repatriation and compensation is guaranteed by UN resolutions. The right solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, is a democratic society, in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians live in one country, in the same neighborhoods, with the same political rights. This should be the long term solution for a lasting peace. For now, the two-state solution is the most realistic one. Finally, morality and politics do not mix. There is no morality in politics today. There is no morality in dispossessing seven million people of their homeland, denying them their political and national rights, and keeping most of them under a brutal continuous military occupation for 35 years. There is no morality in supporting the oppressive occupiers with money and weapons. There are only selfish interests that prevail as the ideology of the ruling classes in our world today.