Jan 17, 2003 Op Eds

Jan 17, 2003 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

History has a way of sweeping past ancient, seemingly intractable disputes, leaving them like rocks marooned by an inexorable tide. The-28-year division of Cyprus is just such a dispute.

Wednesday two old men who have known each other for almost 60 years, sat down on in a building on an abandoned airport in Nicosia, in the no- man’s land that separates the Turkish and Greek Cypriot peoples. The leaders of these two communities, Rauf Denktash, aged 79 and 83-year- old Glafcos Clerides, had promised to continue talking until they reached a settlement.

If however they repeat past failures to find a solution to Cyprus’ division, both sides of the island will be worse off, but the Turkish Cypriots and the mainland Turks, who have supported them economically and politically for so long, will be the greater losers. Now therefore is the time to end a stand-off which has lost all justification. Their negotiations were due to revolve around a detailed UN plan, which would among other things, create a federated Cyprus with a weak central government headed by a revolving presidency, and two separate Parliaments. One sticking point has been the proposed reduction of the territory controlled by the Turkish administration from 36 percent to 28.5 percent of the island.

However if Denktash continues his opposition, he will be missing the core issue. The UN proposals are not and should not be an end in themselves, but a route along which, maybe in ten or twenty years, Turks and Greeks will feel sufficiently confident to abandon any division and come together again as a single, united, multiethnic community. If a deal is not struck by the end of next month and ratified by referenda planned for March, the Greek Cypriot part of the island will continue alone and quickly on its way to membership of the European Union. Not only will the Turkish Cypriot community be left isolated but Turkey itself, which has paid so dearly to support it, will find itself in an impossible position in its own attempt to gain admittance to the EU. Denktash therefore carries on his shoulders, far more than the future of his own community. And the time frame is made the more urgent because next month, Greek Cypriots are due to vote on their presidency. Clerides, who had planned to retire, has decided to stand again, to see his community through the EU joining process, with which he has been intimately connected.

His opponent, Tassos Papadopoulos, welcomes EU membership but is deeply opposed to a reconciliation with the Turkish community. If Clerides goes to his electorate without a done deal on Cypriot reunification, and he loses the vote, the Turkish Cypriots will find themselves once again isolated and the prospects of any deal put away, probably for years.

Though Denktash’s own hard line has its supporters, there is now a majority of Turkish Cypriots which favors an end to division. The 50,000 who demonstrated this week in favor of agreement, represented fully a quarter of Denktash’s community.

His reaction to the demonstration was the angry comment that it undermined his bargaining position at the talks. He is wrong. The popular outburst actually demonstrated that the Turkish Cypriot community is in large measure committed to making reunion work. This should strengthen, not weaken his hand, because it shows that Greek Cypriots have little to fear from the two communities coming together again. When Turkish airborne troops landed in Cyprus in 1974, they stopped plans to join Cyprus to the Greek mainland and protected the Turkish community. Now Greek Cyprus stands on the brink of melding peacefully with the European Union and by extension, Greece itself. The Turkish Cypriots and in their turn, the mainland Turks, could be part of that stabilizing and economically beneficial process. Or they could be left to their own devices. It all relies on the wisdom of two old men at an abandoned airport.

A vicious cycle of death & destruction
By Essam Al-Ghalib

Arab News, 1/17/03

As a result of press censorship which deems certain pictures “offensive,” those who do not live in Palestine have no idea how nightmarish everyday life there is.

As a journalist, I see the daily carnage by way of press releases and photos that are filtered through the Arab News office. A great deal of what I see is considered too graphic by most newspapers to print. For instance, recently I saw a picture of dead and bloodied Jamal Zabbaro, 20, whose family was hugging his bullet-pierced corpse.

Most people’s perception of what is happening in Palestine is formed by what they read in newspapers and what they see on television. Headlines announcing death on both sides are now so commonplace that one is surprised when a day goes by without an atrocity being committed.

For us living in other parts of the world, we take a moment to read the article, shake our heads or frown, then go on with our daily lives. We pick up our children from school, we bring them home and cook their dinner, help them with their homework and wait for our spouse to come home. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Tulkarem and Gaza City, people are living in fear that when their loved ones leave home, there is a strong possibility that they may never return, that it may be the last time they are seen alive. For hundreds, that fear has been realized.

I do not intend to enter the political arena by writing this. I just want to draw attention to the human factor on both sides. There are people being killed, and people doing the killing. There are families being shattered and torn apart.

Imagine you wake up one morning, cook breakfast for your children before they leave for school. Three o’clock comes and you are waiting for them to return home. One of them does not. You think to yourself, “He’s probably with his friends.” While you wait, you turn on CNN and find out that a group of children has been killed, an eight-year-old among them. You think to yourself, “How awful, my child is eight.” Then it clicks. Your heart starts racing, “Where is my child?” A few seconds pass, then... “Oh my God, that is my child.”

This is a nightmare that has become a reality for hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli families. Sadly for them, they cannot change the channel or turn to the comics and forget what has happened. Escape for them is not so easy.

What you do, and how involved you get, can help change the face of the intifada and the crisis in the occupied territories. We are all humans, regardless of race, religion, color, political affiliations or personal differences.

Am I naive, you ask?

Perhaps a little; but I choose to care.

Do you?

essamal-ghalib@arabnews.com

Estrada tries to pull a fast one, again
By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh

Arab News, 1/17/03

Former President Joseph Estrada rendered yet another one of his incredible performances this week when he testified at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday and casually revealed that Rep. Mark Jimenez had offered him $14 million in 1999 to help get the infamous IMPSA power contract approved by the government.

Now, in most languages that action would have been considered a bribe. Not in Estrada's la-la land. No, Estrada denied that it was a bribe when pressed by Sen. Robert Barbers on the issue. According to the former president that is not the way he saw it, citing as justification for his moral blindness the fact that many people had donated money to the Office of the President. Yes maybe so, but were their donations to the tune of $14 million and done in secret? I hardly think so.

Opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a strong Estrada ally, had to pipe up during the proceedings and reveal how the $14 million bribe was allegedly divided up: "$2 million was given to Perez (former Secretary of Justice Hernando Perez), $4 million to Malacanang, $1 million 'for the boys' and $7 million (Jimenez) did not mention anymore." Not only that, but Lacson claims that the bribe was paid to the Arroyo administration just after Estrada had been pushed out of office by EDSA II in January 2001.

It's not clear at all who actually accepted the bribe: Estrada or his successor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The IMPSA contract was not approved until the beginning of the Arroyo administration, although all of the necessary document checking and negotiations on the final terms of the contract were made during the Estrada administration.

I'm inclined to think that Estrada, when faced with a $14 million bribe dangled in front of him, would not hesitate to grab it. But recent actions such as the winding down of President Arroyo's Lualhati Foundation, which had received at least 8 million pesos in donations from Jimenez, leaves one wondering as to just how clean the Arroyo administration really is.

It is ironic to note that Jimenez today is still languishing in a south Florida jail on tax evasion charges because his lawyers are having a hard time to meet the financial guarantees of his $500,000 bail. What happened to the $6.7 million in assets that Jimenez declared in his Statement of Assets and Liabilities that he filed with the Philippine Commission on Audit in April 2002? Did Jimenez spend it all in the Philippines last month, trying to bribe is way out of being deported to the US?

As Sen. Lacson pointed out in a press release after the Senate hearing, this was the first time that details of the $14 million bribe were talked about in public. That leaves me depressed and cynical about the size of the bribery virus infecting Philippine politics. Just how many more revelations of mega-bribes have to surface before Filipino politicians clean up their act? Or is Philippine politics doomed to be stuck in a quagmire of dirty and slimy operators forever? I hope not.

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Overreacting to travel advisories

The Philippine government this week went overboard in reacting to a US State Department travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to any area of Mindanao because of the threat of kidnappings, bombings and other violence and criminal activity.

Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye denounced the advisory as "quite reckless", saying it disregarded the Philippine government's efforts to bring law and order to Mindanao, and that peace and order had actually improved in that area.

That may be so, but after the 9/11 attacks on the US, and the subsequent American bombing of Afghanistan and the current US military buildup in the Gulf region, now more than ever Americans across the globe have become targets of potential terrorist attacks.

Mindanao has never exactly been a very safe place for Americans to travel to, with communist and Muslim rebels on the prowl, ready to kidnap, ransom and many times kill foreigners found there, especially Americans. Sure there are certain areas of Mindanao which are much safer than others, but they are too few and far between to be safely navigated between.

It's a sad fact that the Philippine government does not have a good grip on large swathes of Mindanao, with some areas so hostile to government forces that soldiers dare not venture there. With that in mind, and with the recent kidnappings of Americans in Mindanao (remember the Burnham missionary couple, in which the husband was killed?), it's not surprising that the US government advises it citizens not to travel there.

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Comments or questions? Email the author at: rasheed@arabnews.com or manilamoods@hotmail.com

Collective punishment is a war crime

Daoud Kuttab

Jordan Times, 1/17/03

THE LONG line at the Qalandia checkpoint last week was one of the first signs of the added collective punishment that the Israeli army was now instructed to impose on the Palestinian population. When my turn finally arrived, I drove up to the soldiers, hoping finally to be allowed into Ramallah. A woman soldier was preparing some sandwich and her colleague ordered me to return. I tried to plead with him that my papers were in order, but he kept insisting that I return. I backed my car up and after some wait I decided to walk by foot with my Israeli-issued press card and my travel documents in hand. The young Israeli soldier again screamed at me to return. When I insisted to know why, he pointed to his female partner eating away at her sandwich. “Wait till she is done with her breakfast,” he replied.

The answer surprised me because in 35 years of living under Israeli occupation I don't remember ever being delayed because a soldier was munching on a sandwich. I know many other places were you might be asked to wait in line while staffers had their tea or breakfast, but this was a first for me.

Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia checkpoint were clearly fulfilling new orders coming from the Sharon administration: to hurt Palestinians in any way, shape or form.

A delegation that was invited to London was not allowed to travel to the United Kingdom. A PLO Central Council meeting that was supposed to discuss the Palestinian constitution was not allowed to convene. Even Palestinians invited to an Israeli-Palestinian conference about Palestinian elections in Jerusalem, sponsored by the American University, were told that their permits had been rescinded.

Of all the decisions, the one that upset many Palestinians was the decision to bar Palestinians aged 16-35 from travelling within the Palestinian territories, as well as from Palestine to any part of the world. This collective punishment has literally made Palestinian cities a major prison for a large chunk of the population. After all, why should the student, the worker, the man, the woman, the supporter of the peace process or the opponent of it be deprived of the inalienable right of freedom of movement?

The Fourth Geneva Convention, which details what an occupying power is or is not allowed to do to the civilian population under its control, clearly stipulates that collective punishment is forbidden. If there were a war crimes tribunal, the Israeli officials that take such a decision, as well as those who carry it out, could be convicted of committing a crime of war.

Even more cruel than the crime of restricting the travel of individuals is the crime of demolishing the houses of the families of militant Palestinians. In a span of 24 hours two weeks ago, Israel demolished more than 30 houses in the Rafah area. These were homes to hundreds of Palestinian men women and children. Some of them are houses that the families have waited a lifetime to build. They were destroyed as a punishment and in the Israeli hope that the act would deter Palestinians from carrying out suicide attacks.

The statement by Al Aqsa Brigades taking responsibility for the double suicide attack in Tel Aviv was rather interesting. It stated that the attacks were in part a response to the Israeli policy of house demolition. House demolitions, therefore, are not only useless as a deterrent, they also seem to have been instigators of more attacks against Israelis. That attack was odd on another front. While the Fateh leadership has been busy trying to convince Hamas and other radical groups not to carry out attacks against civilians, this attack clearly carried out by Fateh cadres embarrassed the leadership which tried unsuccessfully to claim that the perpetrators had nothing to do with Fateh. It turns out that this most deadly attack by Fateh in over 25 years seem to have more than one target. While it was carried out against Israeli civilians, analysts believe that it was directed at certain segments of the Fateh movement itself. One source has said that the attack was meant to send a message to the Palestinian Minister of Interior Hani Al Hassan who has been given the difficult responsibility of trying to pacify radical elements within the mainstream Palestinian movement.

War or peace? Middle East enters the ‘danger zone’

By Patrick Seale, The Daily Star, 1/17/03

Diplomatic observers monitoring the Iraqi crisis in London, Washington and Paris agree on one thing: The next three or four weeks will be crucial. As one of them put it to me: “We are entering the danger zone. The issue of war and peace in the Middle East will be decided within the next 30 days.” It is clear that Western leaders are coming under great stress. They are having to arbitrate fierce debates for and against the war inside their own cabinets, they are having to take note of the evolution of public opinion in their respective countries, and make lonely choices which could affect not only the region but the whole world.
Three events toward the end of this month will provide pointers to the difficult decisions that will soon have to be made.
l On Jan. 27, Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, is due to make his first detailed report to the UN Security Council on what his team has found or failed to find in Iraq;
l On Jan. 28, US President George W. Bush will deliver his State of the Union address, which will be closely studied for clues to the president’s intentions.
l Also on Jan. 28, Israelis will vote in a general election which will affect their relations with the Palestinians and with their Arab neighbors for years to come but which will also determine the future of Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard-line leader.
These three events are closely connected, at least in the minds of the “war party” that is to say the small group of men in Washington and Tel Aviv who are pressing for war. The “hawks” know that, for their vast geopolitical ambitions to be realized, and for their own personal and political careers to flourish, the crisis must be resolved “their” way. The make-or-break point is approaching.
If no decision to fight is taken in Washington within the next 30 days, the momentum will slacken, and the opportunity to go to war will be missed or at best deferred until late in the year, when it may be derailed by the start of the US presidential election campaign.
If Sharon and the right emerge triumphant from the Israeli elections and are able to form a government on their own, their friends in Washington will be greatly heartened and will beat the war drums with even greater vigor. But if the Likud’s margin of victory is slim, then Sharon will be at the mercy of Eli Yishay’s ultra-orthodox Shas or of Youssef Lapid’s resolutely anti-clerical Shinuy party. He might even have to rely on the support of the extreme right-wing factions, such as Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, Ephraim Eytam’s National Religious Party, or Natan Sharansky’s Yisrael Baaliyah. An Israeli government built on such unstable foundations would be of no help to Washington hawks.
If, by some miracle, Labor leader Amran Mitzna were to win the elections, form a government of the center left, and embark as he promised on unconditional negotiations with the Palestinians, the hawks would be routed and the focus of international attention would switch from Iraq to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The hawks have reason to be deeply worried because the current of international opinion is running against them, especially in Europe. In Spain, 66 percent of the numbers polled are against the war, in France, 76 percent, in Turkey, close to 90 percent. At the same time, Bush’s personal approval rating has slipped below 60 percent for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, reflecting doubts about the war among ordinary Americans.
Even in Britain, America’s closest ally, only 13 percent approve of military action in the absence of a “green light” from the United Nations. This has put Prime Minister Tony Blair in a difficult situation. He wants to protect Britain’s “special relationship” with the US, but he also has to recognize that British opinion is largely hostile to US policies. According to The Guardian daily, Blair faces opposition from more than half of his own Cabinet if he tries to involve British troops in a US-led war on Iraq that lacks UN backing.
Even more worrying for the “war party” is the explicit criticism now appearing in the US press. On Jan. 12, a long article by Washington Post staff writer Glenn Kessler described how “a small group of conservatives,” many of whom are also strong supporters of Israel, “pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda” by connecting their anti-Iraq cause to the “war on terrorism.” According to the article, this “murky process” bypassed traditional policymaking channels. In other words, this was something of a conspiracy which circumvented the usual airing and shaping of decisions within the administration. The writer pointed to Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary, who, “in public and private conversations, was an especially forceful advocate of tackling Iraq at the same time as Osama bin Laden.” Also named is the Defense Policy Board (chaired by another prominent hawk, Richard Perle) which shortly after Sept. 11 “animatedly discussed the importance of ousting Hussein.” This public exposure of the maneuvers of the warmongers is undoubtedly turning opinion against war and warmongers.
Unnerved by these developments, the “war party” is now pressuring Hans Blix to uncover traces of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the scramble to find incriminating evidence, US agencies are beginning to feed intelligence to Blix’s team. He is being urged to conduct aggressive interviews with Iraqi scientists outside Iraq, in such locations as Britain’s sovereign bases on Cyprus. A frantic search is on for Iraqi defectors who will spill the beans about Iraq’s weapons projects.
In the words of a Washington-based diplomat, the “neo-crazies” as the increasingly nervous neoconservatives are being called have “painted the president into a corner.” They have put him in the impossible position of having to chose between waging a high-risk war in the teeth of international opinion and suffering the political humiliation of allowing Saddam to survive.
Arab, Turkish and Iranian leaders have all spoken out against the war, and warned of the destabilization that could follow. There is little sign, however, that Bush is listening. The view in Washington seems to be that, in spite of their public protests, Arab leaders will fall in behind America once Saddam is overthrown, and that the anger of the “Arab street” can be contained. Of greater concern to the US is the anti-war sentiment of Turkey’s new government, seeing that US planners had hoped to launch one prong of the invasion from Turkish soil.
Characteristically, the Palestinians are failing to seize the chance to influence the outcome of the Israeli elections, even though it is a matter of life and death for them. It is widely recognized that suicide bombings play into Sharon’s hands because they drive frightened Israelis to the right. It follows, therefore, that it is a supreme Palestinian interest to halt the attacks in the run-up to the elections, and to reassure the Israeli electorate that they will end altogether once political negotiations, such as Mitzna has called for, get under way.
Representatives of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been meeting in Cairo where Egypt’s chief of intelligence, General Omar Suleiman, has been pressing them to make a deal before the Israeli elections. The radical parties recognize that there is no way the Palestinian people can be protected without a state. But instead of addressing the Israeli public and convincing it of their serious interest in negotiations, the Palestinian groups have been arguing among themselves about who will take the top place in the temporary leadership they are trying to create.
It is also astonishing that Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has not issued a clear statement of its peace terms ahead of the Israeli elections, including clarifying its position on the controversial but essential question of the Palestinians’ “right of return.”
In turn, Arab states are missing the opportunity to remind the Israeli public as they should be doing in clear and forceful terms that Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace plan, offering Israel peace and normal relations in return for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, is still on the table. It was endorsed at the Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002, but most Israelis seem to believe it has been shelved or is no longer relevant.
Out of passivity or fatalism, much of the Arab world is behaving as if the outcome of the Israeli elections, and crucial decisions about war and peace in the region, were no concern of theirs.

Patrick Seale is a veteran Middle East analyst.

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