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An unacceptable Arab helplessness By Edward Said Al-Ahram Weekly, 1/16/03 -
One opens The New York Times on a daily basis to read the most recent article about the preparations for war that are taking place in the United States. Another battalion, one more set of aircraft carriers and cruisers, an ever-increasing number of aircraft, new contingents of officers are being moved to the Persian Gulf area. 62,000 more soldiers were transferred to the Gulf last weekend. An enormous, deliberately intimidating force is being built up by America overseas, while inside the country, economic and social bad news multiply with a joint relentlessness. The huge capitalist machine seems to be faltering, even as it grinds down the vast majority of citizens. Nonetheless, George Bush proposes another large tax cut for the one per cent of the population that is comparatively rich. The public education system is in a major crisis, and health insurance for 50 million Americans simply does not exist. Israel asks for 15 billion dollars in additional loan guarantees and military aid. And the unemployment rates in the US mount inexorably, as more jobs are lost every day. Nevertheless, preparations for an unimaginably costly war continue and continue without either public approval or dramatically noticeable disapproval. A generalised indifference (which may conceal great over-all fear, ignorance and apprehension) has greeted the administration's war- mongering and its strangely ineffective response to the challenge forced on it recently by North Korea. In the case of Iraq, with no weapons of mass destruction to speak of, the US plans a war; in the case of North Korea, it offers that country economic and energy aid. What a humiliating difference between contempt for the Arabs and respect for North Korea, an equally grim, and cruel dictatorship. In the Arab and Muslim worlds, the situation appears more peculiar. For almost a year American politicians, regional experts, administration officials, journalists have repeated the charges that have become standard fare so far as Islam and the Arabs are concerned. Most of this chorus pre- dates 11 September, as I have shown in my books Orientalism and Covering Islam. To today's practically unanimous chorus has been added the authority of the United Nation's Human Development Report on the Arab world which certified that Arabs dramatically lag behind the rest of the world in democracy, knowledge, and women's rights. Everyone says (with some justification, of course) that Islam needs reform and that the Arab educational system is a disaster, in effect, a school for religious fanatics and suicide bombers funded not just by crazy imams and their wealthy followers (like Osama Bin Laden) but also by governments who are supposed allies of the United States. The only "good" Arabs are those who appear in the media decrying modern Arab culture and society without reservation. I recall the lifeless cadences of their sentences for, with nothing positive to say about themselves or their people and language, they simply regurgitate the tired American formulas already flooding the airwaves and pages of print. We lack democracy, they say, we haven't challenged Islam enough, we need to do more about driving away the specter of Arab nationalism and the credo of Arab unity. That is all discredited, ideological rubbish. Only what we, and our American instructors, say about the Arabs and Islam -- vague re- cycled Orientalist clichés of the kind repeated by a tireless mediocrity like Bernard Lewis -- is true. The rest isn't realistic or pragmatic enough. "We" need to join modernity, modernity in effect being Western, globalised, free- marketed, democratic -- whatever those words might be taken to mean. (If I had the time, there would be an essay to be written about the prose style of people like Ajami, Gerges, Makiya, Talhami, Fandy et. al., academics whose very language reeks of subservience, inauthenticity and a hopelessly stilted mimicry that has been thrust upon them). The clash of civilisations that George Bush and his minions are trying to fabricate as a cover for a preemptive oil and hegemony war against Iraq is supposed to result in a triumph of democratic nation-building, regime change and forcible modernisation à l'américaine. Never mind the bombs and the ravages of the sanctions which are unmentioned. This will be a purifying war whose goal is to throw out Saddam and his men and replace them with a re-drawn map of the whole region. New Sykes Picot. New Balfour. New Wilsonian 14 points. New world altogether. Iraqis, we are told by the Iraqi dissidents, will welcome their liberation, and perhaps forget entirely about their past sufferings. Perhaps. Meanwhile, the soul-and-body destroying situation in Palestine worsens all the time. There seems no force capable of stopping Sharon and Mofaz, who bellow their defiance to the whole world. We forbid, we punish, we ban, we break, we destroy. The torrent of unbroken violence against an entire people continues. As I write these lines, I am sent an announcement that the entire village of Al-Daba' in the Qalqilya area of the West Bank is about to be wiped out by 60- ton American-made Israeli bulldozers: 250 Palestinians will lose their 42 houses, 700 dunums of agricultural land, a mosque, and an elementary school for 132 children. The United Nations stands by, looking on as its resolutions are flouted on an hourly basis. Typically, alas, George Bush identifies with Sharon, not with the 16-year-old Palestinian kid who is used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority offers a return to peacemaking, and presumably, to Oslo. Having been burned for 10 years the first time, Arafat seems inexplicably to want to have another go at it. His faithful lieutenants make declarations and write opinion pieces for the press, suggesting their willingness to accept anything, more or less. Remarkably though, the great mass of this heroic people seems willing to go on, without peace and without respite, bleeding, going hungry, dying day by day. They have too much dignity and confidence in the justice of their cause to submit shamefully to Israel, as their leaders have done. What could be more discouraging for the average Gazan who goes on resisting Israeli occupation than to see his or her leaders kneel as supplicants before the Americans? In this entire panorama of desolation, what catches the eye is the utter passivity and helplessness of the Arab world as a whole. The American government and its servants issue statement after statement of purpose, they move troops and material, they transport tanks and destroyers, but the Arabs individually and collectively can barely muster a bland refusal (at most they say, no, you cannot use military bases in our territory) only to reverse themselves a few days later. Why is there such silence and such astounding helplessness? The largest power in history is about to launch and is unremittingly reiterating its intention to launch a war against a sovereign Arab country now ruled by a dreadful regime, a war the clear purpose of which is not only to destroy the Baathi regime but to re-design the entire region. The Pentagon has made no secret that its plans are to re-draw the map of the whole Arab world, perhaps changing other regimes and many borders in the process. No one can be shielded from the cataclysm when it comes (if it comes, which is not yet a complete certainty). And yet, there is only long silence followed by a few vague bleats of polite demurral in response. After all, millions of people will be affected. America contemptuously plans for their future without consulting them. Do we reserve such racist derision? This is not only unacceptable: it is impossible to believe. How can a region of almost 300 million Arabs wait passively for the blows to fall without attempting a collective roar of resistance and a loud proclamation of an alternative view? Has the Arab will completely dissolved? Even a prisoner about to be executed usually has some last words to pronounce. Why is there now no last testimonial to an era of history, to a civilisation about to be crushed and transformed utterly, to a society that despite its drawbacks and weaknesses nevertheless goes on functioning. Arab babies are born every hour, children go to school, men and women marry and work and have children, they play, and laugh and eat, they are sad, they suffer illness and death. There is love and companionship, friendship and excitement. Yes, Arabs are repressed and misruled, terribly misruled, but they manage to go on with the business of living despite everything. This is the fact that both the Arab leaders and the United States simply ignore when they fling empty gestures at the so-called "Arab street" invented by mediocre Orientalists. But who is now asking the existential questions about our future as a people? The task cannot be left to a cacophony of religious fanatics and submissive, fatalistic sheep. But that seems to be the case. The Arab governments -- no, most of the Arab countries from top to bottom -- sit back in their seats and just wait as America postures, lines up, threatens and ships out more soldiers and F-16's to deliver the punch. The silence is deafening. Years of sacrifice and struggle, of bones broken in hundreds of prisons and torture chambers from the Atlantic to the Gulf, families destroyed, endless poverty and suffering. Huge, expensive armies. For what? This is not a matter of party or ideology or faction: it's a matter of what the great theologian Paul Tillich used to call ultimate seriousness. Technology, modernisation and certainly globalisation are not the answer for what threatens us as a people now. We have in our tradition an entire body of secular and religious discourse that treats of beginnings and endings, of life and death, of love and anger, of society and history. This is there, but no voice, no individual with great vision and moral authority seems able now to tap into that, and bring it to attention. We are on the eve of a catastrophe that our political, moral and religious leaders can only just denounce a little bit while, behind whispers and winks and closed doors, they make plans somehow to ride out the storm. They think of survival, and perhaps of heaven. But who is in charge of the present, the worldly, the land, the water, the air and the lives dependent on each other for existence? No one seems to be in charge. There is a wonderful colloquial expression in English that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness, our passivity and inability to help ourselves now when our strength is most needed. The expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction. Hasn't the time come for us collectively to demand and try to formulate a genuinely Arab alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world? This is not only a trivial matter of regime change, although God knows that we can do with quite a bit of that. Surely it can't be a return to Oslo, another offer to Israel to please accept our existence and let us live in peace, another cringing crawling inaudible plea for mercy. Will no one come out into the light of day to express a vision for our future that isn't based on a script written by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, those two symbols of vacant power and overweening arrogance? I hope someone is listening.
Al-Ahram Weekly, 1/18/03 -
What should we think during times of war? There is, after all, a third world war going on. Its flames were kindled following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar order and it was officially declared -- for an indefinite period of time and against a nebulous enemy called "terrorism" -- following 11 September. That was the date when the unsuspecting awoke from their slumber and began to pray that the Third World War might be "postponed" until the day of the attack on Iraq. We meek and simple-minded folk are still living with the dream of world peace and a global order founded on international legitimacy, the international community, the inhabitants of the single village in which, they say, we are gathered together in a spirit of blissful communion. Gone are those tattered, outmoded notions such as nationhood, culture and civilisation which have sewn discord between people. How, then, should we approach this new world? Perhaps we should start by reading a few lines by that intrepid commentator Thomas Friedman, who issued a letter on the "civilisational war" to "leaders of the Muslim world from George W Bush". Tellingly, it appeared beneath the headline "Muslims must defuse the holy bomb" Yes, that's right, "holy bomb". And it closes with a blatant threat: "Friends, unless you have a war within your civilisation, there is going to be a war between our civilisations. We're just one more 9/11 away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between." (International Herald Tribune, 28 November 2002) "Civilisational war? What's gotten into you?" ask the fainthearted in this part of the world. "Are we in a state of war or on the brink of war? Can what you and those of your colleagues who rally around Huntington call civilisations clash and conflict? Aren't clashes and conflicts the preserve of nations and political movements?" But the threat is on the table. Is there some cultural- civilisational dimension to political, military and economic conflicts? If so then conflicts must express themselves through new ideas or through a new formula for the dialectical relationship between ideas, but just so long as people do not live by bread alone. From theorising to reality is a connection that cannot be ignored, as long as we and those around us are living in this reality. The world is seething in political, military, economic and ideological conflicts, from Colombia to Korea, from Palestine to Nigeria, from Iraq to the Philippines, from Afghanistan and Chechnya to Zimbabwe, Venezuela and the Indian subcontinent. We are, indisputably, at the beginnings of the Third World War which many people have yet to realise has so far been against a spectre or, as I have frequently said, against the future, against a new multi-civilisational, multi-cultural and truly effective multi-polar world. Nevertheless, against this backdrop we still accept a range of terms and concepts that prove how far behind or, at best, how out of the picture we are. Transparency? In this age of military, intelligence and technological penetration? Then there is that odd creature the Quartet -- the US, the EU, Russia and the UN -- claiming to be the arbiter that will bring a solution to the massacre of Palestinians, as though the world revolves in the orbit of NATO and its acolytes. Where are those powers that are entirely dependent for their oil on the Middle East, notably China, Japan, Korea, the countries of southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent? The Quartet assures them that it is working for a settlement -- shorthand for accepting the status quo now that Zionist crimes have incarcerated the Palestinian people in a prison of degradation and torture -- so they can just sit back and relax, far away from the confrontation, the fight for self-determination and the call to Intifada while the Quartet strums the sweet settlement sonata on its roadmap to nowhere. Are we not in the age of "international legitimacy" upon which is founded the "global order" and in which framework the peoples and nations of the international community live in the spirit of brotherhood? Once again men of thought and action on the opposite bank, where stands the coterie of dominant imperial powers, light the way in no uncertain terms. Here we have the Australian Minister of Defence, Senator Robert Hill, in a memorial oration to the University of Adelaide, on 28 November 2002, saying, "The clear view of the United States, set out in its National Security Strategy statement in September, is that there is an 'option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security'. The document says the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively to 'forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries'." Hill continues, "Such clear statements by America reflect the view that the concept of 'imminent threat' must be adapted to the 'capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries'. In short, international law cannot sit still." The minister went on to cite precedents in the use of preemptive action, ostensibly for the purposes of self-defence: the bombing raids against Libya launched by the Reagan administration in response to the attack on a discotheque in Berlin that killed an American soldier, the US imposition of a maritime quarantine on Cuba in 1962 and the Israeli attack on a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. This is a sampling of the ideas of the Australian minister of defence only days before Prime Minister John Howard announced that Australia was ready to undertake preemptive actions in its Asian environment if necessary. The prime minister's declaration was roundly condemned by all Asian countries, including the staunchest of the US's allies in the Philippines. In fact the Australian prime minister and minister of defence have echoed the ideas of that major architect of US strategic thinking, Richard Perle, who asks: "Who says the United Nations is better than NATO?" In a speech during the Trilateral debate in Prague in late November 2002, Perle also asked: "Does the addition of members of the UN like China, for example, or Syria, add legitimacy to what otherwise might be the collective policy of countries that share our values?" Equally contentiously he states: "I hear it said that the UN is imperfect but it's the only one we've got. It seems to me that if you've got a fire extinguisher that you know won't work you don't approach a fire with it because it's the only one you've got.... Why is the UN a greater source of legitimacy than NATO? NATO has every capacity to become a legitimising international institution with respect to the use of force because it is composed of liberal democracies... Why shouldn't NATO be as legitimate as the UN, which happens to contain a lot of dictatorships?" Not all agree. To the prominent liberal commentator William Pfaff, NATO is a "past success" while the "EU is the future". He explains: "NATO is a one-dimensional organisation. It offers solidarity and promises military security. The mandate of the EU is the political transformation of European society." Western Europe has lived under NATO since 1948, while socialist Europe, along with the South, were cast as the enemy. Now the two Europes are drawing together. If they could agree to exchange expertise and military, intelligence and logistic support the new Europe could draw away from NATO, especially now that NATO has become "a toolbox from which units useful for given jobs can be plucked" to serve the interests of US policy in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. Such opinions suggest that the world could be at a new threshold in the history of "international legitimacy" and the "international community". This threshold represents widespread conviction in the need to reformulate the global order, if only in the legal and diplomatic realms. In this regard, it is heartening to consider the following commentary on the composition of the Security Council that appeared in the Herald Tribune last November: "A separate seat for Britain in the inner group of the UN Security Council is equivalent to giving two votes out of the five to the United States. There is no presence from Africa, Asia, the Far East, or South America. This attempt to run the affairs of the world in the 21st century on the basis of the world of 1945 is grotesque. "An inner group of the Security Council consisting of a representative of the European Union, and -- in addition to the United States, China and Russia -- Egypt (a Muslim country and one of the key states of the Middle East), India (with a population only slightly less than that of China), Brazil (with a population half the size of the whole of South America) and Japan (the world's second largest economy) would be more realistic. And enlarging the inner group of a body of 191 from five to eight would hardly be extravagant. "Of course the wiseacres will say that such a reform is not practicable politics. But the vast majority of the 191 UN members have the solution in their own hands. They could revolt, decamp from New York to say Singapore and set up a United Nations of the 21st century. If they do this the diehards of the West will soon tire of talking to each other in an empty hall in New York and come and join them." This author of this innovative outlook was Roy Denman, former representative of the European Commission in Washington. Although a representative of that privileged circle at the heart of that privileged camp in the world of western privilege, he has come to realise that the order they call "global" is, in effect, a distribution of prerogatives among the four powers that emerged victorious from World War II and that grudgingly agreed to take China on board in the mid-1960s. Meanwhile the rest of the world -- most of Europe and Asia, and all of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America -- remain outside the decision-making power enjoyed by the five permanent members of the Security Council. Tangible evidence of their status relative to others could be seen in the distribution of the report on Iraq: the full 12,000 page version went to the permanent members whereas the remaining 10 were provided the abridged 2000-page version. What does all this have to do with the focal question posed at the outset of this article: What should we think in a time of war? Ideologies, in peace and in war, in all times and places, express a perspective on the relationship between tangible and contradictory realities in society and its hopes and aspirations. An ideology is always a set of ideas and concepts that enables us to get a handle on what's going on within. In times of war, as Churchill said during World War II, "words are like a smoke screen". That is to say the use of ideas and concepts in times of war differs, to a certain extent, from their use in times of peace. Peace is always relative. I stress "to a certain extent" because ideas and concepts in peace time reflect the conflicting interests and perspectives of diverse social and national forces. They thus possess, per force, a significant element of ambiguity and, hence, deception, or at least they only reveal a part of the picture. On the other hand the manipulation of concepts and terms, the two components of ideologies, can sometimes offer in peace time a scope for stability, if only relative, and coexistence with diverse trends which the stability of the historical movement can contain. For example, there is nothing wrong with keeping the myth of the UN and the legitimacy of Security Council resolutions alive in times of peace, since its resolutions can have no more than a minor detrimental effect on regional and global causes and crises. Nor is there a problem with sustaining the principle of the permanent membership of a handful of Security Council members, as is the case today, or working to gradually expand permanent membership in the manner envisioned by Roy Denman. However, peace is no more than a mirage in our Middle East. The ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people, day and night, confirms that the Zionist state is resolute in its determination to tear up all existing agreements and impose its will on the region through force and intimidation. Similarly, Security Council resolution 1441 grants the dominant powers the tools to invade Iraq and to concoct justifications that will bring war, regardless of the nature of Security Council deliberations in its next session. In this climate, especially now that the Soviet Union, which had long championed the Arab world, is no longer, Arab states must, at the very least, be able to participate effectively in the Security Council. The critical circumstances we are facing, together with the historical legacy of Arab civilisation and the political, strategic, cultural and demographic weight of the Arab world, make it imperative that the Arab world nominate the central Arab nation for permanent membership of the expanded Security Council. Simultaneously, it has become imperative for the government and people of Egypt to accept the responsibility of performing this role, boldly and vigorously, hand in hand with other rising powers in our new world. I stress boldly and vigorously, for acquiescing to marginalisation and exclusion is a manifestation of a behaviour and mentality imposed by a black phase in the history of Egypt following October 1973. In this phase, especially following Camp David in 1978, the catchphrase was that "America holds 99 per cent of the cards." It was as though the broader world, and even the rising East, could not be accommodated within Egyptian political and intellectual action in a manner concomitant to our responsibilities and hopes. Herein, precisely, emerges the challenge of formulating Egyptian and Arab ideology in a time of war. Its components: the specificity of Egypt and the Arab world in their contemporary phase, the establishment of an economic structure capable of realising social and human development immune to the deception of middlemen, resuscitating a spirit of national culture and revival from its nihilistic stupor, creating a united national front, the unity of men of thought and men of arms and enhancing intelligent organic bonds between the people and the state. These and other elements can all be embraced under the banner: "Lift up your head, brother!" And as we lift our heads, we must bear in mind that our immediate task in countering the current hegemony is to reaffirm our will and our national and Arab national identity if we want to continue to exist.
If V.I. Lenin were rehearsing the rhetoric for the Bolshevik revolution today, his rallying call would be "Axis of evil, unite!" Such a reworking would be à propos these days because an inexorable momentum is building towards a new global struggle, underwritten by the usual pseudo- moralistic rationale of self-righteousness. This is reminiscent of the post-World War I landscape, when the shape of the world for the 20th century was being worked out. Today, the battleground has been levelled, the enemy defined and the war cry sounded. The struggle for global domination has pitted the United States, as the new imperial power who claims the moral high ground, against the marauders of civilisation represented by the axis of evil, consisting of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. It is good against evil all over again -- the difference being that the world is now more divided than ever as to who the bad guys are. Until recently, the enemy was indisputably well- defined. Under the US administration's analysis, Iraq spearheaded the axis of evil that sustained terrorism which, on 11 September, hurt the American national ethos beyond historically tolerated levels. The other members of the club, Iran and North Korea, huddled in the shadows, awaiting their destiny. Then North Korea rudely stomped into the foray, uninvited and unexpected, with China lurking in the background. The US would have preferred to take on each member of the axis separately, or to make the invasion of Iraq the bullet of mercy that would put to rest the entire membership of the club. But North Korea opened a second front -- a move for which the US was unprepared. In Iraq, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee's (UNMOVIC) inspectors have so far been unable to come up with the "smoking gun" the US so eagerly seeks, which has clearly undercut its argument for an invasion. Meanwhile, with every passing day, the anti-war movement is gathering steam in a way that suggests it will soon rival that against the war in Vietnam. US allies, bowing to their constituencies, are less sure that removing Saddam Hussein and his regime are worth the Armageddon that the US is prepared to visit upon the Iraqi people. Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, for which American support is regarded by the Arabs as the epitome of superpower hypocrisy, continues unchecked. US moral authority, consequently, is being eroded. Imperial powers do not like to have their political or moral authority questioned -- not because they are self-righteous, but because they have the firepower to make it legitimate. The US, heady with a sense of power, is cruising around the world on a new messianic mission. That sense of purpose is distilled from the more than 140 wars it fought in the past 200 years in defence of the American value system. The mission, like many of the US's bloody wars, is motivated by a muddled mix of greed, self-interest and self-styled global responsibility. It uses the force of international law and the law of imperial force as two sides of the same coin. In this spirit, the US -- without the authorisation of the UN Security Council -- led a NATO air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in order to roll back acts of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. In the case of Iraq, the US has reluctantly deferred to the Security Council, but with the clear intention of winning time to build up forces capable of carrying out a devastating war against that country anyway. While the stated purpose is to take out President Saddam Hussein and his regime -- as an act of international criminal justice -- the US has spurned the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court for fear of self-incrimination. It views the International Court of Justice with little more than disdain. In its global leadership role, the US has seen fit to reject the Kyoto protocols on climate change (which set mandatory levels for emissions of greenhouse gases) towards supporting instead the interests of US oil and chemical corporations. The US presents itself as the champion of human rights, while it violates international humanitarian law with respect to the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay camp. Similarly, it promotes free trade and open markets, while imposing protectionist duties on steel imports. Particularly germane at this moment is its pursuit of countries alleged to have weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time it defends Israel's possession of them. Such behaviour is typical of unchallenged imperial powers. It is a replay of the actions by Athens, Rome, Constantinople, the Ottomans and Great Britain. They all believed that military might was a projection of moral right, but they all suffered the same fate. What they tend to overlook is that the barbarians are relentlessly banging on the exclusionary walls of the empire, not because they want to destroy civilisation, but because they are demanding a fair share of it. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the main factor that gave the US a global political vacuum to fill. With this went the illusion that the end of the USSR was a moral victory of the forces of democracy over the inequities of totalitarianism. This is only partly true. Paradoxically, the Soviet Union imploded when it tried to modernise Communism by emulating capitalism. Mikhail Gorbachev did not want to dismantle the Communist system -- he wanted to make it more competitive on the global scene. The decades of broadcasts by Radio Free Europe had nothing to do with the change that shook the foundations of the Soviet empire. In dealing with the so-called axis of evil, the new marauders of civilisation, the US has replaced its historical axiom of "freedom and justice for all" with the doctrine of "fire and brimstone for those who oppose us". At the turn of the 20th century, the US stood tall, raising the beacon of freedom, respect for human rights and self-determination for colonised peoples. Today it faces rising opposition to its policy of global domination. It is not merely because George W Bush is no Woodrow Wilson, or that it is not the closing scene of World War I and the dawning of a new era. It is simply that the US is going through the consuming historical malaise of imperial power without a consistent, universally- acknowledged code of moral justice. * The writer is former correspondent of Al-Ahram in Washington DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
They said it would happen and it did, more or less. On Tuesday, in the face of Israeli protests, the British government hosted a conference on Palestinian reform, attended by delegations from the US, UN, EU, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israel did not attend. It hadn't been invited. The Palestinian Authority had been invited but didn't attend. Five Palestinian ministers nominated by Yasser Arafat to represent the PA were barred by Israel from leaving the occupied territories after Palestinian suicide bombers killed 23 in Tel Aviv on 5 January. The ministers had to make do with a video link-up to London from their disconnected enclaves in Gaza and Ramallah. Still, the PA saw the fact that the conference occurred at all as a victory of sorts, re-conferring legitimacy on an elected Palestinian leadership and leader currently in need of all the diplomatic recognition they can get. It was for this reason that the Israeli government was so opposed to the London meeting. "The present terror-promoting [Palestinian] leadership is not a peace partner, and that is part of the reason we didn't let these so-called delegates go to London for the conference, because it would just be another charade," said Zalman Shoval, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Similar motives were probably behind Tony Blair's determination to proceed with the conference despite Israeli objections. He hopes it will help dull domestic and regional criticism that Britain and the US are ignoring the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in deference to their increasingly martial campaign to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction and perhaps of Saddam Hussein. Away from the grandstanding, the delegates in London heard nothing about Palestinian reform that they did not know already. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, praised the changes introduced by the PA's Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, urged the Palestinians to complete the drafting of a new Palestinian constitution and lectured them not to let things like Israel's occupation and travel bans "be used as an excuse to stop the reform process in its tracks... Precisely because the security situation is so adverse you need a higher quality of public administration, not a lower quality". The Palestinian delegates agreed. But they also pointed out that delivering higher quality public administration was difficult when the Israeli army was occupying most of the West Bank, had destroyed much of the PA security infrastructure and was proceeding with policies of settlement construction and land confiscation. "The Israeli occupation is responsible for hindering and creating all of the obstacles to the reform process," said PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. "If they [the international community] want real reform they should move the Israeli tanks and forces from our towns and cities and villages." But the politics of gesture was not confined to London. In Tel Aviv Labour Party leader, Avram Mitzna made his most solemn pledge yet that he would not join a National Unity coalition with Sharon after the Israeli elections on 28 January. "It is either us or him," he told a press conference on Tuesday. "We will not be in a government headed by Sharon. Period." The Palestinian leadership will be relieved if Mitzna stays true to his vow. Another National Unity government under Sharon's leadership is the worst-case scenario as far as the PA is concerned. A coalition government made up of Israel's right and religious parties is preferable since its majority would almost certainly be too narrow and its components too fractious to survive for long. But will Labour stay true to Mitzna's vow? No sooner had he finished speaking than the former Labour leader, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, listed conditions under which he said Labour would be prepared to join a National Unity coalition with Likud: construction of a 700- kilometre fence separating Israel from Palestinian areas in the West Bank, immediate resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians and a re-ordering of Israel's social and economic priorities. With such mixed signals coming from the opposition it is not surprising that Sharon and Likud are starting to recover the ground lost after a barrage of sleaze allegations to do with their primary election campaigns. On Monday polls showed Likud winning 32 seats in the 120- member parliament (up from 30 the week before) with Labour stuck on 22. Should these be the results on 29 January Sharon will be the next Israeli prime minister. But will he be able to form his preferred National Unity coalition with Labour so as to avoid being hostage to "those [parties] who want to give up everything or those who want to keep everything"? He will certainly issue the invitation. It remains to be seen whether Mitzna's pledge or his party will bar Labour from accepting.
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Hopes and gestures President Mubarak has warned that an American war against Iraq would serve no purpose but pour fuel over a fire. Meanwhile, inter-Arab efforts continue to prevent such a disaster, reports Nevine Khalil -
President Hosni Mubarak went to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a brief visit to consult with leaders there on the escalation of tensions in the region. Mubarak's trip to Riyadh is part of an ongoing effort by Cairo to avoid the possibility of a US-led war against Iraq, and contain deteriorating conditions in the Palestinian territories. His visit came at the heels of Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul's Saudi visit on Saturday, after having visited Syria, Egypt and Jordan last week. In Riyadh, Mubarak and Crown Prince Abdullah exchanged viewpoints on the possibility of war in Iraq, its repercussions on the region, and ways to avoid it. At the end of their talks, Cairo and Riyadh called for more diplomatic efforts in a bid to avert strikes against Baghdad. Minister of Information Safwat El-Sherif told reporters later that the two leaders were "very concerned about the repercussions of military action against Iraq," and called on all parties to "seek a peaceful resolution within the context of international legitimacy". Mubarak and Abdullah also stressed the "significance of the UN role" in ensuring that Security Council resolutions are adhered to, "to protect the security and stability of the region as well as international peace and security". Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have denied reports that they are mediating to convince Saddam to step down from power as a way to avoid a war, or that they could be destinations for the Iraqi president's exile. Turkey, a key US ally in NATO and a likely launching pad for US strikes on neighbouring Iraq, sent its Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen to Iraq on 10 January to speak with Saddam about finding a peaceful resolution to the ongoing crisis. But despite parallel efforts by countries in the Middle East, Mubarak declared on Sunday that "there is no Egyptian-Saudi-Turkish coordination or initiative." He told reporters while touring the land reclamation project at Toshka that "resolving the Iraqi problem is very difficult and attacking Iraq has drastic repercussions which no one can predict right now." Mubarak reiterated that attacking Iraq "will not serve any purpose, but only pour fuel over the fire". On a more ominous note, he added that if Washington decides to go to war, "no one can stop it. It is the only superpower in the world." Mubarak also said that there were "no more messages" which he wishes to publicly convey to the Iraqi or American leaderships. "I have sent many messages, I don't want to repeat myself. That's enough." Before leaving for Riyadh on Tuesday, Mubarak met with Bahrain's Information Minister Nabil Al-Hamer, who said he was hopeful that the ongoing Arab consultations would yield positive results. Bahrain, which will host next March's Arab summit, is currently host to the US Navy 5th Fleet. "All Arab leaders are seeking to set aside the spectre of war," Al-Hamer told reporters. Expectations are that Mubarak will soon be receiving a message from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which will be delivered by Ali Hassan Al-Majid, a close aide to the Iraqi leader and member of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council. At Toshka on Sunday, Mubarak did not even want to contemplate what the ramifications of a war in Iraq would have for the region and the situation in the Palestinian territories. "It is very difficult to predict what will happen to the Palestinian issue if a war against Iraq breaks out. I don't want to talk about it now." He was also pessimistic about the prospects for restarting a dialogue between the Palestinians and Israelis. "I cannot say that there will be a relaunch of negotiations after the Israeli elections [at the end of January]," said Mubarak, who also lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his hard-line policies. "Does Sharon want negotiations or not?" he asked. "Without sitting at the negotiating table, it will be difficult to stop the violence." In Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Mubarak and Abdullah criticised Israel's "negative positions, which aim to abort any attempts to revive the peace process". Meanwhile, they ascertained, Arab parties continue their efforts -- such as the recent talks in Cairo among the Palestinian factions -- to stop the violence. The two leaders hoped that the talks hosted by Egypt would result in "a united Palestinian stand enhancing the reform efforts undertaken by the Palestinian Authority". Shortly before Mubarak headed to Riyadh, his chief of intelligence Omar Suleiman led Egypt's delegation to the London conference on Palestinian reform. British Prime Minister Tony Blair initiated the conference, which brings together the Palestinians, along with representatives from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, as well as the diplomatic Quartet (the US, the European Union, Russia and the UN). The two-day conference discussed reforms inside the Palestinian Authority; when Israel barred Palestinians from attending in person, six Palestinian officials took part by video-link.
As the date of the Israeli elections draws near, the Israeli occupation army is stepping up its repression of the Palestinian people, killing and interning people and demolishing dozens of civilian homes. In the second week of January, the Israeli army killed more than 27 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Some 200 Palestinian youths were picked up, seemingly randomly, and taken to the notorious Ofer detention camp near Ramallah. Many in Jerusalem and the territories believe that the vast majority of the detainees are being held to break the Palestinian will to resist the occupation. The demolition of homes continued this week as Israel destroyed more than 40 dwellings -- an average of five to six homes every day. Classified as a war crime under international law, these demolitions are causing suffering to thousands of already-tormented Palestinian families who lose their lifelong investment, and suddenly find themselves in the streets, often in the quiet hours just before dawn. Most of the killings and demolitions took place on 11 and 12 January as thousands of Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks, Apache helicopters and army bulldozers rampaged through civilian neighbourhoods in the southern and northern Gaza Strip. According to eyewitnesses, as dozens of tanks rumbled to the centre of Khan Yunis shortly after midnight Saturday, Israeli Apache helicopters began strafing civilian homes and businesses with heavy machine-gun fire. Facing a hail of bullets from the sky and indiscriminate shooting from armoured personnel carriers on the ground, the terrified and defenseless Palestinians huddled inside their homes for protection, keeping away from windows and doors. At least two Palestinian civilians were reported killed, and many others wounded by flying bullets. Before departing, the invading forces dynamited more than 30 family businesses, mostly private metal workshops, the Israeli army alleged were being used to manufacture primitive missiles used by Palestinian resistance groups. The Israeli allegations are denied by the Palestinians, human rights groups and international observers operating in the area. They all stress that the real Israeli motive is to destroy Palestinian livelihoods and impoverish as many families as possible. Around sunrise, as Palestinian children were preparing to go to school, an Israeli army force attacked the Beit Hanon neighbourhood, just north of Gaza City. After imposing the routine curfew on the neighbourhood, the Israeli army dynamited the family home of Mohamed Al-Masri, an Islamic Jihad activist who was killed during a resistance operation last year. The operation ended with the Israeli force opening fire indiscriminately on Palestinians who had gone into the street to see what was going on. A middle-aged man -- a father of six children, was killed on the spot. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers murdered a Palestinian bread distributor on the outskirts of Hebron. According to eyewitnesses, settlers armed with automatic weapons and riding in a blue car stopped suddenly near 35- year-old Hazem Fanon, who was fixing a flat tyre, and after making sure that he wasn't a Jew, shot and killed him on the spot. Initially, the Israeli army released its usual disinformation, saying that the man was armed and that he had ties to Hamas. However, a few hours later the army said it would "look into the matter". Towards the evening, at least one Israeli Apache helicopter fired several missiles at a car that was travelling in the vicinity of the European Hospital, between Khan Yunis and Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The missiles missed their target, but mutilated two teenagers, Mahmoud Kawari, 16, and Abdullah Najar, 19, who were riding their bicycles nearby. Reacting to the killing, the Israeli army expressed "regret" that the missiles failed to hit the car. Four more Palestinians and two Israelis, a soldier and a settler, were also killed in two separate incidents near the Egyptian border and at a settlement near the northern West Bank. Further killings took place on 13 January in Gaza and the West Bank. Eyewitnesses speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly said Israeli troops killed two Palestinian youngsters, after having accused them of trying to attack a bus carrying Israeli settlers. Their families denied the Israeli army's claim, calling the killing a "brutal, cold- blooded crime". A third Palestinian, a boy of 12 years, died in Gaza from gunshot wounds he sustained during indiscriminate Israeli shooting on his neighbourhood at Wadi Al-Salqa, south of Gaza City. Still, a fourth Palestinian, a 24-year-old student, was assassinated in Nablus when an Israeli tank fired a shell at his home, killing him instantly and injuring his friend. Most Palestinians and many Israelis believe the spate of killing are aimed first and foremost at portraying Ariel Sharon and his party as being tough vis-à-vis the Palestinians, in what is a traditional electioneering strategy used by Israeli politicians. Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz (who played a major role in the Jenin camp massacre last April by ordering the assassination of hundreds of Palestinian political activists), alluded to this tactic this week. The army, he said, would carry out "qualitative hits" against the "terrorist infrastructure". Although Mofaz didn't elaborate, some Palestinian observers predict that the general might order the assassination of a major Palestinian political figure as an election present to Israeli voters.
George Galloway is something of a phenomenon. He stands out for being both an active member of Britain's Labour Party and a staunch defender of many Arab causes. Sitting in a coffee-shop in downtown Cairo, accompanied by his Palestinian wife of eight years, 48-year-old Galloway playfully revels in his popularity at home and in the region. He is one of the most outspoken critics of his country's Middle East policy and one of the main architects of the anti-war movement in Britain. "I have never been more popular or had more supporters," Galloway said with a laugh. He feels that his views and that of Britain's anti- war movement are much more in tune with public opinion than the prime minister. This might explain why Galloway is currently the highest paid columnist in Britain. Born into a politically active family in Glasgow, Galloway was the youngest ever member of the Labour Party. He joined at 15. He left school a year later. "I educated myself in the labour movement," he says. His father was a member of the Labour Party and a trade union activist. "My father was more moderate than me, he always asked me to be less, as he would put it, extreme." Unlike his father, Galloway does not regard his views as extreme. Whether it is the characteristic bluntnes or the rantings of a loony leftist, as his opponents would say, Galloway is one of the rare voices who has earned himself a reputation for speaking his mind without having to resort to any of the diplomatic niceties most politicians seek refuge in. At 26, he was named chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland, where five prominent members of the Blair cabinet sat under his chairmanship. These included the present Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Transport Secretary Alastair Darling and John Reed. "All these people were on the left of British politics, some of them were further to the left than myself, some were even Trotskyite, which I never was." These are the very same people who now rule a Labour party which some of its backbenchers believe is antithetical to all that the Labour Party stood for in the past. The reason, according to Galloway, is that, "The Labour Party has been hijacked. The hijackers' demands have been the effective liquidation of the Labour party as it was known historically." These "hijackers" emerged after the death of John Smith, the then party leader, in 1994. "Smith seemed as if he was taking us to victory and then he died. He was a genuine Labour man. In its grief, the party feared that with the death of Smith, we would never gain power again. This is when Blair enters." Tony Blair's leadership of the party sent alarm bells ringing among those members who considered themselves to be part of the Labour tradition. "No sooner was he in the leadership, than he started to go against the grain of the party in a serious way, changing the constitution, talking about changing the party's name and throwing out all the basic things we believed in. Now we have a government which is nominally Labour but the things that it does are far from Labour. The most important area in which this is true is in foreign policy." Galloway's argument is lent credence by the left-of-centre Guardian newspaper's report that almost a hundred Members of Parliament (MPs) were, "preparing to rebel. Junior ministers could resign if the war on Iraq began without United Nations authorisation." But is Galloway contemplating leaving the Labour Party? "I don't want to leave the Labour Party... I hope it will not come to that," he said. He is pinning hope on, "a massive ground swell of opposition within the rank and file of the party against the war on Iraq". He explains that the half million protesters who attended the 28 September anti-war march in London were Labour voters and virtually all Labour activists. "The kind of war which Bush, Blair and Sharon are talking about is one that does not have UN authorisation. It is very unlikely that the UN will authorise something which is bound to change the whole basis of international relations. So the number of people who would support an unauthorised, illegal Anglo- American-Israeli attack on Iraq will be very small and the overwhelming majority, including Labour activists, will be actively against it." This is precisely why Galloway strongly believes that the war on Iraq, together with the anti-war movement, can produce a momentum for change within the Labour Party. What kind of change? "A change of leadership. Anthony Eden was the unchallenged king of British politics before the Suez crisis in 1956. Now he is not even a footnote in history. I believe that the Iraq war could be Blair's Suez if it goes badly and it has a tremendous capacity to go badly." But if the stakes were so high for Britain, why would Blair risk his country's interests and his own political career in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with George Bush? Galloway makes very little effort to hide his resentment and frustration with such an alliance. He explains it in terms of a strategic decision on the part of Britain to be the auxiliary to a greater power: Greece to America's Rome. So, Britain plays the role of the more sophisticated, older, wiser advisor whispering in the ear of the new rude imperial power. Iraq is a case in point. "One of the scenarios to be discussed concerns dividing Iraq into three parts. Maybe the Sunni-Christian section of the population will be incorporated into a new Hashemite kingdom running from the [Jordan] river to the Gulf. This is being sketched out but the Americans lack the expert knowledge. They don't know anything about the Hashemites, whereas the British know these things. They [the British] know that the Hashemites have some kind of echo among the Shi'a, and that they claim decendency from the Prophet; they know which part of Iraq can safely be incorporated in such a scenario and which are best left in a different entity. The Americans don't, so they [the British] are providing services; not just special forces. It is the intellectual services which matter most at this stage." This is why Galloway is most concerned about discussions currently taking place within some political circles in Britain. "In the building where I work Lord Arthur Balfour committed the original sin [the Balfour Declaration] which has been the cause of all the problems in the region. In the same building the Sykes-Picot agreement was signed in 1916 and in the same building, as we talk and on the same table, foreign men are trying to redraw the maps of the Middle East as they have done before." Yet Galloway is not a man who embraces conspiracy theories. "Ministers, former ministers and senior figures in British politics have, over the last few months, brought up things which I know they have never heard before. They can hardly even pronounce them, words like Hijaz and Najd. Yet they say, 'you know there is nothing called Saudi Arabia really. It was never one country, it was conquered by Al-Saud.' It then became clear to me that this was all part of a discussion about partitioning Saudi Arabia. So I began to make enquiries with my sources at the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence and, as it turns out, there is a policy discussion. They ask why we have this problem with Saudi Arabia: 'We don't have any interest in the holy places, let them keep their holy places without any foreign soldiers. Our interests in Saudi Arabia are elsewhere in the country so why don't we have two Arabias, why don't we go back to the situation that existed before Saudi Arabia, why don't we go back to a Western looking Hijaz, why don't we free the oppressed Shi'a minority and let the Wahabbis keep their Mecca,' they say. These issues are being discussed now as we talk," Galloway says. Galloway does not agree with the Blair government on the Arab-Israeli conflict either. He believes that Blair's government is, "a Zionist government". "The British arms trade to and from Israel [today] is higher than it has been in the history of any Labour government. This takes place at a time when the Palestinians are being slaughtered. Even under my questioning in parliament, the British government had to concede that weapons sold to Israel on the basis that they would not be used in the occupied territories had actually been used. In the end they [the government] take refuge in their underlying position and that is pro-Israeli, namely the defence of Israel. They would like to solve the Palestinian issue but not at the cost of Israeli interests. They hope for a Palestinian leadership that would accept a settlement excluding refugees and where East Jerusalem remains an Israeli city." But is there an acknowledgment among British politicians of the need to claim some sort of responsibility for the wrongdoing and injustices that have been done to the Palestinians? "Surprisingly not," Galloway said. "For a long time, we were fooled by the concept of Kibbutzim as collective socialist enterprise. We failed to see that the Kibbutz was to socialism no more than a gang of thieves agreeing to share the spoils equally. Racism also comes at the heart of this, for it is easier, even for leftists, to relate to people like them [the Israelis]. The Palestinians were an 'other' who conducted themselves in a 'foreign' way. The Israelis, on the other hand, were people like us, they were settlers from Europe and North America who could speak our language, who knew the tools of public relations, who knew the value of calling themselves a democracy and so on." According to Galloway, the story of Israel is like "Frankenstein's monster". "You make a monster for your own use and then you discover that actually it is beyond your control. They [the West] found this with Zionism, which they encouraged and helped and made powerful to serve their interests in the Middle East and now they have discovered that it does not obey orders. They would like them [the Israelis] to behave more reasonably, they want the Israeli electorate to elect some one less provocative. They would like the Israeli army to [operate] according to western orders, but they've discovered that Sharon, Netanyahu and Zionism are beyond their day-to-day control." Galloway is hopeful that, with respect to Israel, a change in public opinion is underway. At the governmental level, however, the status quo remains. "At the end of the day Israel is an important imperial asset. It is the guardian controlling this region with its weapons of mass destruction." One would expect that such radical views would be likely to alienate his British voters and subject him to negative press coverage. Indeed, he has been dubbed "Saddam's agent", "Saddam's mouthpiece" and is routinely branded as an anti-Semite. However, Galloway does not seem to give much credence to the press's hostile attitudes. He remains defiant. "When you stand against the interests of the state, the rich and powerful, the least they will call you is controversial." This was during the 1970s, when anybody who involved himself in the Palestinian cause was considered untrustworthy by mainstream society. "Arabs were automatically deemed to be corrupt and by extension [so were] the westerners working with them. They were regarded to be doing it [supporting any Arab causes] for money." Galloway says that some press reports left the impression that he has tea regularly with Saddam, whom he has only met twice during the past 10 years. Has he ever been accused of being bribed by his Arab friends? "I was never accused of that myself because I was never close to the rich regimes. But these are racist assumptions and this is the kind of mindset which was prevalent in the early days [1970s]. [Now], for example with my work on Iraq, they don't say it openly because I would sue them. I always say that people can criticise me, but their response is, 'you are Saddam's agent, his spokesman' and so on. They imply that there must be some financial gains. They are powerful people, they own the media and have very different views than people like myself." Despite this bad press, Galloway says that he has never been more popular. "I have more supporters [now] than I have ever had in my entire political career. More and more people are behind me, writing in support and sending donations for our campaign. We have 10,000 members [at the House of Commons Committee on Iraq and Palestine] and this makes us one of the biggest organisations in Britain. Those of us who wanted a different policy on Iraq some 10 years ago had no support. Now we are in a majority because we have built a mass movement, with clear-headed and far-sighted activists." Galloway dismisses the claim that these anti-war demonstrations are nothing more than a "weekend activity". "People were shocked by the size of our demonstration in September. Nobody ever expected something like this. This was a very big step forward." On 15 February, the "Stop-The-War" coalition will be organising a huge demonstration. Galloway hopes that it will attract even more people. However, he laments the fact that anti-war demonstrations in Europe have not been reflected on the Arab street. "The real danger is that the Arab street will boil only when it is too late, when Iraq is already under occupation," Galloway says. He admits that he has been through hard times, the most devastating of which was the collapse of the Soviet Union. "It was a bitter and devastating blow to me." Galloway does not regret any of the political choices he has made during his 35-year career in politics. "People used to say that I would be the prime minister and leader of the Labour Party. My father knew that having strong views would cost me something but I never looked at politics as a career. I could never say things I don't believe in."
Hundreds of suspected Al-Qa'eda and Taliban prisoners remain in United States custody in detention facilities at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one year after their arrival. On the first anniversary of their transfer to the base, human rights groups such as Amnesty International are calling on the US to put an end to "the legal black hole" it has placed on detainees. "This legal limbo is a continuing violation of human rights standards which the international community must not ignore," an Amnesty International representative said. The first group of prisoners arrived from Afghanistan on 11 January 2002 as part of the US led "war on terrorism". Today more than 600 prisoners from 40 nations are being held at a high-security compound on the base called "Camp Delta". "No access to the courts, lawyers or relatives; the prospect of indefinite detention in small cells for up to 24 hours a day; the possibility of trials by executive military commissions with the power to hand down death sentences and no right of appeal: is this how the USA defends human rights and the rule of law?" asked the representative. Amnesty International has called on the US to either voluntary release all prisoners detained during the war in Afghanistan, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, or charge prisoners with criminal offences, in order that they be tried within a reasonable time frame. "The importance of allowing these detainees to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in a court of law cannot be overstated," the group said. "That is a fundamental human right, and one that protects against arbitrary arrest and detention." International human rights and civil liberties groups have demanded the detainees be given prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention. The US claims the prisoners do not qualify as prisoners of war, rather they are "unlawful combatants". The US has maintained it reserves the right to continue to hold prisoners for purposes of interrogation and intelligence. Since the arrival of the first group of prisoners to the US naval base a year ago, none of the detainees has been charged or tried. Five men were released from detention after US officials determined they were not terrorists. Legal efforts to free additional prisoners have not been successful. The legal status and conditions of the prisoners has long raised controversy worldwide. Concerns were initially heightened after the release of photographs by the Defence Department that showed detainees in shackles and chains, blackened goggles, face masks and earmuffs. Another series of photos, this time unauthorised by the Pentagon, were recently released to the press showing Al-Qa'eda and Taliban prisoners handcuffed, hooded and chained to the floor of a US military aeroplane. The four photographs of prisoners were featured on the Web site of American radio talk show host Art Bell, sent anonymously. The photographs provided an inside glimpse at how prisoners were transported within Afghanistan, as well as to the base at Guantanamo Bay. In the photographs, prisoners were shown seated on the floor of a C-130 aircraft secured with white straps and guarded by US military personnel. A large US flag can be seen hanging from the ceiling of the aircraft above shackled prisoners wearing black hoods. Despite efforts by human rights groups to have detainees either charged or released from detention at Guantanomo Bay, the fate of the approximately 625 prisoners currently being held remains unchanged. In an interview with ABC News on 8 January, Army Major General Geoffrey D Miller, who controls the detention facility, said the detainment of hundreds of suspected Al-Qa'eda and Taliban men provides "enormous value" in terms of intelligence gathering. "It links with the intelligence that is being developed in other areas of the global war on terrorism. It provides enormous value to the nation," he said. Miller added that the detainees were being treated humanely and that they will be detained by the US government as long as necessary. "We will detain them as long as we are directed to while the global war on terrorism is ongoing," he said. Meanwhile, 26-year-old Faysal Galab, a Yemeni-American, admitted attending an Al- Qa'eda training camp before the 11 September terrorist attacks. His guilty plea on Friday comes three months after he and five other Yemeni-Americans, all in their 20s and from suburban Lackawanna near Buffalo, New York, were indicted on federal charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organisation. The men are suspected of being part of an Al-Qa'eda sleeper cell. Though none of the men are accused of taking part in the 11 September terrorist attack, prosecutors believe they were waiting for orders from Al-Qa'eda to commit another attack against the US. The government alleges the six received weapons training, instruction on suicide bombings, and were present when Osama Bin Laden visited the camp and outlined a future attack against America. Galab can receive up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In his agreement, Galab pleaded guilty to a charge of contributing funds and services to terrorists and agreed to cooperate with the government's ongoing investigation in exchange for a lesser sentence. Sentencing for Galab is scheduled for 30 April. The alleged leader of the Lackawanna cell, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, is believed to have been killed in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) air-strike on 3 November in Yemen, US officials have said. "The guilty plea obtained by this office is the result of an intensive investigation by agents of the FBI in coordination with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies," US Attorney- General John Ashcroft said in a statement. "Those who see fit to provide their money or services to support America's enemies, even if they are American citizens themselves, will face the full force of America's justice."
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This looming war is about oil - AMMAN — I was sitting on the
floor of an old concrete house in the suburbs of Amman this week, stuffing
into my mouth vast heaps of lamb and boiled rice soaked in melted butter.
The elderly, bearded, robed men from Maan sat around me, plunging their
hands into the meat and soaked rice, urging me to eat more and more of the
great pile until I felt constrained to point out that we Brits had eaten
so much of the Middle East these past 100 years that we were no longer
hungry. There was a muttering of prayers until an old man replied.
"The Americans eat us now," he said.
Through the open door, where rain splashed on the paving stones, a
sharp east wind howled in from the east, from the Jordanian and Iraqi
deserts. Every man in the room believed President Bush wanted Iraqi oil.
Indeed, every Arab I’ve met in the past six months believes that this
— and this alone — explains his enthusiasm for invading Iraq. Many
Israelis think the same. So do I. Once an American regime is installed in
Baghdad, our oil companies will have access to 112 billion barrels of oil.
With unproven reserves, we might actually end up controlling almost a
quarter of the world’s total reserves. And this forthcoming war isn’t
about oil? The US Department of Energy announced at the beginning of this month
that by 2025, US oil imports will account for perhaps 70 percent of total
US domestic demand. (It was 55 percent two years ago.) As Michael Renner
of the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this week, "US oil
deposits are increasingly depleted, and many other non-Opec fields are
beginning to run dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come from
the Gulf region." No wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on
the increasing consumption of oil. Some 70 percent of the world’s proven
oil reserves are in the Middle East. And this forthcoming war isn’t
about oil? Take a look at the statistics on the ratio of reserve to oil production
— the number of years that reserves of oil will last at current
production rates — compiled by Jeremy Rifkin in Hydrogen Economy. In the
US, where more than 60 percent of the recoverable oil has already been
produced, the ratio is just 10 years, as it is in Norway. In Canada, it is
8:1. In Iran, it is 53:1, in Saudi Arabia 55:1, in the United Arab
Emirates 75:1. In Kuwait, it’s 116:1. But in Iraq, it’s 526:1. And
this forthcoming war isn’t about oil? Even if Donald Rumsfeld’s hearty handshake with Saddam Hussein in
1983 — just after the great father figure had started using gas against
his opponents — didn’t show how little the present master of the
Pentagon cares about human rights or crimes against humanity, along comes
Joost Hilterman’s analysis of what was really going on in the Pentagon
back in the late 1980s. Hilterman, who is preparing a devastating book on the US and Iraq, has
dug through piles of declassified US government documents — only to
discover that after Saddam gassed 6,800 Kurdish Iraqis at Halabja
(that’s well over twice the total of the World Trade Centre dead of 11
September 2001) the Pentagon set out to defend Saddam by partially blaming
Iran for the atrocity. A newly declassified State Department document proves that the idea was
dreamed up by the Pentagon — who had all along backed Saddam — and
states that US diplomats received instructions to push the line of
Iran’s culpability, but not to discuss details. No details, of course,
because the story was a lie. This, remember, followed five years after US
National Security Decision Directive 114 — concluded in 1983, the same
year as Rumsfeld’s friendly visit to Baghdad — gave formal sanction to
billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other credits to Baghdad. And
this forthcoming war is about human rights? Back in 1997, in the years of the Clinton administration, Rumsfeld,
Dick Cheney and a bunch of other right-wing men — most involved in the
oil business — created the project for the New American Century, a lobby
group demanding "regime change" in Iraq. In a 1998 letter to
President Clinton, they called for the removal of Saddam from power. In a
letter to Newt Gingrich, who was then Speaker of the House, they wrote
that "we should establish and maintain a strong US military presence
in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital
interests in the Gulf — and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from
power". The signatories of one or both letters included Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, now Rumsfeld’s Pentagon deputy, John Bolton, now
under-secretary of state for arms control, and Richard Armitage, Colin
Powell’s under-secretary at the State Department — who called last
year for America to take up its "blood debt" with the Lebanese
Hezbollah. They also included Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary
of defense, currently chairman of the Defense Science Board, and Zalmay
Khalilzad, the former UnocaL Corporation oil industry consultant who
became US special envoy to Afghanistan — where Unocal tried to cut a
deal with the Taleban for a gas pipeline across Afghan territory — and
who now, miracle of miracles, has been appointed a special Bush official
for — you guessed it — Iraq. The signatories also included our old
friend Elliott Abrams, one of the most pro-Sharon of pro-Israeli US
officials, who was convicted for his part in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Abrams it was who compared Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — held
"personally responsible" by an Israeli commission for the
slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian civilians in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila
massacre — to (wait for it) Winston Churchill. So this forthcoming war
— the whole shooting match, along with that concern for "vital
interests" (i.e. oil) in the Gulf — was concocted five years ago,
by men like Cheney and Khalilzad who were oil men to their manicured
fingertips. In fact, I’m getting heartily sick of hearing the World War II being
dug up yet again to justify another killing field. It’s not long ago
that Bush was happy to be portrayed as Churchill standing up to the
appeasement of the no-war-in Iraq brigade. In fact, Bush’s whole
strategy with the odious and Stalinist-style Korea regime — the
"excellent" talks which US diplomats insist they are having with
the dear leader’s Korea which very definitely does have weapons of mass
destruction — reeks of the worst kind of Chamberlain-like appeasement.
Even though Saddam and Bush deserve each other, Saddam is not Hitler. And
Bush is certainly no Churchill. But now we are told that the UN inspectors
have found what might be the vital evidence to go to war: 11 empty
chemical warheads that just may be 20 years old. The world went to war 88 years ago because an archduke was assassinated
in Sarajevo. The world went to war 63 years ago because a Nazi dictator
invaded Poland. But for 11 empty warheads? Give me oil any day. Even the
old men sitting around the feast of mutton and rice would agree with that.
(The Independent)
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The moral argument against war - This week Pope John Paul 11 spoke out, saying war in Iraq "would
be a defeat for humanity". Many people, of many different cultures
and persuasions often tack to a common standard when it comes to the
making of war — at least in principle. Buddhist teaching asks,
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hateful".
Confucianism asks, "Do not to others what you would have them do to
you." Hindu teaching says, "This is the sum of duty: Do not to
others what would cause you pain if done to you." Islam preaches,
"No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that
which he desires for himself". Judaism, although it is known for its
precept of an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" also
talks of "what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men". All these admonishments have been pulled part and broken to pieces by
the adherents of all religions. The most bellicose of the great faiths is
Christianity whose European followers were nearly always at war until
finally they were awoken from their folly by the two biggest wars of all
time and created in the aftermath the European Union to bind them
together. Christ’s teaching rejecting an eye for an eye and asking us to
"turn the other cheek" has rarely been taken at face value. What is perhaps extraordinary is that occasionally someone who has been
steeped in realpolitik and some of its most bloody compromises should
emerge as a spokesman for moral principles being applied to the making of
war. I am thinking of Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense under
presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was responsible for many of the
decisions that led to the prolongation of the terrible war in Vietnam. One of his closest friends told me, "he bleeds inside for deeds
done in Vietnam". I am sure he does, but perhaps no other high
official who has commanded a war machine has done more to raise the level
of the moral debate. One after the other, over the years, his articles and
books have given us insights that have shown that it is possible to be
concerned with the security of one’s country without the reflex of
always preparing for war. McNamara is convinced there is a way to achieve a radical reduction in
the killing of human beings if we think morally, rationally and with
empathy toward those we are in conflict with. "Might war —
especially Great Power war — be relegated, perhaps like slavery, to a
cruel and primitive past?" This is the total opposite of the way the great scholars of realpolitik
and "realism" have argued it, such men as Henry Kissinger and
John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is convinced that "there have been no
fundamental changes in the nature of international politics since World
War II…military competition between sovereign states will remain the
distinguishing feature of international politics." But are these "realists" in fact unreal in their analysis of
our world? Perhaps they are blind to the danger of trying to intimidate,
humiliate or coerce a nation whose self-image is that of an important
power? We may intimidate them to do what we want in the short run but the
memories of the humiliated tend to be long ones. McNamara is convinced that current US policy which sees China and
sometimes Russia as aspiring to challenge and defeat the US as perverse.
"It creates enemies where there need not be enemies and it leads to
missed opportunities for sustainable peace that may never come
again." It was the great British philosopher Isaiah Berlin who wrote that in
addition to knowing the mind of an adversary we need empathy to grasp
"the particular vision of the universe which lies at the heart of his
thought". McNamara, who sat at Kennedy’s right hand during the Cuban missile
crisis of 1962, when the US and the Soviet Union came their closest to
nuclear war, believes only Kennedy’s empathy of what was going on in
Khrushchev’s mind saved the world from catastrophe. We need this empathy with Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il today. The US
needs to talk to these men face-to-face at the highest level and see what
it is that makes them feel so threatened that they lash out at all around
them. It won’t solve every problem, but it might avoid the recourse to a
murderous and unnecessary war.
-
African tragedy BOTH WEST AND Central Africa have become a mare’s nest of horrific
conflicts, in which it seems any thug who can get his hands on a
Kalashnikov can do far better for himself than if he had stuck to an
honest day’s work. Unpaid soldiers or policemen, or as has just happened
in the Ivory Coast, troops about to be disbanded, are the source of
endless rebellions. Minor disputes can quickly turn ugly when both sides are armed.
Classically it is only after a conflict has erupted that the rebelling
side seeks around for a cause, which seems more convincing that its own
original greed or disobedience. Rarely do political programs precede a
rebellion. They are something tacked on afterward, to give some
credibility to what is all too often just an armed and criminal gang.
Typically, the cause for which these people will claim to be killing and
terrorizing their community is something like "Equality and Justice
for all !" However, incumbent governments have often been no less culpable. A
rebellion by some hard-up soldiers is often used as an excuse for the
administration to settle old scores, frequently with parts of the
community in no way connected with the original rebellion. Thus for instance in the Ivory Coast at the moment, the wrath of the
authorities has fallen on two immigrant communities, one of refugees from
Liberia and the other of workers from Burkino Faso. The government in
Abidjan has said that it believes that the rebellion has been sponsored by
Muslim interests and blames Burkino Faso. Thus a campaign has begun
against the luckless workers from this country. However for good measure,
the authorities are also accusing Liberian refugees of fighting with the
rebels. There have been attacks by government supporters on the wretched
shanty towns to which 40,000 Liberians had fled the senseless and brutal
conflict in their own country. Now United Nations aid workers are doing
their best to get these unhappy people back to their own country, even
though their future there is just as uncertain. The truth is that in these conflicts there is little to tell between
the forces of law and order and those of disorder. Indeed the law itself
is a faintly held concept in these countries. Civil and criminal codes
were left by the colonial powers, the British or the French, but they had
been created largely to keep the local population in check. With the
departure of the imperial rulers, law became an increasingly rare luxury,
more honored in the breach. Right became might and power came out of the
barrel of a gun. Some countries, such as Nigeria, despite immense
demographic and infrastructural challenges, have managed to rise above the
tide of thuggery. But even that country has had to endure repeated
military takeovers. The Ivory Coast was once a prosperous country ruled by an eccentric
strongman, attracting world businesses to headquarter their West African
operations in the pleasant capital, Abidjan. With the death of President
Houphouet-Boigny it became apparent that this stability had shallow and
dangerous roots. The first coup took place in 1999 and the last four years have seen the
Ivory Coast sliding ever further into conflict. As in too many other
African countries, autocratic rulers have not permitted institutions to
grow that would guarantee continuity and therefore stability. The ignorant
and poor of these countries can pull a trigger far more easily than they
can combine in a mass movement to present their grievances to the
government and force through change. Most of what seems to happen in the politics of these states is
haphazard and arbitrary, with government and rebels each living for the
moment and trusting nothing. The only thing that is certain in these
tragic regions is that the man with the gun is a man who matters, and the
man without, does not.
-
Shinui may tip scales in
Israel -
TEL AVIV — Israel goes to the polls in ten days, and for once the
Palestinians are not the only ones being presented as the enemy. The real surprise of this campaign has been the sudden arrival, almost
out of nowhere, of a previously distinctly small-time party that is now
running third in the polls. The secret of its success? It has run a campaign that has aggressively
laid into ultra-Orthodox religious Jews. If the polls are right, the Shinui Party could well propel itself into
Israel’s next government. It could even hold the balance of power. And all through this election campaign, it has barely addressed the
conflict with the Palestinians. Instead the party is riding high on a
ferocious assault on the ultra-Orthodox Jews Haredim, distinctive for the
black hats and long black coats worn by the men, and the disproportionate
amount of power the party says they wield in Israel. Some analysts believe Shinui’s strong performance is partly
responsible for the failure of Amram Mitzna, the Labour leader who
promised to return to the negotiating table with Yasser Arafat if elected,
to galvanize electoral support. At the centre of Shinui’s stunning performance so far is its leader,
the charismatic Tommy Lapid. He has been accused of misogyny, homophobia,
and racism — not only against Arabs, but also against Sephardim — Jews
from Middle Eastern and Mediterranean backgrounds. At one point he said: "If our Westernism erodes, we won’t have a
chance. If we let the Eastern European and the North African ghetto take
over, we will have nothing left to float on. We will blend into the
Semitic region and be lost in a Levantine dunghill." Lapid speaks six languages, and is the author of ten books and two
plays. His conversation is peppered with quotations from English
literature. More than that, those who know him say the bluff,
straight-talking, at times bigoted image is an act Lapid switches on for
the cameras. When Lapid took over Shinui, it was a small fringe party going nowhere.
Then, in the last election, in 1999, it surprised everyone by winning six
seats in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. Now the polls say it is set
to come third with 15 seats. Lapid’s policies are simple. He wants to legalize civil marriages —
at the moment only religious marriages are recognized in Israel. He wants
the buses to run on the Jewish Sabbath — at the moment they are not
allowed to. And above all he wants to force the ultra-Orthodox to serve in
the army. In this he is tapping into a rich seam of bitterness in Israeli
society. Nothing seems to raise the hackles of secular Israelis as much as
the fact that they are obliged to serve in the army and face death on the
front lines in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while ultra-Orthodox Jews are
exempted so they can pray instead. Added to this is seething resentment that the Haredim do so much better
out of state funding, while 80 percent of them do not work and therefore
pay no taxes. And the overwhelming majority of Israelis are secular. The
political power of the ultra-Orthodox rests on proportional
representation. They have their own political parties, which enjoy small
but consistent voter support. For years, they have joined in coalition
governments to give them narrow majorities — and then blackmailed the
bigger parties into agreeing to huge state subsidies for ultra-Orthodox
schools and neighborhoods in return for support on key votes. But nobody
has ever dared campaign against them — until now. Shinui has carefully targeted the huge numbers of recent immigrants
from the former Soviet Union, almost all of whom are secular. If Lapid has
been unafraid to lay into ultra-Orthodox Jews, his own credentials are
impeccable. Now Shinui may find itself in government, Lapid has been forced to take
a clear position on the conflict with the Palestinians. He has carefully
tried to position himself between Ariel Sharon’s Likud and Labor, saying
he supports an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, but not
until militant attacks stop and Arafat is replaced. That is a sharp reversal for Lapid, who once vigorously supported
Greater Israel — an Israel covering much more of the Middle East than it
does now. (The Independent) -
Whose international law? Jordan Times, 1/19/03
- As the interview was to be published yesterday tens of thousands of
protesters in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas took to the
streets in demonstrations against a US-led war on Iraq. Meanwhile, the
more ominous aspect of Powell's interview was his declaration that his
government and like-minded governments would go to war against Iraq alone
if necessary. That means with or without a second UN Security Council
resolution. Powell added the obligatory cliff-hanger: that the US has yet
to make a final decision on war with Iraq! The US, without providing any
evidence of its own but always claiming to have proof of Iraqi breaches,
says it is waiting for the Jan. 27 report of the UN inspectors. If Washington does have evidence that would incriminate the Iraqi
regime, holding on to it for release at a future date is reckless.
Meanwhile, its proclamations and its buildup of its war machine are
instilling fear in the peoples of two vast regions, the Middle East and
the United States, if not the rest of the world. The US belief that a second UN Security Council resolution can be
dispensed with should raise fears about the game of arrogance Washington
is playing with the international community. To conclude that the US and
its allies are ready, willing and able to go it alone in the absence of an
international consensus raises serious questions about the new
international order. Washington needs to be much more candid about its stance on Iraq by
putting all its cards on the table well in advance of any military action
against the Arab country so that the international community may have an
appropriate opportunity to make the right decisions. As is, the world
knows very little about the true intentions of the only superpower, and
the question marks are increasing. AS TENS of thousands of American soldiers pack up and head for the Gulf
to fight President George W. Bush's war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein,
other Americans are demanding that the so-called crisis over Iraq's
alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) be resolved through peaceful
means. Obviously, the crowds that gathered in Washington, DC and other cities
of the US over the weekend to stage public demonstrations against the
policy of war followed by the Bush administration reflect a growing
realisation among Americans that there is something seriously wrong in
their country's approach. They are not denying that there could be a case against Iraq, but they
are questioning why American soldiers should fight a war to disarm Iraq
and topple Saddam. Those sentiments are shared by a majority in the
international community, but then, the only people who could make a real
difference, or at least hope to make a difference, are the Americans. However, the Bush administration and Congress share a common view on
the issue, as reflected in the carefully charted congressional approval
given to the president to execute a war against Iraq, citing Baghdad's
alleged arsenal. If that were not enough, Bush has announced a doctrine
which ostensibly allows him to wage a unilateral American war against any
individual, group or government that he deems as posing a threat to the
security of the US. He has also hedged his bets by declaring in advance
that he reserves the right to adopt unilateral American action against
Iraq if he thought that the United Nations was not handling the Iraq case
properly. As such, the Jan. 27 date for the UN weapons inspectors to file a
report on Iraq's cooperation with them in implementing UN Resolution 1441
is a mythical deadline. The US and its closest ally, Britain, have already
determined on their own that Iraq is in “material breach” of
Resolution 1441 and are going ahead with a military buildup that seems to
have already crossed the point of no return for war against Iraq. Britain
has even tried to outdo the US by asserting that London had the right to
take military action against Iraq without having to obtain a fresh UN
resolution authorising war against that country. The Britons, at least a majority of them, seem to know better about the
realities of the equation. After all, they had controlled events in this
part of the world for centuries; hence, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair's political future may be on the firing line if he goes ahead and
engages the British military in the planned war against Saddam. That might
not make a real difference in what seems to be an inevitable war, but
Blair might be trying to convince Bush that it could be better to put off
military action by several months, when he goes to Washington this month. The world is carefully watching the situation for signs whether it is
feasible for Bush to heed Blair's suggestion — if indeed it is made —
but the ongoing buildup and logistics of retaining or rotating such a
massive military force being assembled in the region tell us otherwise. Against this backdrop, the growing discontent among Americans against
the government's approach might not have an immediate impact and apply a
brake on Bush's plans for war against Iraq. At the same time, we Arabs,
and of course all others who are aware of the US game against Iraq and, in
a wider context, the lopsided US policy in the Middle East, could use the
discontent as a base to present the Arab and Muslim case to the people of
America. It might seem an impossibility against the realities of Sept. 11. If
anything, it has further complicated the Arab and Muslim effort to correct
the “terrorist, militant, fundamentalist, extremist” subliminal and
overt image of Arabs and Muslims that was and continues to be beamed and
inculcated into the negative stereotype of Arabs in the American mind. But
that is no reason for us to resign ourselves to accept the implementation
of the US policy as a fait accompli. We admit that in the Arab and Muslim worlds there are shortcomings and
we need to go a long way in addressing them in a manner that does not lead
to compromising our values and beliefs. That is where the recently
announced Saudi initiative for reforms in the Arab world comes to
prominence. In Jordan, we have already covered a fairly good ground in adopting
reforms and we are going ahead with determination despite hiccups and
hurdles. We could, to a large extent, set an example for the Arab world
with some of those reforms. However, reforms in the Arab world are
long-term objectives that could eventually contribute to improving
relations between the Arabs and the people of the West in general, but
they could not be of much help in our efforts to avert a war against Iraq
at this juncture. At the same time, the Turkish-proposed meeting of the key regional
players could be a springboard to crystallising a strong initiative to
present the regional case against war to the world and seek international
support. Of course, there are no magical solutions to the problem at hand,
but what alternatives do we have? -
'Back to square one' & US support for Sharon By George S. Hishmeh Jordan Times, 1/19/03
- Creating havoc in the land of the Palestinians has been his singular
achievement, in part thanks to the American cover that he has managed to
secure for his dastardly actions. The record speaks for itself. An impartial count, provided by the
Associated Press, revealed that 115 unarmed Palestinians under the age of
18 were killed last year — an increase of more than 50 per cent from the
year before. “Most of the youngsters killed in 2002 were stone throwers
or bystanders hit by Israeli army fire,” the wire agency added. In
contrast, 36 Israeli minors were killed as a result of Palestinian
bombings and shootings in the same period. Additionally, there are 5,000
Palestinians in Israeli jails, most of them arrested during the past year. It took only allegations of corruption and fraud, and not his brutal
and bloody treatment of the Palestinians, to jolt Sharon's election
campaign and his right-wing party. In the first weeks, the Likudniks
appeared certain to win as many as 41 seats in the 120-man Knesset. But
when the charges were levelled about bribe taking during the Likud
primaries in December and accusations that the prime minister's two sons
had illegally received $1.5 million loan from a South African friend of
their father's, to pay back an earlier election debt, the burly Israeli
leader stood to lose more than 10 seats in the Israeli parliament slated
to be elected on Jan. 28. (However, a recent poll showed that he has
regained few of his disaffected backers in reaction to a judge's decision
to pull the plug on his television appearance that strayed away from his
denials about bribe taking.) Irrespective of these scandals, Sharon remains immune from any American
criticism, attesting to the influence of the pro-Israeli backers here,
Jews and others. Another telling example of their commanding role in the
US body politic was revealed recently by President Jimmy Carter, who has
just won the Nobel Prize for Peace. He told an interviewer that upon his election nearly twenty years ago,
his first choice to head the State Department was George Ball and not
Cyrus Vance. He said he was impressed with Ball because he had “spoken
up when nobody else in government did about what was wrong with the
Vietnam war”. Carter explained to Douglas Brinkley, a professor of
history at the University of New Orleans, that he wanted Ball because
“he had the courage to question aspects of America's attachment to
Israel”. But, the former president continued, Ball's “outspokenness on
the Middle East would have made it difficult for him to pass
(congressional) confirmation hearings”. Western timidity towards Israel has once again been demonstrated when
Sharon denied passage to a Palestinian delegation to participate in a
peace conference in London this week, attended by representatives of the
“quartet” of international peace-makers: the United States, the United
Nations, Russia and the European Union. All the pleading British
ambassador would say after meeting a stubborn Sharon was that they agreed
to disagree on Palestinian participation. It is time that Israel, now 55-year-old, be faulted for its failure to
come to terms with the indigenous Palestinians and the rest of the Arab
world |