Post by RPankn on Apr 16, 2004 4:03:25 GMT -5
Outraged by President Bush's embrace of Ariel Sharon and the bloody U.S. assault on Fallujah, the Arab world is linking America's occupation with Israel's. That's ominous.
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By Juan Cole
April 16, 2004 | One year after Baghdad fell to victorious U.S. troops, the Americans had to conquer the country all over again. The great rebellion of April 2004 expelled the U.S. from much of the capital, humiliated coalition allies, cut supply and communications lines to the south, and revealed a reservoir of popular hatred for the U.S. among both some Sunni Arabs in Fallujah and some Shiites in their cities. But perhaps the most ominous development for the U.S. was that the events tied together two occupations and two intifadas, or popular uprisings -- Iraq and Palestine.
In his press conference of April 13, President Bush gave several reasons for cracking down on Iraqi insurgents. He said their motivation was the same as those who set off bombs in Jerusalem; he tied them to the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, executed by al-Qaida in part for being Jewish. He also cited Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr's support for the Palestinian Hamas organization and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah party. He gave as one reason for having gone to war against Saddam Hussein the former dictator's support for Palestinian terrorists. In this speech, he presented the Iraq war and its violent aftermath as an extension of the Israeli struggle to subjugate the Palestinians and Hezbollah.
Before the war, Bush connected nonexistent dots between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Now he and his neoconservative brain trust are mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine. This time, however, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- and one that will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world.
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so central to U.S. diplomacy in the region that it cannot help affecting every other policy imperative, including Iraq. Many Arabs, including Iraqis, initially looked upon the U.S. as an honest broker, but its reputation has gradually been sullied. The U.S., for instance, had long opposed the aggressive Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza as an obstacle to a full and fair settlement with the Palestinians. On April 14, however, Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington and, breaking with longstanding U.S. policy, acquiesced in the permanent annexation by Israel of large swathes of the West Bank. In other words, as of this week, the Bush administration has endorsed the seizure of the land of one party by another in an international dispute.
Events in Palestine have already had an important impact on Iraqi attitudes to the United States, and likely will continue to do so. It is not that most Iraqis are fanatically pro-Palestinian: In fact, many resent Palestinian leaders for taking money and support from Saddam. But Iraqis, like most Arabs and Muslims, feel anger and sorrow over the Palestinian catastrophe and regard their struggle as legitimate. Even cautious, mainstream Iraqi leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel for attacks on Palestinians.
On the morning of March 22, Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Muslims emerging from a radical mosque in the densely populated al-Sabra quarter of the occupied territory of Gaza. They killed eight people, including the half-blind paraplegic, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (clerical leader of Hamas), and wounded 24 others. Yassin had blessed the suicide bombings that had taken so many civilian lives in Israel, but he was not on the operational side of Hamas. He planned no such attacks, although Israeli Interior Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi implied that he did, saying, "The days of the terrorist chiefs and commanders who will not spend all their time trying to survive and still prepare attacks are numbered." Actually, Yassin had spoken of the possibility of a century-long truce with Israel, and exercised a restraining influence on young hotheads in the movement. Nor had any court tried and found Yassin guilty. He was simply assassinated, a contravention of the Geneva Convention of 1949 governing military occupations. Despite U.S. denials, many Arabs and Muslims concluded that Yassin's assassination was green-lighted in Washington, and Hamas itself briefly threatened revenge on the United States -- a virtually unprecedented departure from its position that its war is only with Israel.
Israel's right-wing Likud government, headed by Sharon, came into office in 2001 determined to undo the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, which required Israel to give back all or most of the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967. Israel had militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza ever since, and had systematically colonized large parts of them, expanding Israeli territory at the Palestinians' expense.
Sharon wanted to permanently annex about half of the West Bank, and appears to have decided that this action might be made palatable to the U.S. and some European states if he, at the same time, withdrew from Gaza altogether. Gaza is a vast slum. It is the most densely populated place in the world, burdened by a poverty-stricken, angry population that has suffered through nearly 40 years of military occupation. The 7,500 Israeli settlers in Gaza, who are difficult and expensive to protect, would be removed to the West Bank, which has much better real estate values, and Israel would be seen to be voluntarily relinquishing Palestinian territory. In the process, it would permanently acquire much of the real prize, the West Bank, and make it almost impossible for a Palestinian state to emerge -- despite continued empty promises on that score from Sharon and Bush. (In fact, Sharon has made his intentions quite clear: He told the Israeli press that his plan would "bring their [Palestinians'] dreams to an end.")
At their joint news conference on April 14, Bush blessed Sharon's plot. Of the "existing major Israeli population centers," (i.e. settlements) on the West Bank, Bush said it is "unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Bush also hailed Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and move its settlers to the West Bank as "historic."
Translated, what Bush really said was that there would be no return to the 1967 borders and that Israel's policy of annexing occupied territory and planting large settlements on it -- actions forbidden by the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbid permanently acquiring territory by war -- had now received the stamp of approval from Washington. Moreover, Sharon was authorized to take further steps unilaterally, without negotiating with the Palestinians.
Combined with the American military assault on Fallujah, Bush's embrace of Sharon's position succeeded in making America, in Arab eyes, virtually indistinguishable from Israel. The Egyptian daily al-Jumhuriyyah spoke for many Arabs when it observed in the wake of the Bush-Sharon accord, "the victims being killed daily in Palestine and Iraq are due to the continuation of the occupation ... Violence and extremism have increased as a natural response to the brutality of the occupation."
Continued here: www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/16/israel/
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Juan Cole
April 16, 2004 | One year after Baghdad fell to victorious U.S. troops, the Americans had to conquer the country all over again. The great rebellion of April 2004 expelled the U.S. from much of the capital, humiliated coalition allies, cut supply and communications lines to the south, and revealed a reservoir of popular hatred for the U.S. among both some Sunni Arabs in Fallujah and some Shiites in their cities. But perhaps the most ominous development for the U.S. was that the events tied together two occupations and two intifadas, or popular uprisings -- Iraq and Palestine.
In his press conference of April 13, President Bush gave several reasons for cracking down on Iraqi insurgents. He said their motivation was the same as those who set off bombs in Jerusalem; he tied them to the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, executed by al-Qaida in part for being Jewish. He also cited Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr's support for the Palestinian Hamas organization and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah party. He gave as one reason for having gone to war against Saddam Hussein the former dictator's support for Palestinian terrorists. In this speech, he presented the Iraq war and its violent aftermath as an extension of the Israeli struggle to subjugate the Palestinians and Hezbollah.
Before the war, Bush connected nonexistent dots between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Now he and his neoconservative brain trust are mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine. This time, however, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- and one that will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world.
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so central to U.S. diplomacy in the region that it cannot help affecting every other policy imperative, including Iraq. Many Arabs, including Iraqis, initially looked upon the U.S. as an honest broker, but its reputation has gradually been sullied. The U.S., for instance, had long opposed the aggressive Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza as an obstacle to a full and fair settlement with the Palestinians. On April 14, however, Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington and, breaking with longstanding U.S. policy, acquiesced in the permanent annexation by Israel of large swathes of the West Bank. In other words, as of this week, the Bush administration has endorsed the seizure of the land of one party by another in an international dispute.
Events in Palestine have already had an important impact on Iraqi attitudes to the United States, and likely will continue to do so. It is not that most Iraqis are fanatically pro-Palestinian: In fact, many resent Palestinian leaders for taking money and support from Saddam. But Iraqis, like most Arabs and Muslims, feel anger and sorrow over the Palestinian catastrophe and regard their struggle as legitimate. Even cautious, mainstream Iraqi leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel for attacks on Palestinians.
On the morning of March 22, Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Muslims emerging from a radical mosque in the densely populated al-Sabra quarter of the occupied territory of Gaza. They killed eight people, including the half-blind paraplegic, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (clerical leader of Hamas), and wounded 24 others. Yassin had blessed the suicide bombings that had taken so many civilian lives in Israel, but he was not on the operational side of Hamas. He planned no such attacks, although Israeli Interior Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi implied that he did, saying, "The days of the terrorist chiefs and commanders who will not spend all their time trying to survive and still prepare attacks are numbered." Actually, Yassin had spoken of the possibility of a century-long truce with Israel, and exercised a restraining influence on young hotheads in the movement. Nor had any court tried and found Yassin guilty. He was simply assassinated, a contravention of the Geneva Convention of 1949 governing military occupations. Despite U.S. denials, many Arabs and Muslims concluded that Yassin's assassination was green-lighted in Washington, and Hamas itself briefly threatened revenge on the United States -- a virtually unprecedented departure from its position that its war is only with Israel.
Israel's right-wing Likud government, headed by Sharon, came into office in 2001 determined to undo the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, which required Israel to give back all or most of the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967. Israel had militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza ever since, and had systematically colonized large parts of them, expanding Israeli territory at the Palestinians' expense.
Sharon wanted to permanently annex about half of the West Bank, and appears to have decided that this action might be made palatable to the U.S. and some European states if he, at the same time, withdrew from Gaza altogether. Gaza is a vast slum. It is the most densely populated place in the world, burdened by a poverty-stricken, angry population that has suffered through nearly 40 years of military occupation. The 7,500 Israeli settlers in Gaza, who are difficult and expensive to protect, would be removed to the West Bank, which has much better real estate values, and Israel would be seen to be voluntarily relinquishing Palestinian territory. In the process, it would permanently acquire much of the real prize, the West Bank, and make it almost impossible for a Palestinian state to emerge -- despite continued empty promises on that score from Sharon and Bush. (In fact, Sharon has made his intentions quite clear: He told the Israeli press that his plan would "bring their [Palestinians'] dreams to an end.")
At their joint news conference on April 14, Bush blessed Sharon's plot. Of the "existing major Israeli population centers," (i.e. settlements) on the West Bank, Bush said it is "unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Bush also hailed Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and move its settlers to the West Bank as "historic."
Translated, what Bush really said was that there would be no return to the 1967 borders and that Israel's policy of annexing occupied territory and planting large settlements on it -- actions forbidden by the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbid permanently acquiring territory by war -- had now received the stamp of approval from Washington. Moreover, Sharon was authorized to take further steps unilaterally, without negotiating with the Palestinians.
Combined with the American military assault on Fallujah, Bush's embrace of Sharon's position succeeded in making America, in Arab eyes, virtually indistinguishable from Israel. The Egyptian daily al-Jumhuriyyah spoke for many Arabs when it observed in the wake of the Bush-Sharon accord, "the victims being killed daily in Palestine and Iraq are due to the continuation of the occupation ... Violence and extremism have increased as a natural response to the brutality of the occupation."
Continued here: www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/16/israel/
