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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2581)	10/4/2001 1:18:49 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Good column from today's Jerusalem Post: THINK AGAIN: Re-starting the 'process' now is folly By Jonathan Rosenblum (October 4) Let us admit at the outset that it is a lot easier being a pundit than prime minister of Israel. That must be why candidates who speak with admirable clarity and enunciate clear policy guidelines - e.g., "No negotiations under fire;" "If they give, they will receive; if they don't give, they won't receive" - become so clueless once in office. Let us also admit that it cannot be pleasant being the prime minister of a small, beleaguered nation getting hollered at by your sole patron and arms supplier. So when US President George W. Bush demanded that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon allow talks to take place between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, and accused Sharon of being the only leader in the world to turn down a request from the United States since September 11, the pressure was very heavy. Sharon did well to refrain from pointing out that no terrorist groups have been expelled from Damascus in response to Bush's equating of terrorists and the nations that harbor them, that Iranian and Syrian backing of Hizbullah has not been cut, that the Saudis will not allow the US to attack Afghanistan from its bases in Saudi Arabia, and that the French and Russians continue to aid Iranian and Iraqi nuclear programs. The president was likely in no mood to debate. Yet even acknowledging the extenuating circumstances, Sharon still made a disastrous mistake in submitting to American pressure, much of it orchestrated by his own foreign minister. No government can afford to give its citizens the impression that their blood is cheap. Yet that is what Israel did by agreeing to negotiations after a week in which three mothers were murdered in separate ambushes, at least one by Arafat's own Fatah militia. By approving a Peres-Arafat meeting if a "decent interval" of 24 hours passes since the murder of a Jew, Sharon has turned the killing of Israelis into a game. Continuing to pursue talks after the Palestinian Authority arrested and immediately released the murderer of Sarit Amrani - gunned down in front of her three children - further cheapened Jewish life. With that release, Arafat made it crystal clear that he has no more intention of keeping this cease-fire than he had of keeping the previous six. Sharon was entitled to ask Bush how he would have reacted if the PA had arrested one of Osama bin-Laden's chief operatives and then released him with a warning that the murder of Americans is frowned upon this month. THE American push for movement on the Israeli-Palestinian front as part of its war on terrorism gives credence to two myths. Both myths are demonstrably false, and their perpetuation endangers both the United States and Israel. The first myth is that American support for Israel caused the Islamist jihad against America. That explanation betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of radical Islam and its war against the West. It conveniently ignores Islamist plots to blow up the European parliament in Strasbourg - hardly a bastion of support for Israel - and the Eiffel Tower. Even Osama bin-Laden has never listed American support for Israel as chief among his complaints against America. Explanations for terrorism inevitably provide it with a certain legitimacy by locating the terrorists' motives within the realm of rational - albeit exaggerated - grievances. Moral crusades require moral clarity. To preserve that clarity, Bush must avoid weakening his clarion call for victory over terrorism through granting legitimacy to the terrorists' cause, whatever it may be. Turning Arafat, the father of the use of terrorism against civilian populations, into an object of sympathy creates the appearance of a distinction between "bad" terrorists and "good" terrorists. THE second myth is that the September 11 attack on America proves that America must remain highly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, because "if you don't go to the Middle East, the Middle East will come to you." In fact, the September 11 attack required years of planning, most of it during a period of American hyper-involvement in the Middle East. Bush came into office after eight years of intense American involvement that led only to a renewed war by Palestinians on Israel. From the first he showed an instinctive understanding that the so-called peace process and peace itself have nothing to do with one another, and that the conditions for a peaceful resolution do not exist at present. Over 70% of Palestinians reject as unacceptable a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital. A population indoctrinated for decades in the sacred duty to die reclaiming every inch of Israel from the Jewish "descendants of pigs and monkeys" is incapable of compromise. Not an easily digested fact, but the truth nevertheless. Led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush risks repeating the diplomatic failures of the Clinton years. The resumption of talks with Arafat thrusts Israel once again into a process based on repeated Israeli concessions on the ground in return for infinitely renewable and infinitely violable promises from Arafat to refrain from violence. Except this time, Israeli concessions will be the pound of flesh offered by the United States to win support from the Europeans, as well as from rogue Moslem states which are themselves major sponsors of international terrorists. Predictably, the Peres-Arafat meeting led only to a dramatic intensification of Palestinian attacks, allowing Arafat to shore up his credentials at home while casting himself as a peacemaker abroad. The increased confrontations were then followed by the familiar State Department condemnation of the perpetrators of violence and those responding to it in equal measure. (For the preceding two weeks, we were blessedly spared such condemnations, as America prepared for its own war on those who attacked her.) The inexperienced Bush can be forgiven for not recognizing the extent to which he has weakened his own cause and is heading back into old Middle East quaqmires. But why did our vastly more experienced prime minister choose to aid and abet this folly?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2581)	10/4/2001 1:32:25 PM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Why doesn't the rest of the World impose peace on the US and Bin-Laden or massively isolate them if they don't agree? David

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (2581)	10/4/2001 1:41:44 PM
From: CountofMoneyCristo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Durban was an absolute disgrace. I completely agree. However, it has become very clear that the sides are not going to agree on peace for a host of reasons. Therefore, time for the international community to decide the matter, perhaps in stages. Stage one, declare Jerusalem an open city and remove all Israeli and Palestinian authorities, introducing an international police force under the auspices of the European Union. That's right, NO US, no other UN nations, but Europe. Likewise, all checkpoints between Israel and Gaza and the West Bank. Finally, Israeli settlers are ejected from these areas, but they are compensated for their loss.