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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (21247)	6/19/2004 11:11:34 AM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81068

Gustave > my current opinion is that the "tactical" rapprochement (both in Europe and the US) between the far-right and the Jewish constituency goes beyond a mere passing opportunism < There are others, including yours truly, who not only have a different view which is that the present "marriage" between Likudniks and Christian fundamentalists is a temporary phenomenon but, indeed, it may be nearing its end. counterpunch.org >>But I will go out on a limb and make a prediction (something I rarely do because I hate to be wrong): one-sided support for Israel, while it may win votes among American Jews and some fundamentalist Christians, is not necessarily wise from the standpoint of U.S. oil interests, and may even cost votes among that increasing number of Americans who can pick up the newspaper almost any day and see another story about Israeli tanks surrounding the residence of the Palestinian president, or massacring children, or assassinating a crippled half-blind cleric. I predict that if Dubya manages to extend his control of the White House in 2004, he will present the bill to whoever is in power in Israel, and that bill will include withdrawal from some of the territories occupied after 1967. If the Israelis respond negatively to this demand, which there is every reason to believe they will, and are supported by American Jews, which there is every reason to believe they will be, the younger Bush, already born-again, will be reborn yet one more time and will start making remarks about special minorities with divided loyalties and so forth. In other words, he will stoke up anti-semitism, carefully of course, as befits the leader of the free world. And he will find a tremendous response, more than anyone anticipates, from many ordinary people who are tired of picking up the tab for the number one outlaw state in the Middle East, the state that has defied scores of United Nations resolutions, been condemned by the UN more than any other member or non-member, the only state in the Middle East that possesses actual weapons of mass destruction.<< theatlantic.com >>Last week, on the NPR public affairs program On Point, Ian Lustig, a Middle East scholar, saw another filament of hope emerging from the ruin of Iraq: The US may be so desperate to recoup a measure of good will in the Arab world that it will force a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The outlines of a two-state solution were agreed upon by former Israeli government officials and moderate Palestinians at Geneva last year. Secretary of State Powell welcomed their initiative. But progress toward peace cannot happen so long as Ariel Sharon's Likud Party remains in power in Israel. President Bush's father helped bring down an earlier Likud government by withholding aid. The issue was the building of more Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The settlements remain the issue on which the US still has leverage and over which it still has responsibility, and, along with Palestinian terrorism (over which we have neither control nor responsibility) they are the roadblock on the "road map" to a two-state solution. On the settlements US and Likud interests diverge. President Bush betrayed the national interest in abandoning thirty-five years of US policy toward the settlements to appease Ariel Sharon—and win Jewish votes in Florida. It is hard to imagine a second Bush Administration reversing course and even harder to imagine John Kerry facing down a vital part of the Democratic coalition to force Israelis to choose between the settlements that have brought them so much suffering and continued US aid. But desperation brings clarity. National crisis can override special-interest politics. Israel could still build its wall—only within its pre-1967 borders. Perhaps a Palestinian state on contiguous territory on the West Bank, its people barred from work in Israel, its economy petrified, would confront its Islamist terrorists. But even if it did not, "Fortress Israel" would be as secure behind its wall as its history with the Palestinians will permit. And the US would have taken the one step, perhaps the only step it can take now, to tamp down the fury of the Arab street, to deny a propaganda instrument to the denizens of the Arab "basement" itching to perpetrate a new September 11, and to strengthen the forces of reform in the Arab world. If there is a path to democracy in the Middle East, it begins in Jerusalem, not Baghdad. <<