|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
The Bush Middle East initiative |
Current rating: 0 |
by Raymond K Cunningham Jr.
(No verified email address) |
25 Jun 2002
Modified: 03:46:53 PM |
|
The latest Middle East initiative by the United States as outlined by President George W. Bush on June 24, 2002, was nothing more than an extension of the views of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. To demand the removal of Chairman Yasir Arafat while ignoring the actions of Ariel Sharon shows the duplicitous nature of the Bush administration policies. The call for a "new Palestinian leadership" without first calling for Israeli elections is evidence of America's myopia in the Palestinian struggle. |
The latest Middle East initiative by the United States as outlined by President George W. Bush on June 24, 2002, was nothing more than an extension of the views of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. To demand the removal of Chairman Yasir Arafat while ignoring the actions of Ariel Sharon shows the duplicitous nature of the Bush administration policies. The call for a "new Palestinian leadership" without first calling for Israeli elections is evidence of America's myopia in the Palestinian struggle.
Ignored are issues central to the establishment of a just peace in the region: the right of return of displaced Palestinians , the dismantling of Israeli settlements constructed in contravention to international law, and the end to the colonialist exploitation of Palestinian labor.
The issue of the "Right of Return" is central to the Palestinian people. The nations surrounding Israel have hosted generations of Palestinians displaced in 1948 by the creation of Israel and these refugees have no citizenship rights in the host countries. The Palestinian Diaspora has been ignored in the peace process, continually pushed into the background. Central to the failure of the Clinton plan was the continued removal of the right of return from the issues to be discussed. Without adequate and just compensation, without the international community recognizing the right of return, the peace process will continued to be stalled.
The issue of the "settlements" on the Gaza and the West Bank is another obstacle that is continually ignored by the United States. The United Nations has repeatedly affirmed the principles of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Person in Time of War (12 August 1949) with relation to the illegal settlements of civilians in a colonialist policy designed to seize the West Bank. The settlements must be removed as part of any peace agreement or the inhabitants recognized as citizens of Palestine. A democratic Palestinian society has room for diversity - there has never been any other policy by the Palestinian Authority. However, armed and fortified settlements designed specifically to alter the demographic nature of Jerusalem, secure the hills and strategic points of the West Bank and Gaza are designed to seize territory. A "freeze" is tantamount to recognition of existing settlements. The United States policy is totally inadequate and these illegal settlements, their growth and the continual funneling of funds for the settlements is a primary cause of the Intifada.
The Israeli policy of the subjugation of the Palestinian people has been to utilize Palestinian labor as the South African government once exploited the black majority. By controlling the movement, wages and hours of the Palestinians, the workers are nothing more than slaves. Unable to organize, travel freely or live in proximity to their workplaces, the Israelis have effectively created an apartheid system of labor exploitation. Done in the name of security, they have created the insecurity and resistance they seek to remove. The poverty of the occupation has created a labor force desperate for the jobs most Israelis would not take (witness the United States' utilization of agricultural labor). The Israelis have created a virtual prison of the West Bank and Gaza and has exploited day laborers in a way in contravention to international standards. This may go on well after any United States' imposed peace plan since the practice of labor exploitation by the wealthy nations and international corporations has become acceptable.
It is this generation of Palestinians that have answered the call to resist occupation. The United States acts as if resistance is immoral. A population under occupation has the right and the obligation to resist. While the world has been shocked by the particularly vicious nature of the conflict, the Palestinian people are now with their backs to the wall. The conflict is being exploited by nationalists and extremists of all kinds for their own ends. It is time to end the conflict before we see a far more calamitous event using weapons of mass destruction. There are avenues of commonality between the Israelis and Palestinians. So much is shared by the two cultures but we stand on the abyss of far worse.
|
|
How... |
by Clueless
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Jun 2002
|
...will any conscientious Israeli be able to stand up and seriously argue for the Right of Return, with smoldering bodies of schoolkids laying about? Are people just supposed to let folks run around willy-nilly when a percentage of them have sworn with great conviction to fight until they die?
I'm all for Right of Return, cuz I'm a sentimental sap who thinks everyone deserves a home, but how do you do it and stay safe? The Israelis have done their part to keep this a perpetually insoluble problem - but they're not the only ones. What kind of arrangements might make this work safely at this point?
Educate me, if you will.
p.s. It seems to me that rather than the conflict "being exploited by nationalists and extremists", it is in fact the nationalists and extremists who have manufactured the entire conflict, working from all different directions. Kinda makes ya wish for a pill that erases the concept of "nation", don't it? |
|
there are different kinds of resistance |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Jun 2002
|
"It is this generation of Palestinians that have answered the call to resist occupation. The United States acts as if resistance is immoral."
Yet there are kinds of resistance which _are_ immoral; a new example of that kind of immorality detonates somewhere in Israel about once a week. Be careful with rhetorical uses of blanket phrases like "resistance" -- one of what Stephen Dedalus calls "those big words which make us so unhappy."
"A population under occupation has the right and the obligation to resist."
Yet all forms of resistance aren't equally moral, and immoral forms of resistance, like belt bombings aimed at civilian kids on the way to school, only result in prolonging the occupation. That was the central point of the famous ad signed by hundreds of Palestinian intellectuals less than a week ago.
"While the world has been shocked by the particularly vicious nature of the conflict, the Palestinian people are now with their backs to the wall."
If the US were led for forty years by Yasir Arafat, we'd have our backs against the wall too. The man is to international politics what Inspector Clouseau is to crime fighting. Yet it's the people he "leads" who pay the price most of all. For all the complaints about how little autonomy he was given right after Oslo, you'd think people have forgotten that the first part of Oslo was about confidence building, in preparation for discussions of final status. If Arafat hadn't created the new world standard for corrupt government, he'd have a Palestinian state today.
@%< |
