U.S. and ISRAELI Deceptions...
over and over again
"...detailed investigation shows that not a single one of
these
withdrawal agreements was honored by the Israelis.
And in the meantime,
the number of settlers illegally
living on Palestinians' land rose
after Oslo from 80,000 to 150,000."
MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 18 November:
It was back in 1996 when MER had a chance
to interview Robert Fisk at length in Washington about the 'Peace
Process'. The longest serving Western correspondent in the
Middle East, we discussed with Fisk for some two hours the details and
the realities of the entire Middle East situation -- and a unique
series of four half-hour MERTV programs then resulted.
Back
then, hard as it is now to believe, the Americans and the Israelis were
insisting their 'Peace Process' was 'irreversible' and Yasser Arafat
was the most frequent foreign visitor at the White House in Washington
and #10 in London. And now, just eight years later, look at
the bloody mess brought on by U.S., U.K, and Israeli policies and
deceptions.
Even as
Yasser Arafat was being buried last Friday the American President and
the British Prime Minister purposefully tried to immediately dim his
memory and twist the headlines by holding an unusual joint press
conference at the White House. What Bush and Blair spewed
forth grabbing TV time that evening from Arafat's Cairo funeral and
Ramallah burial twisted and distorted history further beyond
recognition. This extraordinary and urgently needed corrective
was published by Robert Fisk earlier this week in The Independent.
Death, Delusion and Democracy
by Robert
Fisk
11/16/04
"The Independent"
-- So the death of Yasser Arafat is a great new opportunity for the
Palestinians, is it? The man who personified the Palestinian struggle -
"Mr Palestine" - is dead. So things can only get better for the
Palestinians. Death means democracy. Death means statehood. That the
final demise of the corrupt old guerrilla leader should be a sign of
optimism demonstrates just how catastrophic the conflict in the Middle
East has now become. It's a bit like Fallujah. The more we destroy it,
the crueler we are, the brighter the chances of Iraqi democracy. The
more successful we are, the worse things are going to get. That's what
George Bush said on Friday: that violence will increase as Iraqi
elections grow closer - a total mind warp since the more violent Iraq
becomes, the less the chances of any election ever being held.
Note how Bush could not even bring himself to mention Arafat's name.
It's the same old agenda. The Palestinians have to have a democracy.
They have to prove themselves; they - not the Israelis - have to show
that they are a worthy "negotiating partner". And any new leader - the
colorless Ahmad Qureia or the equally colorless and undemocratic Abu
Mazen - must "control his own people". That was what Arafat failed to
do even though he thought his job was to represent his own people,
which is what democracy is supposed to be all about.
It's worth noting how this narrative has been written. The Israelis,
with their continued occupation, their continued illegal construction
of colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, their air strikes and
helicopter executions and live-fire shooting at stone-throwing
children, are not part of this equation. They are just innocently
waiting to find a new "negotiating partner" now that Arafat is in his
grave. Ariel Sharon, held "personally responsible" for the 1982 Sabra
and Shatila massacre by the Kahan commission report, remains, in George
Bush's words, "a man of peace". No one asks whether he can control his
own army. Or whether he can control his own settlers. He wants to close
down the colonies in Gaza - even though his spokesman has told us that
this will put Palestinian statehood into "formaldehyde".
So let's just take a look back at those tragic years of the Oslo
accord. In 1993, we are supposed to believe, the Palestinians were
offered statehood and a capital in Jerusalem if they accepted the right
of Israel to exist. Oslo said nothing of the kind. It did set down a
complex system of Israeli withdrawals from occupied Palestinian land
and a timetable that the Israelis were supposed to meet. We all knew
that any failure to do so would humiliate Arafat - and make him less
able to "control" his own people.
And what happened? It's important, at this supposedly "optimistic"
moment, to reflect on the facts of the previous "peace process" in
which Europe as well as the United States spent so much time, energy
and - in the EU's case - money. Under the Oslo agreement, the occupied
West Bank would be divided into three zones. Zone A would come under
exclusive Palestinian control, Zone B under Israeli military occupation
in participation with the Palestinian Authority, and Zone C under total
Israeli occupation. In the West Bank, Zone A comprised only 1.1 per
cent of the land whereas in Gaza - overpopulated, rebellious,
insurrectionary - almost all the territory was to come under Arafat's
control. He, after all, was to be the policeman of Gaza. Zone C in the
West Bank comprised 60 per cent of the land, which allowed Israel to
continue the rapid expansion of settlements on Arab land.
But a detailed investigation shows that not a single one of these
withdrawal agreements was honored by the Israelis. And in the meantime,
the number of settlers illegally living on Palestinians' land rose
after Oslo from 80,000 to 150,000 - even though the Israelis, as well
as the Palestinians, were forbidden from taking "unilateral steps"
under the terms of the agreement. The Palestinians saw this, not
without reason, as proof of bad faith.
Since facts are sometimes elusive in the Middle East, let's remind
ourselves of what happened after Oslo. The Oslo II (Taba) agreement,
concluded by Yitzhak Rabin in September 1995 - the month before he was
assassinated - promised three Israeli withdrawals: from Zone A (under
Palestinian control), Zone B (under Israeli military occupation in
co-operation with the Palestinians) and Zone C (exclusive Israeli
occupation). These were to be completed by October 1997. Final-status
agreement covering Jerusalem, refugees, water and settlements were to
have been completed by October 1999, by which time the occupation was
supposed to have ended. In January 1997, however, a handful of Jewish
settlers were granted 20 per cent of Hebron, despite Israel's
obligation under Oslo to leave all West Bank towns. By October 1998, a
year late, Israel had not carried out the Taba accords.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, negotiated a new
agreement at Wye River, dividing the second redeployment promised at
Taba into two phases - but he only honored the first of them. Netanyahu
had promised to reduce the percentage of West Bank land under
exclusively Israeli occupation from 72 per cent to 59 per cent,
transferring 41 per cent of the West Bank to Zones A and B. But at
Sharm el-Sheikh in 1999, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak,
reneged on the agreement Netanyahu had made at Wye River, fragmenting
the latter's two phases into three, the first of which would transfer 7
per cent from Zone C to Zone B. All implementation of the agreements
stopped there.
When Arafat finally went to Camp David to meet Barak, he was allegedly
offered 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza but turned it down and
went to war with the second intifada. A study of the maps, however,
shows that - with the exclusion of Jerusalem and its extended
boundaries, with the exclusion of existing major Jewish colonies and
with the inclusion of an Israeli cordon sanitaire, Arafat was offered
nearer to 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of mandate Palestine that was
left to him. Then a new explosion of Palestinian suicide bombings,
usually aimed at Israeli civilians, destroyed Israel's patience with
Arafat. Sharon, who had provoked the second intifada by strolling on to
the Temple Mount with a thousand policeman, decided that Arafat was a
Bin Laden-style "terrorist" and all further contact ended.
This is not to excuse the PLO or Arafat himself. His arrogance and
corruption, and his little dictatorship - initially encouraged by the
Israelis and Americans who lent Arafat their CIA boys to "train" the
Palestinian security services - ensured that no democracy could thrive
in "Palestine". And I suspect that while he personally disapproved of
suicide bombings, Arafat cynically realized that they had their uses;
they proved that Sharon could not provide Israel with the security he
promised at his election, at least until he built the new wall - which
is stealing further Palestinian land. But that was only one side of the
story - and last week Bush and Blair went back to the old game of
seeing only the other side. The Palestinians - the victims of 39 years
of occupation - must prove themselves worthy of peace with their
occupiers. The death of their leader is therefore billed as a glorious
occasion that provides hope. All this is part of the self-delusion of
Bush and Blair. The reality is that the outlook in the Middle East is
bleaker than ever.
Oh yes, and - since we'd be asking this question today if Sharon had
gone to meet his maker in an equally mysterious way - just what did
Arafat die of?
If you don't get MER, you just don't
get it!
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