Hi. The two essays offer different apects of the crisis, and some important differences in POVs. Fisk is strong on history and the Times, on real-politic; both, in great contrast to the endlessly recycled trash in the LA Times, making them even more valuable. Ed
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2663199.ece Welcome to 'Palestine' Robert Fisk The Independent: 16 June 2007 How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East. Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement. No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ? And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority". I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people? All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province). We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal. We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non- existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror". Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control. For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza? It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other). If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners. So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love. How do we deal with a coup d'etat by an elected government? *** http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/world/middleeast/17assess.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin News Analysis Palestinian Split Poses a Policy Quandary for U.S. By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: June 17, 2007 JERUSALEM, June 16 - With the two Palestinian territories increasingly isolated from each other by a week of brutal warfare between rival factions, Israel and the United States seem agreed on a policy to treat them as separate entities to support Fatah in the West Bank and squeeze Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The idea is to concentrate Western efforts and money on the occupied West Bank, which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction control, in an effort to make it the shining model of a new Palestine that will somehow bring Gaza, and the radical Islamic group Hamas, to terms. As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, who arrives in the United States on Sunday to meet with American officials, said, a Fatah government, shorn of Hamas, "can be a new opening." After the failure of the Palestinian unity government, Mr. Olmert said in an interview with The New York Times, "I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit." But like all seemingly elegant solutions in this region, this one has many pitfalls. It is entirely unclear whether Hamas would sit still during such an effort, whether Mr. Abbas would be willing to ignore the 1.5 million residents of Gaza or whether the separation strategy would gain the crucial support of the Arab world. As Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation and the New America Foundation in Washington suggests, it's hard to imagine how Mr. Abbas could accept the tax receipts Israel has been withholding from the Hamas government and use them only for West Bankers. The Palestinians in Gaza and the refugee diaspora would not stand for it, he says, and Fatah might lose more popularity than it gains. Mr. Abbas is already under pressure from some Arab governments, in particular the Saudis, who mediated the national-unity government at Mecca, to take Hamas at its word and try to recreate a shared government. In a speech on Friday to an emergency meeting of the Arab League, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia said, "The Palestinians have come close to putting by themselves the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause." But he added, "It would be best for our Palestinian brothers to return to their commitment to the Mecca agreement and work to carry it out." Both the United States and Israel are reeling from the rapid and ignominious collapse of Fatah in Gaza in recent days, despite significant injections of American political and military advice and aid. There is no question that, if they are to survive, Mr. Abbas and Fatah need bolstering fast after the victory in Gaza of Hamas, which favors Israel's destruction. The whole future of the two-state solution - an independent Palestine living in relative peace with an independent Israel - seems ever more at stake. The United States and Israel are each searching for short- and medium-term responses to a collapse neither saw coming. Both want to limit the regional impact of the latest victory of radical Islam over Western-backed, secular forces. And both are worried about the impact on Egypt, which is trying to seal its border from Gazan refugees and where President Hosni Mubarak faces a serious internal challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist organization with which Hamas is affiliated. Mr. Abbas and Fatah say they are committed to a two-state solution with Israel. Whatever his weaknesses, which are manifold, Mr. Abbas still has the legal authority as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization to negotiate with Israel. There is even talk of pushing Israel to negotiate with Mr. Abbas to create a Palestinian state in provisional borders in much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with Gaza left for another time - a way to use the road-map peace plan President Bush endorsed. This idea was floated by a former Clinton Administration official, Martin Indyk, now director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, in an opinion article published Friday in The Washington Post. For Mr. Olmert and Israel, the policy of treating the two territories separately would also be a way to justify the continued sealing off of Gaza from the West Bank on security grounds, to prevent the transfer of military equipment and skill. And it would also take the pressure off Israel to lift security restrictions on Gaza crossing points or to move very quickly to withdraw more settlers and soldiers from the West Bank, let alone start negotiating with Hamas. But it is highly unlikely that Mr. Abbas, elected as president of all Palestinians, will change his refusal to accept statehood in provisional borders, or abandon all Gazans, many of whom would vote for Fatah if given a chance, to their fate. That means efforts to reach a shared political consensus will have to continue, because Hamas is clearly not going to go away. There is another problem with the idea of creating a beautiful West Bank Palestine at relative peace with Israel and with fewer checkpoints and restrictions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, though kept underground there because of the Israeli occupation, could produce havoc, Iraq style, with a few bombs and suicide bombers. That would put a quick end to any easing of Israeli security restrictions. And Hamas may in turn make something of its new responsibilities in Gaza. Without what it considers the troublemakers of the Fatah security forces, some of whom had been engaging in crime and destabilizing acts, Hamas may very well bring a new security to the people of Gaza. And if the customs connection to Israel is broken, it may be able to work out a deal to ship goods in and out of Egypt and create some jobs. Still, Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli negotiator who runs the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv, said that with Hamas now confronted with real power and responsibility for the welfare and security of Gazans, "this may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for them," since they always wanted to share such responsibility with Fatah. Hamas, he said, is "more comfortable in the gray area where it addresses the needs of the population but not the requirements of power." But Hamas may find that it needs to deal with Israel and the compromises of politics in ways that could bring it over time, as Yasir Arafat and Fatah were brought, closer to the space in which two adversaries can negotiate a peace. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
