- NEW YORK -- It's hard to
know whether to laugh or to cry at U.S. President George Bush's much-awaited
"vision" of Mideast peace unveiled last week, a speech so obviously
crafted by special interests and driven by domestic politics that the rest
of the world winced in embarrassment. Even moderate Israeli leader Shimon
Peres called it a "fatal mistake."
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- The view abroad was captured by veteran British journalist
Robert Fisk, who acidly wrote that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, who has made
six visits to Bush's White House, should be allowed to run the White House
press office, to "spare the American president the ignominy of parroting
everything he is told by the Israelis."
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- Bush's message to Palestinians: basically, no state until
you kick out Yasser Arafat, stop resisting Israeli occupation, develop
true democracy, do what Israel tells you, create capitalism, eliminate
corruption and stop causing trouble. Then, some day, the U.S. might consider
an "interim" Palestinian state whose borders and sovereignty
would be "provisional," provided Israel agrees.
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- Bush might as well have told Palestinians they won't
get their freedom and homeland until they can recite the U.S. Tax Code
in Apache.
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- Bush, a man untroubled by deep thought or irony, had
the chutzpah, as we New Yorkers say, to urge Palestinians to adopt Scandinavian-style
democracy, while telling them they cannot re-elect Arafat, who was elected
in a fair vote by over 80% of his people - rather better than President
Bush, who slid into office thanks to court orders and voter exclusions
in Florida.
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- As for corruption, Arafat's thieving PLO cronies look
like the homeless compared to Bush's mega-crook pals at Enron who helped
finance his elections.
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- Corrupt autocracies Why didn't Bush urge free elections
on America's other Mideast clients - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco
and the Gulf states, mostly corrupt autocracies run by generals or feudal
monarchs? What the president wants is an obedient Palestinian version of
Afghanistan's new leader, CIA "asset" Hamid Karzai, who was put
into power with U.S. and British bayonets and billions in bribes. Bush
politely suggested Israel stop building settlements. Considering that Sharon
scorned Bush when the president ordered him to pull his U.S.-armed and
financed troops out of the West Bank, there is zero chance Israel will
stop gobbling it up. Sharon has made it perfectly clear by his actions
that he will never withdraw from the West Bank or Golan, which Israel occupies
illegally, and will never accept a viable Palestinian state. Worse, Sharon
appears likely to be succeeded by rival Benjamin Netanyahu, who actually
calls Sharon "soft" on Palestinians. What Bush and Israel's rightists
want is apartheid-style bantustans - tribal reservations policed by Palestinian
kapos, surrounded by Israeli troops, covering about 40% of Palestine. Israel
will get the rest. In fact, Israeli peace groups recently revealed there
are now 400,000 Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories and Golan,
not the 200,000 previously believed. When the Oslo Accords were signed
in 1993, there were 85,000 Jewish settlers.
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- Arafat's U.S.-financed Palestinian Authority and its
security apparatus are dictatorial, thoroughly corrupt and abuse human
rights. Arafat winks at terror attacks on Israeli civilians, is a liability
to his people and should make way for new leadership. But so should Sharon
and Israel's expansionists, who have plunged their nation into a bloody
morass and provoked anti-Semitism around the globe. A pox on both houses.
Israel, at least, has moderate, capable alternative leaders like Peres
and Yossi Beilin, who can bring some sanity to the political scene. The
only real Palestinian candidate, Marawan Barghouti, is in an Israel prison.
The PLO is totally discredited among Palestinians because of corruption
and close co-operation with the U.S. and Israel. This leaves the extremist
groups - Hamas and Islamic Jihad - as the choice of a majority of Palestinians.
Bush's relentless undermining of Arafat's PLO has strengthened Palestinian
radicals and played into the hands of Sharon, who vows he will never deal
with "terrorists."
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- Israelis and their American supporters greeted Bush's
speech with predictable adulation. Bush and his advisers hope to increase
their share of the Jewish vote in November's critical U.S. mid-term elections
from 19% to over 50%. Embracing Israel's far right also delighted ardent
Bush supporters on the Christian far right. Many of these rustic fundamentalists
believe that when all Jews are moved into Biblical Israel (including the
West Bank), their Christian Messiah will return and destroy the world in
Armageddon. Good Christians will then go to paradise.
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- President Bush's "vision" for Palestine is
a myopic fantasy seen through rose-coloured glasses supplied by his alter
ego, Ariel Sharon. The plan is frightful news for Palestinians, bad news
for Israelis seeking peace, and bad news for Americans.
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- Bush has put domestic politics and his re-election before
America's proper national interests. He has undermined real peacemakers
among the Israelis and Arabs. Worse, instead of playing honest peace broker
in the Mideast, Bush's total identification with Israel's far right ensures
America will again become the target of extremists from an increasingly
enraged Muslim world - and of furious Palestinians who now have nothing
to lose except the cruel mirage of a fraudulent "provisional interim"
state.
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- Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
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- http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jun30.html
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