- The situation is probably more disturbing than this:
Bush has handed the keys of the American government over to Israel not
to win American Jewish voters but because he is an ideological extremist
whose mind (what little there is of it) has been thoroughly indoctrinated
by Christian Zionism. Two main principles of Christian Zionism are:
-
- 1. God has commanded Christians to do whatever the Israeli
government asks of them, no matter how contrary those requests may be to
the American interest.
-
- 2. Armageddon is a good thing, and should be made to
happen as soon as possible.
-
- Bush reminds one very much of those Christian Zionists
who are regular inhabitants of Free Republic. He's not even as bright
as most of those, and yet he is trying to run the American government and
American foreign policy. The situation is beyond alarming, and yet the
American establishment media are still failing to communicate the true
gravity of the crisis.
-
- The reason is simple: many powerful people in the big
media, who hold Christian Zionism in contempt, are more than willing to
use someone they consider to be a demented halfwit to attack and crush
Israel's neighbors with American military power.
-
- During the last decade or two a coalition forged in hell
emerged to take over the Republican Party: southern white Protestant fundamentalist
males (Christian Zionists) and northern Jewish militant Zionist males (neoconservatives).
These events were encouraged and facilitated by neoliberals in the Democratic
Party and the major media, whose Zionism is fully as fervent as that of
the Christian Zionists and neocons. The alliance of these factions has
brought us to our current state of affairs in Iraq.
-
- The Bush administration is well down the path of igniting
a world war in the Middle East, with the covert backing of many Democrats
and liberals. Lawrence Kaplan, a leading neoliberal, recently remarked
that the United States should be willing to accept the deaths of 30,000
young Americans to fulfill the war aims of the neocon/neolib axis in Iraq.
-
- "better_off_said" wrote:
-
- For those of you who want cut to the chase, here's what
Bush's latest U-Turn it's all about, gaining the votes he stood to lose
from the Christian Zionists, at the expense of our safety and the stability
of the world:
-
- "The move also has potential electoral benefits
for Bush, who has courted Jewish voters in the battleground state of Florida
and elsewhere. It also plays well with Christian conservatives, who see
support for Israel as part of a religious imperative."
-
- As far as I'm concerned, this latest stunt makes him
the most dangerous man in Washington. _____
-
- In A Shift, Bush Backs Sharon On West Bank
-
- By Maura Reynolds and Mary Curtius
LA Times Staff Writers
4-15-4
-
- WASHINGTON - President Bush
made a fundamental shift in Middle > East strategy Wednesday, recognizing
long-standing Israeli claims to major settlements in the West Bank as part
of an agreement under which Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and
portions of the West Bank.
-
- Bush also adopted the Israeli position on the resettlement
of Palestinian refugees, saying they should find homes in a future Palestinian
state and should not expect to return to their former homes in Israel.
In doing so, Bush bypassed negotiating steps envisioned in a U.S.-backed
peace process.
-
- Bush's pronouncement, which drew an immediate angry reaction
from Palestinian leaders, moves U.S. policy into closer alignment with
Israel, which has in effect extended its borders by building scores of
settlements on land seized from Arabs in the 1967 Middle East War.
-
- The announcement, made in an exchange of letters at a
White House summit with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, boosted the Israeli
leader's prospects for winning support at home for his Gaza disengagement
plan, which would lead to the evacuation of about 7,500 Jewish settlers
now guarded by Israeli troops.
-
- But it also drew criticism from United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, who said through a spokesman that a Mideast peace plan "should
be determined in negotiations between the parties, based on relevant Security
Council resolutions."
-
- It was not immediately clear how the announcement would
affect Bush's relationship with Arab leaders, whose support he had sought
to help stabilize Iraq.
-
- Previously, the position of the U.S., which had been
the broker of Mideast peace negotiations, had been that all Jewish settlements
in the Palestinian territories were an impediment to peace. The United
States has also said neither side should take action outside negotiations
under the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map."
-
- Administration officials said the new stance was designed
to breathe life into the peace process by encouraging - critics might say
"provoking" - Arab states into putting more pressure on Palestinian
extremist groups to end suicide bombing attacks and for Palestinian Authority
leaders to engage in negotiations that would lead to a Palestinian state.
-
- At the White House ceremony with Sharon, Bush portrayed
his endorsement of Israel's plan to unilaterally leave Gaza as part of
an effort to reinvigorate the peace initiative, which in effect has been
moribund for months.
-
- "These are historic and courageous actions"
by Sharon, Bush said. "If all parties choose to embrace this moment,
they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's
longest-running conflicts."
-
- In the exchange of letters with Sharon, Bush said he
was not trying to influence the eventual outlines of a negotiated settlement
between the two sides.
-
- "The United States will not prejudice the outcome
of final status negotiations. That matter is for the parties," Bush
said. "But the realities on the ground and in the region have changed
greatly over the last several decades, and any final settlement must take
into account those realities."
-
- Bush, in his letter, also said that "in light of
new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population
centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations
will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and
all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the
same conclusion."
-
- Bush, who has long complained that the peace process
has been undermined by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, appealed
to Arab countries to do their part to "build democratic Palestinian
institutions." Bush met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday
and will play host to King Abdullah II of Jordan next week.
-
- "The Palestinian people must insist on change and
on a leadership that is committed to reform and progress and peace,"
Bush said.
-
- Bush's assurances did little to assuage Palestinians,
who immediately denounced the president's action as in effect endorsing
Israeli appropriation of West Bank land and bypassing the peace process.
-
- "We as Palestinians reject that, we cannot accept
that, we reject it and we refuse it," Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Ahmed Korei said in a hastily convened news conference in his
West Bank hometown, Abu Dis.
-
- "If Israel wants to make peace, it must talk to
the Palestinian leadership," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian Cabinet
minister and veteran negotiator.
-
- Egyptian leader Mubarak, speaking at Rice University
in Houston on Wednesday night, agreed that unilateral action would create
problems. "I think such an initiative, from my point of view, should
be discussed with the Palestinians," he said.
-
- "Withdrawal from Gaza first of all needs good preparation
from the Palestinian side to maintain security and stability. They have
to prepare the police force, the equipment and everything," he said.
He did not address the issue of the West Bank settlements. > Sharon
has been moving toward a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in an effort to
stem violence against Israel. His right-wing Likud Party will hold a referendum
May 2 on whether to endorse the withdrawal plan, and Bush's backing is
expected to increase support for Sharon within his party.
-
- The issue has been a tricky one for Sharon, a godfather
of the Jewish settlement movement, which has sought to make occupied Palestinian
territories part of Israel.
-
- "My plan will create a new and better reality for
the State of Israel," Sharon said in his White House remarks. "And
it also has the potential to create the right conditions to resume negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians."
-
- The move also has potential electoral benefits for Bush,
who has courted Jewish voters in the battleground state of Florida and
elsewhere. It also plays well with Christian conservatives, who see support
for Israel as part of a religious imperative.
-
- Last summer, Bush traveled through the Mideast to promote
the U.S.- backed peace plan, and in recent months he has pushed his Greater
Middle East Initiative - which promotes democratization of Arab countries
as part of a larger solution not only for the Israeli- Palestinian conflict
but also for postwar Iraq.
-
- But until Wednesday, Bush administration officials had
repeatedly warned Israel not to create "facts on the ground"
that would make peace negotiations with the Palestinians more difficult.
Those "facts" were widely interpreted to mean Jewish settlements
in the Palestinian territories as well as Israel's barrier, which many
Palestinians fear will become a de facto border.
-
- Bush stated unequivocally Wednesday his belief that "facts
on the ground" mean that Israel should not be expected to retreat
to its pre- 1967 borders.
-
- A senior administration official said the Israeli moves
would not scuttle the peace plan, insisting instead that they were designed
to "jump-start" the peace process, which was to lead to an independent
Palestinian state.
-
- "The news here is that the Israeli government, headed
by Ariel Sharon, has decided to pull out of Gaza and to abandon settlements
- not only on Gaza, but also on the West Bank," the official said.
"That is an opportunity for us now to move the Palestinians, because
what he's doing is opening the door for a pathway to a Palestinian state.
That is big news."
-
- He added that the change in policy had been discussed
in at least two recent meetings with Palestinian officials, so it should
not have come as a surprise.
-
- But Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East scholar at Columbia
University, said that the United States has always insisted that a solution
to the conflict lies in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians
and that Bush "is trampling all over decades of American policy."
-
- Khalidi said the Bush-Sharon agreement reflected the
new, post-Iraq war reality of a Middle East where "the Americans and
the Israelis can tell everybody what they have to do."
-
- Two of the United States' most experienced Middle East
peace negotiators agreed that Bush's new stance could result in a revival
of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
-
- Sharon "is doing something that no Israeli prime
minister has been prepared to do before - evacuate settlements without
anything from the Palestinians in return," said Dennis Ross, director
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Ross was the U.S. representative
to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for Presidents George H.W. Bush and
Clinton.
-
- What the exchange of letters underscores, Ross said,
"is the sense of exclusion" of the Palestinians from the process.
Because Sharon is taking the politically risky step of evacuating settlements
with no agreement from the Palestinians, Ross said, "he needed some
assurances from us."
-
- "The Palestinians are going to have to get over
it," Ross said. "They can rant and rave but the reality is still
the same: Israel will get out of Gaza. The Palestinians will have no excuse"
to fail to > crack down on terrorism once Israel withdraws.
-
- In a telephone interview from Jerusalem, Martin S. Indyk,
a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said that questions about the West
Bank settlements and the Palestinian refugees were in effect conceded by
President Clinton when the administration was attempting to broker a peace
agreement in 2000.
-
- "But then, it was in the context of an ongoing negotiation
and also had reference to territorial compensation" for the Palestinians,
said Indyk, now director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at
the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Bush has established his
own parameters now, and it is not in the context of negotiations."
-
- Still, Indyk said, "if Sharon is helped to make
a full withdrawal from Gaza, he will have done something which no previous
Israeli prime minister has done and in the process he will have set precedents
- for the full evacuation of Israeli settlements and for full withdrawal
- and that is actually far more important than what the president said
today."
-
- Both Indyk and Ross dismissed the notion that a unilateral
withdrawal was in keeping with the U.S.-backed peace plan.
-
- "Ironically, it is likely to lead to a resurrection
of the road map in the sense that the president made clear that he wants
European, U.N., Egyptian, Arab support for this," Indyk said.
-
- In a briefing for Israeli reporters, a senior official
traveling with Sharon hailed the agreement, saying it would improve his
nation's security. The official, who spoke on condition that he not be
named, said that once Israel withdrew from Gaza, it would respond harshly
to any terrorist attacks from the Palestinian-controlled territory.
-
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-
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