DUBYA TO THE RESCUE

On the evening of June 24th 2002, George W. Bush delivered a speech setting out his vision of peace in the Middle East. A full transcript is below, followed by many articles that appeared in response. Surprisingly even Israeli commentators came out against it, in no uncertain terms.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/bush.mideast.speech/index.html
Bush outlines Middle East peace plan
June 24, 2002 Posted: 5:35 PM EDT (2135 GMT)
Bush speaks from the Rose Garden of the White House

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush outlined his plan for Middle East peace in a speech Monday afternoon at the White House. The following is a transcript of the speech:

For too long, the citizens of the Middle East have lived in the midst of death and fear. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage. The forces of extremism and terror are attempting to kill progress and peace by killing the innocent. And this casts a dark shadow over an entire region. For the sake of all humanity, things must change in the Middle East. It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself. In the situation the Palestinian people will grow more and more miserable. My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security. There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror. Yet, at this critical moment, if all parties will break with the past and set out on a new path, we can overcome the darkness with the light of hope. Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born.

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.

And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.

In the work ahead, we all have responsibilities. The Palestinian people are gifted and capable, and I am confident they can achieve a new birth for their nation. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism.

Today, the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few. A Palestinian state can only serve its citizens with a new constitution which separates the powers of government. The Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body. Local officials and government ministers need authority of their own and the independence to govern effectively.

The United States, along with the European Union and Arab states, will work with Palestinian leaders to create a new constitutional framework, and a working democracy for the Palestinian people. And the United States, along with others in the international community will help the Palestinians organize and monitor fair, multi-party local elections by the end of the year, with national elections to follow.

Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption. A Palestinian state will require a vibrant economy, where honest enterprise is encouraged by honest government. The United States, the international donor community and the World Bank stand ready to work with Palestinians on a major project of economic reform and development. The United States, the EU, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund are willing to oversee reforms in Palestinian finances, encouraging transparency and independent auditing.

And the United States, along with our partners in the developed world, will increase our humanitarian assistance to relieve Palestinian suffering. Today, the Palestinian people lack effective courts of law and have no means to defend and vindicate their rights. A Palestinian state will require a system of reliable justice to punish those who prey on the innocent. The United States and members of the international community stand ready to work with Palestinian leaders to establish finance -- establish finance and monitor a truly independent judiciary.

Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure. This will require an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services. The security system must have clear lines of authority and accountability and a unified chain of command.

America is pursuing this reform along with key regional states. The world is prepared to help, yet ultimately these steps toward statehood depend on the Palestinian people and their leaders. If they energetically take the path of reform, the rewards can come quickly. If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support for the creation of a provisional state of Palestine.

With a dedicated effort, this state could rise rapidly, as it comes to terms with Israel, Egypt and Jordan on practical issues, such as security. The final borders, the capital and other aspects of this state's sovereignty will be negotiated between the parties, as part of a final settlement. Arab states have offered their help in this process, and their help is needed.

I've said in the past that nations are either with us or against us in the war on terror. To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel -- including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations.

Leaders who want to be included in the peace process must show by their deeds an undivided support for peace. And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.

Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.

As we make progress towards security, Israel forces need to withdraw fully to positions they held prior to September 28, 2000. And consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.

The Palestinian economy must be allowed to develop. As violence subsides, freedom of movement should be restored, permitting innocent Palestinians to resume work and normal life. Palestinian legislators and officials, humanitarian and international workers, must be allowed to go about the business of building a better future. And Israel should release frozen Palestinian revenues into honest, accountable hands.

I've asked Secretary Powell to work intensively with Middle Eastern and international leaders to realize the vision of a Palestinian state, focusing them on a comprehensive plan to support Palestinian reform and institution-building.

Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians must address the core issues that divide them if there is to be a real peace, resolving all claims and ending the conflict between them. This means that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize borders.

We must also resolve questions concerning Jerusalem, the plight and future of Palestinian refugees, and a final peace between Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and a Syria that supports peace and fights terror.

All who are familiar with the history of the Middle East realize that there may be setbacks in this process. Trained and determined killers, as we have seen, want to stop it. Yet the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with Israel remind us that with determined and responsible leadership progress can come quickly.

As new Palestinian institutions and new leaders emerge, demonstrating real performance on security and reform, I expect Israel to respond and work toward a final status agreement. With intensive effort by all, this agreement could be reached within three years from now. And I and my country will actively lead toward that goal.

I can understand the deep anger and anguish of the Israeli people. You've lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation, and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offer at hand, and trafficked with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life; you have a right to security; and I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security.

I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people. For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict. Your interests have been held hostage to a comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come, as your lives get worse year by year. You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy. You deserve a life of hope for your children. An end to occupation and a peaceful democratic Palestinian state may seem distant, but America and our partners throughout the world stand ready to help, help you make them possible as soon as possible.

If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government.

I have a hope for the people of Muslim countries. Your commitments to morality, and learning, and tolerance led to great historical achievements. And those values are alive in the Islamic world today. You have a rich culture, and you share the aspirations of men and women in every culture. Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes, or Western hopes. They are universal, human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations.

This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all parties in the Middle East: an opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace; a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not. The choice here is stark and simple. The Bible says, "I have set before you life and death; therefore, choose life." The time has arrived for everyone in this conflict to choose peace, and hope, and life.

Thank you very much.

Robert Fisk: I wonder why Bush doesn't let Sharon run his press office
26 June 2002

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=309115

Put your flak jackets on, President George Bush has spoken. He wants a regime change in Palestine, just as he wants a regime change in Iraq. He reads the Israeli government press handouts and accurately quotes them to his American people.

Ariel Sharon, wants the destruction/ liquidation/ resignation of Yasser Arafat. So does Mr Bush. "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so a Palestinian state can be born," Bush told the fearful American people, waiting for the next apocalypse, be it on 4 July or after.

So, no Palestinian state unless Arafat goes. There were no Bush conditions for Israel. He did not secure an end to the continuing building of Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab (that is somebody else's) land. Nor did he secure a halt to continuing Israeli military "incursions" - how I love that word "incursions".

Mr Sharon, in his highly mendacious demand for Palestinian "'transparency", has demanded Palestinian reform must be neither cosmetic nor an attempt to preserve Arafat. And what does Mr Bush say? Why, that Palestinian reform "must be more than cosmetic changes or a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo".

Why, I wonder, doesn't Mr Bush let Ariel Sharon run the White House press bureau? Not only would it be more honest - we would at least be hearing the voice of Israel at first hand - but it would spare the American President the ignominy of parroting everything he is told by the Israelis.

All that he offers to the Palestinians is a ghastly mockery of what the Palestinians are told to do by the Israelis.

There never has been an "interim" state, let alone a "provisional" state. These are fantasies of the Israelis and Mr Bush. White House "officials" - we can guess who they are - believe a Palestinian state can be "achieved" within 18 months. Let's forget international law provides for no such entity.

Let's go over again that most crucial - and most dishonest - part of the Bush statement.

"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours," he told us, "the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose border and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East." Let's see what this means: when the Palestinians have elected a leader whom the Israelis want - a condition that could go on to the crack of doom - the Americans will support a Palestinian state whose very existence will mean nothing unless Israel approves what that state wants to do.

In other words, the United States will be Israel's spokesman in any negotiations. A growing number of Americans know they are being suckered by their own government and their own press, that their country's foreign policy is being manipulated to give maximum support to one - and only one - country in the Middle East. So will "certain aspects of its sovereignty". Note these weighty words. "Certain aspects" of its sovereignty.

What, I wonder, does this mean? Do these "certain aspects" include the continuation of illegal Jewish settlement building? Or the absence of any international guarantees for this interim/provisional state? Or perhaps a get-out clause for the United States to wash its hands of the whole shebang if Israel decides to annex the entire West Bank?

Note, again, the weasel words. Palestine's borders will be "provisional ... until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East". Yet never before has an occupied people been led by so pathetic a person as Yasser Arafat. Nineteen years ago, this same Yasser Arafat swore to me - on a hilltop above the Lebanese city of Tripoli - that his "Palestine" would be "a democracy among the guns". His Palestine, he told me, would be unlike any other Arab state. There would be no secret policemen, no "regime", no cronyism, no corruption.

Fast forward to the spring of 1998. I am listening to a French diplomat who has returned from Gaza. He and his delegation carried a personal letter to Arafat from President Chirac. Again and again, Arafat disregarded the letter, only interested in when the new French school in Gaza will open. The diplomats understand. One of Arafat's relatives will be the headmistress of this school. Family before nation. The Chirac letter stays unopened.

Yes, as Nabil Shaath, one of the most loyal - and most obsequious - of Arafat's ministers, says, "a state is a state, and you cannot be provisionally pregnant and you cannot have a provisional state". It might have been wiser - and more honest - if he had reminded us that the CIA trained the gunmen and intelligence thugs who worked for Arafat; if he had outlined the imprisonment and torture that Arafat inflicted on his Palestinian opponents with the complicity of those who supported the "peace process".

For it is becoming ever more obvious that Arafat did not fail in his duties as Palestinian leader. He failed in his duties as Israel's - and thus America's - proxy colonial apparatchik in the West Bank and Gaza. The fact he is a corrupt little despot does not change this.

He was given time to prove his loyalty to the West, to America, to Israel. He was supposed to have made Israel's settlements both safe and sacred.

Now, when he can no longer control the people he was supposed to control - remember the BBC's repeated question: "Can he control his own people?" - his usefulness is at an end. He must go, to be replaced by our choice of leader - forget elections - who will be as democratic as the new Afghan "interim" government.

George Bush insulted the Palestinians and enraged the leadership of the Arab world. Who cares about the latter? Most of them were appointed by us. But I have a feeling that the Palestinians will not accept this nonsense.

Which is why they will be condemned - as never before - as "terrorists."

From: Mazin Qumsiyeh <mazin.qumsiyeh@yale.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 18:04:50 -0400
Subject:  President Bush's "speech"

Many have kept at least some hope that President Bush will take a lead and a balanced approach to the conflict in Israel/Palestine that has already claimed the lives of over 500 Palestinian Children and nearly 100 Israeli Children. Others have rightly predicted that Bush would simply take the usual "hide your head in the sand and shout terrorism repeatedly."

So let us analyze Bush's speech. Let us look at the number of times in this long speech (1867 words) Bush mentioned these important items:

Terror or Terrorism (against Israelis) 18 Times
Terror or Terrorism (against Palestinians) 0 (zero) Times
Palestinian Democracy lacking 4 Times
Israel's lack of democracy or plurality 0 (zero) Times
Israelis needing security 7 Times
Palestinian needing security 0 (zero) Times
Settlements 1 Time
Refugees 1 Time
Israeli colonialism 0 (zero) Times
Arab summit peace initiative 0 (zero) Times
European Peace Initiative 0 (zero) Times
US tax funding of Israel 0 (zero) Times
International law 0 (zero) Times
Human Rights 0 (zero) Times

Amazing (is this a script from Sharon's speech writer?). To me the absence of any mention of human rights and International law is simply unforgivable and for that alone, the total grade I give bush: 0 (zero). Why is the president being shielded from reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, B'Tselem, Red Cross, etc. (e.g. about Israeli targeting of civilians)? And as for International law, I guess that is only useful when we deal with Iraq (next on the agenda?). This speech reminds me of a speech by secretary Shultz (under Reagan) about Apartheid South Africa where he continued to say: we have to keep "constructive engagement" and not divest. It was the epitome of failure to grasp reality of crumpling apartheid and growing resentment and continue to support the killing while claiming to want peace. Shame.

I hope all reading this will write the media and government officials to complain about our Government's shameless slide and self destructive policies.

Mazin Qumsiyeh

By the way, my understanding is that 'zero' as a mathematical concept and term was invented by the Islamic/Arab civilization.

From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <info@gush-shalom.org>
Subject: Peres calls speech 'fatal mistake'
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:23:22 +0200

FM Peres predicts a bloodbath

Some of the most outspoken criticism of President Bush's speech on the Middle East came from none other than Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister in the Sharon Government. The veteran Yediot Aharonot journalist Shimon Shiffer had watched Peres watching the Bush speech on TV last night and today gave a vivid description:

"Shimon Peres' face became more and more weary and angry, the longer Bush went on with his speech. "He is making a fatal mistake" remarked Peres. "Making the creation of a Palestinian state dependant upon a change in the Palestinian leadership is a fatal mistake" he repeated again and again. "Arafat has led the Palestinians for 35 years, kept their head above the water in the international arena. No, no, you can't just brush him aside with one speech." Peres did not watch the speech to the very end. He got up, turned off the TV and left the room, saying before he left: "The abyss into which the region will plunge will be as deep as the expectations from this speech were high. There will be a bloodbath."

For once, the words of Peres correspond quite closely to what we in Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, feel. Therefore, we today decided to once again address a public appeal to Peres, something which we gave up in despair some time ago. We called upon Peres to leave the government immediately, to help get out the Labor Party as a whole, and to consistently address the Israeli and American public opinion in the spirit of his recent remarks. "It is your unique chance to atone a bit for all the harm you have done, serving as a fig-leaf in a government of war and bloodshed."

Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 21:20:37 -0400
From: magazine@tikkun.org
Subject: Bush's Mid-East plan-a non-starter

Bush Offers Nothing Real to the Palestinians--but Plenty for the Terrorists
--a response to Bush's Mid East speech June 24th, 2002.
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun

George Bush might be a nice guy, but he sure knows how to miss an opportunity. For the first time since 1948, Arab states have offered to give Israel full recognition and peace if Israel withdraws to its pre-67 borders. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority has just announced that it would accept the terms of an agreement as defined by President Clinton in 2000 in the months after Camp David.

But there are two substantial obstacles to all this: First, the Israeli political Right, which currently runs the Government of Israel, has no interest in withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. Many religious Zionists believe that giving up West Bank settlements would be a violation of God’s will.

Second, Islamic fundamentalists have no interest in the creation of a secular Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. They would much prefer to see an Israeli occupation which will be worn down over the course of the next thirty to forty years of guerilla struggle against Islamic forces than to see a secular state that would restore hope for Palestinians and lessen the appeal of the fundamentalists.

So both have entered into a de facto alliance to prevent any such development. Ariel Sharon says that he will not reward terror by allowing any substantial steps toward withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza as long as Israelis face terror. Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad understand the covert invitation, and respond by acts of terror against Israel , particularly at moments when the Palestinian Authority seems to be moving toward accommodation with whatever is the lastest American or Israeli demand. Instead of responding by attacking Hamas, Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad, Sharon responds by repressive measures against the Palestinian Authority and the entire Palestinian people. Those measures increase despair, generate new recruits for the terrorists, and demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority. A perfect reward for the terrorists—exactly what they are seeking.

Now George Bush has joined Sharon in endorsing the notion that any small bunch of fundamentalist extremists can veto a peace process. Of course, had the US insisted as a precondition for withdrawal that the Vietnamese end acts of violence against Vietnamese civilians who supported the US, we’d still be fighting that war. Or if the South African whites had demanded an end to all acts of anti-white violence as a precondition for majority rule, there would still be apartheid in South Africa. And since the Palestinian terrorists do not seek peace with Israel, but the destruction of Israel, George Bush has given them massive incentive to keep going with acts of terror.

Bush’s call for democratic reform of Palestine might have more credibility if it had come from a President who had won the popular vote in the U.S., but it frames a direction which almost everyone can embrace. The Palestinian people would certainly benefit by replacing Arafat and other criminal elements who have supported terror against Israeli civilians. But as long as Israeli tanks roll into Palestinian cities every week, few Palestinians will believe that it is possible to have a democratic process that is anything more than a ratification of whatever Israel seeks to impose on them—and if they vote at all, it will be for those who express the most extreme anger at Israel (just who we don't need in power if we want to negotiate for peace).

If the US wants peace, George Bush is going to have to summon the courage that allowed his father to stand up to the American friends of Israel’s Right wing. In 1991 that meant demanding a settlement freeze, but in 2002 that will mean support for an international intervention to separate and protect the two sides from each other and to impose a settlement which minimally requires an end to the Occupation and the settlements, reparations for the Palestinian refugees(and to Israelis who fled Arab lands) as well as an end to the terror.. One way to reassure legitimate Israeli fears: offer Israel membership in NATO or a mutual defense pact with the US to guarantee protection from assault by neighboring states.

But there is only one path to mobilize Palestinians to join in a serious effort to crush Hamas and other fundamentalist terroriss—and that is for the Palestinian people to feel Israel has had a fundamental change of heart and is now ready to treat the Palestinian people with the same respect and sensitivity to their needs and their fears that we Jews rightly demand for ourselves. And that will never happen as long as we punish an entire people for the outrageous acts of a few. In my view, both sides need to do real teshuva--repentance for the terrible cruelty and pain each has unnecessarily inflicted on the other. But in the actual reality of Israel's far superior military power, it must be the more powerful force that starts this process without demanding that it be reassured from the start that the other side will reciprocate. If the Jewish people were to not only end the Occupation and provide reparations, but also do it in a way that demonstrated real repentance, and we kept up an attitude of generosity and open- heartedness for many years, the justifiable Palestinian rage would eventually melt enough so that most Palestinians would be willing to stop, villify, and imprison those (and there are certain to be some) who will want to keep up violence no matter what Israel does. This is the only way to isolate the fundamentalists--every other approach guarantees their survival and future acts of terror.

Bush's vague promises of a state without territory, and without protection from further Israeli incursions, and conditional on overthrowing Arafat and stopping all violence, is a non-starter ­except perhaps as a temporary respite of pressure from the Saudis who may use the Bush speech as a pretext to claim that the US has demonstrated good intentions, and therefore deserves the go-ahead for US’s desired war against Iraq. But for those of us who want peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, George Bush never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

All the more reason why we need to build a social movement capable of pushing US policy in a different direction. We call it The Tikkun Community--and our goal is to be is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, a movement that calls for both a new social policy and a new spirit of compassion and generosity.

George W's bloody folly
by
Jonathan Freedland

Bush's fantasy Middle East plan is bound to fail. It will strengthen those who want war, not peace

The Guardian
June 26, 2002

That was a fantastic speech. Quite literally, fantastic. George Bush's address on the Middle East, delivered outside the White House on Monday evening, consisted, from beginning to end, of fantasy.

It bore so little relation to reality that diplomats around the world spent yesterday shaking their heads in disbelief, before sinking into gloom and despair. Our own Foreign Office tried gamely to spot the odd nugget of sense in the Bush text - but, they admitted, it was an uphill struggle. Israelis committed to a political resolution of the conflict were heartbroken. Even Shimon Peres, foreign minister in Ariel Sharon's coalition, reportedly called the speech "a fatal mistake", warning: "A bloodbath can be expected."

The core of the president's message was that the Palestinians must embark on a sweeping process of internal reform before they can even think about getting back to the negotiating table. They must transform themselves into a democratic market economy, free of corruption and with a separate judiciary and legislature if they are to be considered eligible for statehood - which, when it comes, will be merely provisional.

Shall we count the ways in which this is completely absurd? George Bush is demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine: it must be stable, prosperous and boast constitutional arrangements which still elude Britain - our judiciary and legislature are not separate - let alone the Arab world before it can become even a state-in-waiting.

This would be laughable if Palestine were in tranquil Scandinavia. Even there it would count as putting the cart before the horse, asking a nation to create the institutions of a highly developed country before it becomes a state. But this, remember, is being demanded of the Palestinians - statebuilders with every possible obstacle in their way.

Like the fact that they are under military occupation. As the New York Times noted yesterday: "How the Palestinians can be expected to carry out elections or reform themselves while in a total lockdown by the Israeli military remains something of a mystery." Palestinian ministers complain they cannot visit a village 10 minutes away; they can pass laws but not implement them. They are Potemkin ministers, existing on paper only. Yet now they are to build the Switzerland of the Levant, where the streets are clean and government functions like clockwork. This is George in Wonderland stuff.

Monday's speech even had a touch of black comedy. The president said the new Palestine should be taught good governance, nominating the Arab states for the role. Imagine it! : democracy lessons from Saudi Arabia, a masterclass in liberty from Kuwait.

But that is not the president's greatest fantasy. Yasser Arafat must go, he says, though without naming him. It may be refreshing to hear a US president come clean in his conviction that he has the right to pick other nations' leaders, but this demand exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's thinking.

For who does he imagine might replace Arafat? Does he not realise that Palestinians are angry with their leader not because he has been insufficiently pro-American but because they see him as too moderate, too willing to do Israel's bidding. The Palestinian street is not clamouring for a man who will crack down harder on Islamist militants or sing a western song about free trade and local elections.

So if elections go ahead, here's what will happen. Either Palestinians will deliberately defy Washington and re-elect Arafat or they will choose someone more hardline. Any leader who has the Israeli or US stamp of approval will immediately be discredited as a puppet and promptly rejected.

Also, for all his flaws, Arafat has an asset none of his rivals can match. He is still, thanks to his long history, Mr Palestine: his signature on a compromise deal is the only one that could persuade his people to accept it. By rushing his exit now, Bush is depriving any future peace agreement of the only Palestinian who could deliver it.

So the president's speech shows a man unconnected to Middle Eastern reality. But it is worse than unhinged; it is dangerous. First, Bush has given a green light to Sharon to continue his policy of military force coupled with a refusal to freeze settlement building on the West Bank. Monday's wording implied that Sharon is only obliged to pull back from Palestinian cities or freeze settlements once the Palestinians have worked their way through the US wishlist! . So long as violence goes on, or Arafat remains in place, the Israeli PM can do what he likes.

Given that the president refused to specify what the final settlement might look like - delaying that and other questions to later talks - he has supplied Sharon with an incentive to get busy now, building settlements, putting up fences and carving new borders. If Bush had declared that the eventual Palestinian state would be on the other side of Israel's 1967 borders, there would be no point in Israel trying to redraw the map. But now Sharon has every motive to create his notorious "facts on the ground".

There is danger on the Palestinian side too. The only people celebrating yesterday were the Islamist extremists of Hamas and Jihad, chiding moderate Palestinians for ever believing that politics, rather than violence, might bring results. Bush has not dangled any serious carrot before the Palestinians: no promises on Jerusalem or refugees or final borders. Even Colin Powell's planned international conference seems to have vanished. All Palestinians will get if they comply with Washington's demands is a provisional state on 42% of the West Bank. Maybe. Few will consider that a prize worth the sacrifice of their own leader and a national transformation.

So this new plan of Bush's is a flight of errant, irresponsible fancy that can only fail, bringing more bloodshed and ruin to the peoples of the Middle East who are desperate for something better.

But it will reverberate far beyond. It will damage the international standing of the US president and America along with it. Muslim and Arab nations will be antagonised by this plan of inaction, while chancelleries from London to Moscow will realise they are dealing with a leader who pays no lip-service to them - or to basic reality.

This is a foreign policy failure for George Bush. If he were a Democrat, both the Washington press corps and Congress would already be racking it up alongside the unextinguished threat from al-Qaida and the continued freedom from captivity of Osama bin Laden. Those failures, and now the guarantee of further slaughter in the Middle East, should be prompting hard questions about Bush and his war on terror. America needs to snap out of its post-9/11 torpor of consensus and realise there is a leadership problem in the US - and his name is George Bush.

j.freedland@guardian.co.uk

Bush's Speech - A Vision of Permanent War
by
Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada,
June 25, 2002

George Bush's much-anticipated speech on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, weighed in at 1,867 words. By my count, more than one thousand words were devoted to criticizing and making demands of the Palestinians, while just 137 words dealt with what Israel should do. And if you look for any criticism at all of Israel, you will not find it. The few remaining words were taken up with cliches and platitudes.

The content of few statements can have been leaked in advance as much as this one, and yet Bush's pronouncement still managed to surprise by its sheer breathtaking unfairness and unwillingness to address a reality which is clearly perceived by the rest of the world.

The speech was so pro-Israeli that Jerusalem Post reporter David Horowitz told National Public Radio that the Sharon government may feel they could have written it themselves. Bush has entirely accepted the Israeli view that "terror" alone is what is fuelling the conflict, and defined all Israeli violence as self-defense.

As expected, it is up to the Palestinians to "reform" themselves before any demands, no matter how mild, are made of Israel. Bush declared: "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts."

Bush's apparent call on the Palestinians to get rid of Yasir Arafat immediately grabbed the headlines. But this call, just as Israel has re-re-re-invaded almost every Palestinian city, once more placed Arafat under house arrest and announced "massive action" imminently in the Gaza Strip, may actually serve as a green light to Sharon to kill or expel Arafat. Sharon whose popularity is flagging as he has failed to bring security through repression may now feel emboldened to make the move against Arafat that many in Israel are demanding. This would only increase the chaos and violence. On the other hand, now that Bush has openly identified Arafat as the obstacle to progress, Sharon may well do all he can to preserve Arafat in hale and vigorous health.

Arafat, demonstrating how incoherent and detached from reality he has become, reacted to Bush's speech by calling it a "serious contribution to the Middle East peace process." Such a declaration deserves at best pity for a man whose faculties are clearly failing him, but is more likely to generate among Palestinians only anger, derision and contempt.

Bush's message amounts to a demand that the Palestinians must under the totalistic conditions of military occupation develop all the institutions of a fully independent, democratic state and a fully functioning democracy. Yet, while demanding democracy from the Palestinians, Bush is not shy to tell them in advance whom they cannot have as their leaders.

What will be the Palestinians' reward for achieving this impossible task? Not independence, but according to Bush "the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East."

Hussein Ibish originally pointed out in The Los Angeles Times that "interim independence and partial sovereignty make as much sense politically as a woman being somewhat pregnant. Independence and sovereignty are either fully realized or meaningless." (June 20, 2002) Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Shaath has since repeated this analogy on CNN.

Bush complained that "Today, the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few." He observed--correctly--"The Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body." What he left out is that it was the Oslo Accords, signed with the full blessing of the United States that explicitly limited the powers of the Palestinian legislature and gave the Israeli military authorities the right to annul any law passed by it.

Bush worried that "Today, the Palestinian people lack effective courts of law and have no means to defend and vindicate their rights." Yet he failed to mention that the very worst abuses were carried out by the infamous "State Security Court" established with the full approval of the United States and blessed in person by then Vice President Al Gore when he visited Jericho in 1994. Since then the Palestinian security services have arrested people and violated their human rights not merely with the acquiescence of the United States, but with the active encouragement, training and supervision of the CIA. Palestinian courts have no jurisdiction at all over the Israeli settlers living on confiscated land, and so even reformed will not provide Palestinians with "means to defend and vindicate their rights." This is the difference between real independence and 'provisional' independence. And it is this lack of real means to defend their rights that leads many to conclude that the only means available is violence.

On the issue of violence, Bush made it very clear that only the Palestinians must renounce it. Israel was given a free hand to "continue to defend herself." Palestinians are required to stop "terror" immediately, but Bush only called on Israel to withdraw its forces to the positions held prior to September 28, 2000 and to stop settlement construction in the occupied territories, "as we make progress." This is essentially a license for Israel to carry on with aggressive violence unilaterally, since the settlement building enterprise is based solely on violence--the violent expropriation of Palestinian land, the violent demolition of Palestinian homes, and the violent suppression of any Palestinian who tries to get in the way of this relentless colonization--which Sharon has openly declared will continue until he can bring a million more Jews to settle all of "Judea and Samaria."

Forty years ago, Frantz Fanon explained that between the colonizer and the colonized native "it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression.... It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of the peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native." ("The Wretched of the Earth," chapter 1)

So it is now with the "clear conscience of the upholder of the peace" that Bush is effectively inviting Sharon to accelerate the settlement enterprise until there is "progress." Since the violence and despair that the settlements generate can only bring the opposite of progress towards security and peace, it is an open invitation.

When Bush speaks about Israeli "occupation"--it is merely a word, an abstraction. It is not a system of foreign military dictatorship over millions of people which is the very antithesis of every democratic value Bush claims to stand for and which invades every transaction of daily life. First and foremost he views it not as a condition affecting the Palestinians but as something that harms Israelis, because "permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy."

Bush clearly views the Palestinians as being the direct cause of Israeli suffering: " I can understand the deep anger and anguish of the Israeli people. You've lived too long with fear and funerals, having to avoid markets and public transportation, and forced to put armed guards in kindergarten classrooms. The Palestinian Authority has rejected your offer at hand, and trafficked with terrorists. You have a right to a normal life; you have a right to security; and I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security."

But as for the Palestinians--dispossessed of their country and freedom for fifty-four years--Israel has no culpability at all: "I can understand the deep anger and despair of the Palestinian people. For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict. Your interests have been held hostage to a comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come, as your lives get worse year by year."

That is all Bush has to say. It is as if the Palestinians, due to a bit of rotten luck, have caught a cold. Yet if one reads carefully, it seems that if anyone is responsible for the Palestinians plight it is those who have "treated them as pawns." This is usually a code word for other Arab states. Indeed, Bush places the Palestinians' relationship with Israel on the same plane as their relations with other Arabs, as if the two can be compared, as if Israel is just another one of many countries with which the Palestinians can't get along. Why then does Bush declare that after the Palestinians meet his impossible demands for a fully functioning democracy "they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence."? Later he affirms that the 'provisional' Palestinian state "could rise rapidly, as it comes to terms with Israel, Egypt and Jordan on practical issues, such as security." All of this is an effort to wipe away any of the unique historic responsibility Israel has for the conflict as well as being an effort to try to co-opt "moderate" Arab leaders to Bush's "vision."

Is there anything hopeful in this speech? I cannot find anything unless it is Bush's call--eventually--for an independent Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal. But there is nothing new even in this, and his latest statement does not even go as far as US Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech in Louisville, Kentucky last November or Bush's own Rose Garden declaration last April. The notions of true independence and a real end to the occupation are so thoroughly undermined by the conditions attached and the full backing given to an Israeli government that openly opposes these goals as to be utterly meaningless.

In the final analysis, Bush's speech having failed to offer the only thing that can at this point stop the spiral towards disaster--a clear timetable, guaranteed by the international community to end the Israeli occupation and return to political negotiations,--may only make things worse. Israel's far-right government will be emboldened that its patient strategy of pushing its aggression further step by step and weathering the periodic gusts of American and international criticism has paid off with a full US endorsement of its current policies. We can expect an acceleration of Israeli violence and settlement activity with predictably disastrous results. On the Palestinian side--among those who could distract themselves from the task of survival long enough to care what Bush has to say--his speech will only increase despair, and may bolster support for those who have argued that the international intervention Palestinians have been waiting and working for, for more than fifty years will never come, and only by continuing to take the fight directly to the Israelis can Palestinians free themselves.

The future for Palestinians and Israelis is as grim as it has ever been. What Bush has offered is not a formula for provisional or any other kind of Palestinian statehood, but a vision of permanent war.

From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <info@gush-shalom.org>
Subject: The speech: beautiful words bypassing ugly reality
25 Jun 2002

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Press release

Democratic reforms, a practicing democracy based on liberty and tolerance, an effective legislature, an independent judiciary, separation of powers, a new constitution - so many rosy items did the President of the United States set out for the Palestinians, in his long-awaited speech on the Middle East.

Somehow, throughout his speech George W. Bush managed to avoid any mention of the present situation in the same parcel of land where all these wonderful things are to materialize. No mention of the fact that all West Bank cities had been invaded by Israeli military forces; that hundreds of thousands of inhabitants are imprisoned in their homes by a strict curfew, and that civilians appearing on city streets risk having tanks shoot shells on them (while the speech was delivered in Washington, Israeli soldiers completed the takeover of Hebron, killing three Palestinian policemen in the process); that even before that conquest, the towns and villages where Bush would have a flourishing market economy set up are cut off from each other by checkpoints and closures and sieges, with inhaibitants replacing their cars with donkeys able to negotiate narrow mountain paths.

How are Palestinians to implement any kind of reforms under such circumctances? How are they to reform a Palestinian Authority which is being systematically chocked out of existence?

How could elections be held "before the end of the year" without a pullout of Israeli forces, and some assurance of their non- interference? And what would President Bush do if Palestinian voters, exercising their democractic right to choose, re-elect Yasser Arafat as their leader? Would that democratic choice be set aside in yet another military invasion? And even if "new Palestinian leaders" would get elected, pass Bush's careful scrutiny, and try to "fight terrorism" as the president so vocally demands, would they be assured of the basic conditions for doing so? Would their efforts not be continually thwarted by Sharon, as are those of the existing Palestinian leadership? In the Gaza Strip, the one parcel of land where the Palestinian Authority retains some measure of control and where it tried in the past few days to take some action against Hamas, Israeli forces yesterday committed the provocation of assassinating a major Hamas leader (together with five family members who happened to travel in a taxi with that leader, and who got killed by the same missile which killed him).

The root cause of terrorism and suicide bombing (or "homicide bombing" as the president insisted upon calling it) was hardly addressed at all: the situation of young Palestinians under an increasingly tight occupation, who see themselves oppressed and dispossessed, deprived of all hope and expectation for the future, abandoned by the world, and who reach the point where they decide to blow themselves up in order to kill random Israelis. No end to terrorism can be expected without offering some tangible hope to such people, to dry up the phenomenon of suicide bombing at the source.

President Bush's speech - making strident demands upon the weaker party to the conflict, and only vague polite requests upon the stronger side - contributes little to that cause. No wonder that Sharon expressed immense satisfaction with the speech - but the two peoples, locked in this terrible struggle, pay the price for the arrogance, short-sightedness and lack of resolve of the dweller in the White House.

Adam Keller
Gush Shalom spokesperson

From: "Jewish Peace News" <plitnickm@attbi.com>

Subject: Bush's Speech
24 Jun 2002 

Included below [actually, see Item #1--Bill] is the transcript, from CNN, of George Bush's speech regarding his "vision" of peace in the Middle East. Little can be found that is truly new in the speech, but there are key elements that can give us insight into the direction the Bush administration is heading, insofar as it has any coherent plan at all.

A running theme in the speech is the need for "new leadership" for the Palestinians. To be sure, as reported on JPN last week, this is far from a minority view. It is held not only in the United States and Israel, but also in Europe, other Arab states and in the Palestinian territories themselves (for more on this, see the Jewish Peace News commentary along with an op-ed by Edward Said at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JewishPeaceNews/message/1890 ). But, as Said pointed out, what each party means by reform is vastly different. In Bush's formulation, it means little more than full agreement with Ariel Sharon on his demand that Yasir Arafat be excluded from any future negotiations. This will inevitably have the effect of strengthening support for Arafat, for, after all, what people willingly accepts being told by any outside power whom they may choose for their leaders? Thus, Arafat's leadership, which has indeed been both inept and corrupt, is bolstered by Bush's words and demands. As one would expect, no mention is made of the position of the Sharon government, which, with its Labor Party quislings neatly in tow, has been remarkably consistent in making peace more difficult to achieve, in expanding settlements, in escalating violence in the region and in committing serious breaches of international law and human rights principles. Bush's use of the phrase "homicide bombers", a phrase popular among the Israeli right, is further indication of just how strongly he has bought into Sharon's program.

Equally telling is the position Syria occupies in the speech. On the heels of a report this weekend that Bush had indicated that he may go along with an Israeli attack on Syrian territory, Syria is clearly branded as a supporter of terrorism, while we continue to hear no mention of America's close ally, Saudi Arabia. While Bush calls for a peace between Lebanon and Israel, he calls for peace only between Israel and a different Syria, one which, in his words, "supports peace and fights terror". The threat is hardly even veiled. The juxtaposition of Syria with Iraq near the end of his speech (on the heels of reports that Bush had authorized the CIA to engage in activities to topple Saddam Hussein and increasing talk of another large-scale attack on Iraq, as well as a recent bombing raid in Iraq, generally unreported as most such actions have been for years, which killed 4), further accentuate the menace in these words, and raises even more strongly the possibility of a wider regional conflict.

Bush occasionally speaks of occupation in his speech, yet it always is couched in dissociative words, as if the occupation is some abstract phenomenon that harms the Palestinian people. Conversely, "Palestinian terror" is explicitly named. One side causes the other to suffer, while, in the kindest interpretation, the suffering of Palestinians comes from almost natural dynamics. In a less kind interpretation, we are likely meant to believe that the situation the Palestinians find themselves in is of their own making. Bush says "Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption." No mention is made of the occupation in this context, nor is Israel mentioned at all. We are thus given to understand that this economic stagnation simply happened. It was not planned or nurtured by Israel. The destruction of what infrastructure, both physical and political, Palestinians had in the last Israeli raids is not even noticed in Washington.

Indeed, it is crucial for Palestinians to have a better leadership. But such leadership cannot, must not, come through the direction or discretion of the United States or Israel. There can be little doubt that one objective of this speech was to undermine and co-opt the very real drive among Palestinians for reform of their polity. The recent statement by hundreds of Palestinian leaders calling for an end to attacks on Israeli civilians has no place in Bush's speech or his views. Here we have the very branch we need to work with Palestinians to stop these heinous attacks. The statement is as thoroughly ignored in the US State Department as it is in the halls of the Knesset.

Bush said nothing to offer the Palestinian people any hope of improvement in their situation. All they will hear are his hollow calls on them as to what they should do. This is balanced only by a call on Israel to stop expanding its settlement of the West Bank. Between what is mostly tin-pan clichés and empty rhetoric, there is nothing here for Palestinians to try to work with. How would one think this speech would appear to a Palestinian in Ramallah? Can it be seen as anything other than a reinforcement of American support for the Sharon government? And can we, as supporters of a just peace for Palestinians as well as Israelis, see this as anything other than yet another setback to that cause?

From: ewdurst@yahoo.com Sent from the Internet (Details)

An Israeli Officer's Response To President Bush
by
Shamai Leibowitz
June 27, 2002

I am an Orthodox Jew and a criminal defense attorney in Tel Aviv. I am also a tank gunner in reserve duty, and part of a group of 1000 soldiers who have refused to serve in the occupied territories. Many of them were imprisoned in military jails in the past few months.

Now that President Bush has enlightened us with his new "Plan" for the Middle East, we can only wonder how long it will take him to realize that his plan is useless and meaningless. Although his speech was riddled ith rosy descriptions he envisions for the utopian Palestinian State in the far future, George W. Bush managed to avoid any mention of the present situation in the same parcel of land where all these wonderful things are to materialize. No mention of the fact that all West Bank cities had been invaded by Israeli military forces; that hundreds of thousands of inhabitants are imprisoned in their homes by a strict curfew, and that civilians appearing on city streets are being shot at like dogs by Israeli tanks and Apache helicopters.

His failure to understand that no progress can be made while a whole nation is being brutally occupied is the basic flaw in his policy, and serves as the best explanation why his Middle East plans have consistently become colossal failures. Bush's delusional thinking that he can change the Palestinian leadership by delivering a speech is mind-boggling. The American President thinks he can just do away with any leader in the world he dislikes. This kind of thinking is going to cost us a lot of bloodshed. It is only a matter of time until Bush's "new outline" will turn to ashes as the flames in this region reach higher and higher. Instead of offering a glimmer of hope, his plans resemble the famous Biblical burning bush , i.e. more of the same (see Exodus 3;2). This means more Israeli occupation, which will result in more terror and more fatalities.

Clearly, the terror attacks are abhorrent. They have no justification in any sane polity. However, no amount of condemnation will stop them. Bush fails to comprehend that the suicide bombings are a product of mass starvation and humiliation of the Palestinian people. Bush's aides are doing us so much harm by refusing to acknowledge that only an immediate end to the Israeli occupation will bring an immediate end to the Palestinian uprising.

We are now witnessing a situation in which 3.5 million people have no future, no hope, no vision, other than to become terrorists and avenge the continued harassment and shelling by the Israeli army's helicopters, tanks and artillery. While Bush has never set foot in this region, we have been living here, watching how the Palestinians were trampled and denied basic rights on a daily basis, besieged and occupied in every possible way. Our Jewish sources teach us that where there is no justice, there is no peace. The idea behind the Oslo accords, namely that we could "negotiate" a peace agreement while remaining the Occupying Power, has proven to be romantic nonsense. Can you expect a rape victim to negotiate with her attacker? Can you expect a slave to negotiate with his master a "contract of freedom"?

Most Israelis know deep in their hearts that once we stop humiliating and oppressing this nation, we will return to become a safe and secure democratic Israel living next to a viable Palestinian State. Most intelligent people in the world understand that the Palestinians had a right to a state of their own many years ago. And there should have been an Israeli-Palestinian border marking the two completely separate sovereign states. There is only one institution in the world that is blind to this: the Israeli government.

This means it is up to us, Israeli soldiers, to defend ourselves. Defend ourselves from our government. And this can only be done through refusal to participate in the occupation. It is our opinion that an Israeli soldier refusing to dominate and starve millions of Palestinians is defending his state in the best possible way. The reason is simple: If enough soldiers refuse, we will eventually force our government to relinquish its death-grip over the West Bank and Gaza. And this will save thousands of lives.

In a famous Jewish quote found in the Talmud, it is said: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" After Bush showed us how warped his understanding of reality is, he's left it to ourselves to save our nation from complete demise. We will push Bush aside, and do the job ourselves. We, the refusal movement, will continue to grow until thousands of Israeli soldiers announce enough is enough . Then, hopefully, this land which has been battleground for so many years will become a place of refuge, vision and hope for all its inhabitants

The following two articles actually appeared four and five days respectively before Bush's speech. It seems obvious he either didn't read the first article or failed to take any of its' points into consideration. A mistake, especially in light of the fact that its' author, Uri Avnery, is a former member of the Israeli Knesset.

Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 19:57:29 -0400
From: Alan Haber <megiddo@umich.edu>

Uri Avnery
22.6.02
Reform Now!

To: the President.
From: the National Security Advisor.
Top Secret.

I hereby submit to you, Mr. President, the report of the secret task force for reforming Israel, parallel to the task force working on the reform of the Palestinian Authority.

The faults of the Israeli system are known to all: an autocratic one-man rule by a leader surrounded by cronies and yes-men, a leader who is a chronic liar whose every word is untrustworthy, corruption that penetrates every echelon of government, democratic institutions which serve only as window-dressing, the lack of a constitution, the absence of a real opposition, a multi-party system that is just a pretense, media that are fully mobilized in the service of the government. This system is unable to move towards peace. Since you, Mr. President, have determined that peace is in the basic national interest of the United States, we must use our power in order to bring about a thorough reform.

Following are some of the findings of the task force:

One-man rule: In theory, Israel is governed by a democratic leadership with decentralized authorities and a system of checks and balances. In fact, the situation is quite different. By a sophisticated labyrinth of make-belief institutions ­ government, cabinet, inner cabinet, "kitchen" "kitchenette" ­ a situation has been created that allows Mr. Sharon to decide and execute anything he wants.

In practice, Mr. Sharon acts through a small group of family members and cronies who have been devoted to him for decades, but who have never been elected. (Conspicuous among them is his son Omri and Messrs. Weisglas and Genger.) Members of the official cabinet have no influence whatsoever. Messrs. Peres and Ben-Eliezer, for example, serve only as rubber-stamps.

Corruption: The existing Israeli system is based on general, systematic and institutionalized corruption.

Large chunks of the national budget are transferred ­ both openly and secretly ­ as bribes to religious and other parties who keep him in power, and parts of these go into the pockets of their functionaries. These huge sums are stolen from the general public at a time of growing unemployment and lack of funds for the infrastructure, when there is even no money to assure a decent living to invalids, the elderly, the unemployed and to handicapped children, decent hospitalization for the sick, not to mention decent living conditions for prisoners, who are kept in barbarous conditions.

Election campaigns are tainted by general corruption. Leading candidates receive secretly and illegally huge amounts of money from local and foreign interest groups, which expect, of course, to be repaid many times over once their candidate comes to power. Every campaign is followed by a long train of criminal indictments, which are but the tip of the iceberg.

The Prime Minister himself, who is the owner of the biggest private farm in Israel, is involved in directing agricultural policy, including the price of water and the regulation of agricultural imports, Much as in the Palestinian Authority, almost all the leading positions in the government and private services and corporations are handed out to cronies of the Prime Minister and members of the central committee (numbering thousands) of the governing party, most of them without elementary qualifications and talent. All the previous governments did the same. Every ministry is, of course, staffed and stuffed with cronies of the minister, and so are local authorities etc. In this way, a huge parasitical apparatus has been created at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.

In addition, taxpayers have to carry the burden of a large sector of people called "Haredim" (God-fearing) who do not work or pay taxes (nor do they serve in the army, thereby increasing the compulsory service and reserve duties of all the others.) Many settlers are also flourishing at the expense of the general public.

The gap between rich and poor in Israel is bigger than in any Western country, a fact that turns Israel into a Third World country.

Mendacity: Mr. Sharon is a certified liar. Already at the beginning of Mr. Sharon’s career, the then Prime Minister, Mr. Ben-Gurion, defined him as a habitual liar. On January 29, 1960, Mr. Ben-Gurion wrote about him in his diary: "If he would wean himself from the habit of not speaking the truth…he would be an exemplary military leader." Two years earlier, when Mr. Sharon was promoted to the rank of Colonel, Mr. Ben-Gurion asked him: "Have you stopped saying the untruth?" The mendacity is not a personal trait of Mr. Sharon only, but a method deeply imbedded in the Israeli leadership. A predecessor of Mr. Sharon, former Prime Minister Shamir, has publicly declared that lying for the state is a virtue.

One could cite innumerable instances of this official trait. Mr. Sharon’s immediate predecessor, Mr. Barak, for example, has spread a mendacious account of the Camp Davis summit conference (Summer 2000), in order to put the blame for the failure on Mr. Arafat. Since then, all the Israeli media repeat this legend daily, in spite of the fact that most leading commentators know the truth.

The same goes for the Oslo agreements. The Israeli leadership, with the help of the media, hides the fact that most of the violations have come from the Israeli side (they did not implement the third troops’ deployment, did not open the four agreed "safe passages" between Gaza and the West Bank, they have embezzled the tax and customs money collected for the Palestinian Authority, refused to negotiate in good faith about Jerusalem, settlements and refugees, as stipulated in the agreements, etc.)

It will be remembered that even Mr. Rabin announced that "there are no sacred dates", thereby relieving himself of the duty to fulfil any obligation at the agreed time.

It should be mentioned that at the time when the Israeli government has pretended to stop settlement activity, this activity is in fact continuing at a frantic pace, as discovered by our satellites.

This, Mr. President, is a summary of the report. The task force proposes suspending our economic and military aid to Israel until a thorough reform has been undertaken, and to appoint a team of monitors to oversee the results. Israel, like the Palestinians, should also be forced to adopt a Constitution.

Yours respectfully,
The Advisor.

Fatal vision: how Bush has given up on peace
by
Robert Fisk
A vacillating President and lack of a credible plan is fuelling hatred in the Middle East
23 June 2002

George Bush Junior gave up last week. After all the blustering and grovelling and the disobeyed instructions to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and all the hectoring of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and all the "visions" of a Palestinian state, the President threw in his hand. There will be no Middle East peace conference in the near future, no serious attempt to halt the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, not a whimper of resolution on the region's tragedy from the man who started the "war for civilisation'', the "war on terror'', the "endless war'' and, most recently, the "titanic war on terror''. Mr Bush, his ever more incomprehensible spokesman Ari Fleischer vouchsafed to us last week, "has come to some conclusions". And – this really took the biscuit – "when the President determines the time is right, he will share it".

I love the idea of this increasingly incompetent strategist on Middle East affairs quietly weighing, like Frederick the Great, the odds on the rights of three million Palestinian refugees to return, the future of Jerusalem, and the continued growth of settlements for Jews on occupied land – only to decide that these weighty matters of state must be withheld from his loyal people. After lecturing the pompous and pathetic Arafat on his duties to protect Israel it only took an Israeli shell fired into a crowded Palestinian market – another of those famous Israeli "errors" – to shut Bush up again. Just a week ago, as we all know, Mr Bush had another of his famous "visions". They started in the autumn of last year when he had a vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

This particular vision coincided quite by chance, of course, with his efforts to keep the Arab states quiescent while America bombed the poorest and most ruined Muslim country in the world. Then this dream was forgotten for a few months until, earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to drum up Arab support for another war on Iraq. The Arabs tried to tell Cheney that there was already a rather dramatic little war going on in the region. And what happened? George Bush suddenly had his vision thing again.

Now, however, after six visits to the United States by Ariel Sharon – and after Bush was totally ignored by the Israelis when he demanded an immediate end to the West Bank invasion and an end to the siege of Palestinian towns – the President has had yet another vision, a rather scaled-down version of the earlier one. Now he dreams of an interim Palestinian state. It is a sign of how obedient American journalists have become that not one US newspaper has seen this for the preposterous notion it really is. The great American newspapers – I'm talking about their physical bulk not their contents – tiresomely pontificate on the divisions within the American administration on the Middle East. Or they ask whether there's a Middle East policy at all: there is not, of course. But the ideas of this US administration, however vacuous or simply laughable, continue to be treated with an almost sacred quality in the American press and on television.

What on earth, for example, does interim mean? I noticed that in the past four days, interim has turned into provisional, an even more miserable version of the original vision. It reminds me of Madeleine Albright's truly wonderful proposal that the Palestinians should be happy because they might get "a sort of sovereignty" over some areas of Arab east Jerusalem.

But what does interim portend? Talal Salman, the editor of the Beirut daily As Safir, wrote in his newspaper last week that interim envisages "a provisional state on territory segmented like beehives'', with every town, village and refugee camp cut off by "a wall of tanks and permanent and moving checkpoints; with everything under helicopter surveillance ... with death squads monitoring intentions and dreams, targeting anyone they discover, determine, speculate or suspect may have explosive materials in their blood".

A provisional state is an innovation no one has ever heard of before. It's a state unrelated to its land or to its people. All other states are permanent. But the Palestinian state will be a stop-gap, according to President Bush, and thus its role or existence can be ended in a day or a year if its usefulness comes to an end. It does not need to find territory – after all, it is only interim – and permanent institutions such as an army (perish the thought), the luxury of independence, or sovereignty, or an economy, or foreign relations will be denied. This will be Israel's luxury.

And in the absence of leadership from President Bush, Ariel Sharon can do what he wishes. He can dig ditches and lay down so much barbed wire that a map of the West Bank will portray a land covered in blisters; a smallpox of settlements and surrounded villages. Crazy ideas blow through Washington. Israelis can discuss in all seriousness the eviction of the entire Palestinian population. Now Nathan Lewin, a prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader, is calling for the execution of family members of suicide bombers.

His exact words are as follows: "If executing some suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically permissible. It is a policy born of necessity.'' Forgetting for a moment the logic of this rubbish – if the suicide bomber has already killed himself, knocking off granny and the kids is not going to have much effect – it raises some intriguing questions. Who should be the first to die in the family of suicide bombers? If the bomber has three children, how many of them do you kill? The youngest or the oldest? Or the whole lot? Is there a minimum age for execution? Is five years old enough to be put before an Israeli execution squad? It would certainly be hard, even for Mr Lewin, to explain to a three-month-old baby why it had to be put to death. Or would it be only men? Or just wives and older sisters?

Merely by asking these questions, it is possible to demonstrate the obscene depths to which this terrible war has sunk. To their great credit, prominent members of the American Jewish community have condemned Lewin's fantasies. And it is necessary to reflect that the Palestinian suicide bombers don't even ask these questions. For the suicide bombers are executioners, the executioners of whole Israeli families. The immolation of their own lives does not excuse the fact that, in their last moments, they are able to see the Israeli child in the pram who will die with its mother, the Israeli family eating its pizzas on a hot Wednesday afternoon, the old folk celebrating a Jewish religious festival who will be his or her victims. The 17-year-old Palestinian girl who blew herself up to kill a 16-year-old Israeli girl remains an awesome symbol of youth destroying youth.

And amid these horrors, what do we get from Mr Bush? Delay. Obfuscation. A vague plan – revealed as usual to the pliant New York Times – suggested that the Bush boys and girls were going to ignore the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees, dump the "final status" issues of Jerusalem and settlements on the Israelis and Palestinians and – by far the most hilarious clause – would "find new language" to bridge Israel's and Palestine's interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242. This is the all-important resolution, of course, which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 war in return for the security of all states in the area. The Israelis claim that they can keep what land they want because the resolution does not place the word "the" before the word "territories" – even though the same UN resolution specifically says that land cannot be acquired through military conquest.

It is somehow fitting as the Israeli-Palestinian war turns incandescent that this weak and vacillating President should consume his time with a debate on the meaning of the definite article. Should "the" read "some"? Should Palestine be provisional? Or should Mr Bush be just an interim President?

From: Sam Bahour <sbahour@palnet.com>

The BUSHARON Global War
by
Lev Grinberg
7 Jul 2002

President George Bush's speech intensified the plight of the peace supporters in Israel, and in the entire Middle East. Since 1977, they were accustomed to American presidents playing the role of "fair mediators": pressuring Israel to restrain violence and to negotiate with its neighbors. Jimmy Carter mediated between Begin and Saadat, Ronald Reagan brought Israel and the PLO to a first ceasefire pact in 1981, and stopped Sharon before occupying Beirut in 1982. George Bush Senior coerced Shamir to the Madrid Peace Conference after the Gulf War, and Bill Clinton was best man to Rabin and Arafat. Then, and all of a sudden, comes a president that doesn't mediate and unilaterally supports Sharon. This is not only confusing to the Israeli "peace camp," but places the Palestinian leadership in an awkward position, and the rest of the Arab states as well. In March the Arab League accepted a brave peace plan, initiated by Saudi Arabia, and now the President Bush dismissed it off hand.

George Bush did not present a peace plan, but instead, in the subtext, we can understand who are his allies in his war plans. During the last half a year Bush stands at Sharon's side and spurs him onwards on his aggressive policies. The obvious question is: Why did Bush quit playing the "fair mediator" between Israel and its neighbors? The explanation I suggest here is very simple: Bush is planning to launch an attack on Iraq, and in recent months he has come to the conclusion that, for the purpose of this war Sharon is a more reliable and worthwhile ally than the moderate Arab states. Bush doesn't care too much about peace between Israel and Palestine, nor is he all that bothered by the millions of Palestinians living under curfew in intolerable and inhuman conditions, and neither is he really concerned about the Israeli casualties caused by the despaired suicide bombers. "Let them bleed" was the Bush administration's motto early on in its reign, until it became politically incorrect on 9/11. And yet, as long as the Bush administration continues in its plans to attack Iraq, we, Palestinians and Israelis, will continue to bleed.

What makes so clear that Bush is mainly concerned by his plans of war? It is a matter of timing. In his speech Bush suggests the establishment of a Palestinian state within three years, focusing in the meantime on replacing Arafat and installing a new democratic, uncorrupted, transparent and efficient Palestinian administration during the coming year and a half. This means the Palestinian state will be established only AFTER the war against Iraq, if at all. Bush wants a strong and deterring Israel during the attack on Iraq, first of all because Sadam Hussein might bomb Tel-Aviv, as he did in 1991, and then Sharon will surely join the war. Second, because the "US's enemies" throughout the Arab world might awaken during such a war. Israel's job would then be to deter, and eventually fight, the US's enemies within its "area of influence": the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

How did this full understanding between Bush and Sharon crystallize? It developed smoothly since 9/11. Immediately after the attack on the Twin Towers Sharon tried to get on the "War-On- Terrorism" wagon, declaring that "Arafat is our Bin Laden." This position was firmly rejected by the US administration, mainly because they were planning an attack on Afghanistan, and did not want to endanger the expected cooperation with the pro-American Arab states. However, during the war in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was disappointed with the positions of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After the end of the war and the demolition of the Taliban's regime, Sharon was invited to Washington "to coordinate the next moves in the war against terror", this time against Iraq. In his meeting with President Bush on December 3rd Sharon received a "green light" to attack Arafat. On December 4th, Arafat's helicopters were bombed, and he was placed on a "city arrest" in Ramalla for five months. Even when Arafat declared a ceasefire on December 16th, the US ignored it, and when Israel breached the ceasefire by assassinating Raad Carmi on January 14th (to avoid the upcoming political negotiations), Bush continued to support Sharon. Since December 3rd the President of the USA has defined Israel's actions against the Palestinians as "self defense," while Arafat is always found guilty. Sharon has systematically undermined Arafat's authority in the eyes of the Palestinians, disbanded the forces that were loyal to his command, destroyed their infrastructure, and even sabotaged the Palestinian Authority's computers. When the UN Security Council decided to send an inquiry committee to investigate war crimes committed in Jenin in April 2002, the US administration collaborated with Israeli Government in preventing the committee to enter Israel. In the present conditions, under military occupation and without international protection, it is hard to imagine how can the Palestinians establish democratic and efficient institutions.

The Bush Administration adopted and augmented Sharon's big lie that Arafat is the problem (not the 35-year Israeli occupation), and that a Palestinian State would be established later on (when, where and how remain constantly deferred questions). Bush decided to back Sharon's strategy due to his own political interests. His political axiom is that the US must attack Iraq, and the question was whether he wanted a weakened Sharon in confrontation with the US, or a strong Sharon on US's side. Bush's speech indicated that the administration has decided in favor of full coordination with Sharon. Bush has understood that a thorough solution of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict requires two elements: time, and confrontation with the Israeli government. Since Bush is neither willing to postpone the offensive on Iraq for three years, nor is he interested in confronting Israel before the war, Sharon has become an ally. Sharon knows that "all is open" in war. He is deeply satisfied with Bush's "Middle East Plan", that practically means a global war managed by the BUSHARON team, in which Bush will play the role of the global sheriff, imposing a new order in the Islamic States. Sharon has been nominated as the "regional sheriff", and he will be allowed to impose a new order in his "area of influence".

Indeed, it is hard to believe that these are the plans of the "leader of the globe", but Bush behavior doesn't leave too much room for doubts. He is leading with Sharon to a global war that, according to our experience with Sharon in Israel, is expected to be disastrous. We also know that in times of war the civil society, democracy and freedom of opinion are marginalized, so it is about time to start criticizing the expected war, before it starts. Neglecting harsh realities has never been helpful.

Dr. Lev Grinberg is a political analyst, senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, Israel

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