Henry Siegman. Al-Hayat. 30/07/07. To read President Bush's speech of July 16 in which he sought to inject new life into the Middle East peace process is to understand why his policies in Iraq have been such an unmitigated catastrophe. In the Israel-Palestine conflict as in Iraq, he is completely out of touch with the most fundamental realities on the ground.
President Bush: "In Gaza, Hamas radicals betrayed the Palestinian people with a lawless and violent takeover."
The facts: The Palestinian people were betrayed not by Hamas, whom they elected to run their government in the first truly democratic elections in the Arab world, but by Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who, with a typically colonial mindset, planned to overthrow the Palestinian people's democratic choice by financing and arming Fatah, the party that lost the elections.
President Bush: "Hamas has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is more devoted to extremism and murder than to serving the Palestinian people."
The facts: The Palestinian people elected Hamas, overwhelmingly, because the organization "demonstrated beyond all doubt" its devotion to the Palestinian people through a network of social institutions - educational, medical and economic - which the dominant Fatah party was unable to match. Indeed, the Palestinian public was convinced that a corrupt Fatah leadership was simply using the peace process to enrich itself.
The savageries committed by Hamas merit unqualified condemnation. What they do not merit are the hypocrisies of Bush and Olmert. Did Bush and Olmert imagine that Mohammed Dahlan and the militias under his control, whom the U.S. and Israel were training and arming, would have treated Hamas militants any more gently than Hamas treated Dahlan's people had they succeeded in mounting their putsch?
President Bush: "We are strengthening our political and diplomatic commitments. Again today, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert sat down together to discuss priorities and resolve issues…[Secretary Rice] has worked with both sides to sketch out a 'political horizon' for a Palestinian state."
The facts: Olmert has rejected every effort by Secretary Rice to get him to discuss with Abbas any of the elements that might define a political horizon - i.e. borders, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees. Bush has consistently failed to back up Rice's efforts. In his speech, he suggested to Olmert that he finally define Israel's position regarding borders. The very next day, Olmert's spokesperson publicly told Bush, in effect, don't even think about it.
President Bush: "The Palestinian government must arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure and confiscate illegal weapons - as the road map requires."
The facts: The road map also requires that Israel not only halt the expansion of settlements but dismantle them. Furthermore, it explicitly obliges each side to implement its obligations, within each of the three phases of the process that it established, without regard to the pace of implementation of the other. Thus, Palestinians cannot delay measures to end violence until Israel stops settlement-building, and Israel cannot delay ending the expansion of settlements by demanding that Palestinians first complete their efforts to end all violence. While Bush and Israel have advocated and imposed draconian sanctions for Palestinian violations, they have failed to do the same for Israeli violations. Bush has also prevented Security Council attempts to deal with the parties in a more balanced way.
President Bush: "[By supporting Hamas], the Palestinian people would surrender their future to Hamas' foreign sponsors in Syria and Iran."
The facts: Hamas is not a natural ally of either Iran or Syria; Iran is Shiite and Syria advocates a secular Arab nationalism that is anathema to Islamists. Bashar Assad's father slaughtered thousands of members of the Islamic Brotherhood in the city of Hama for their opposition to his government. Hamas has never expressed support for violence directed against U.S. and Western interests by Iran and Syria, or Al Qaeda for that matter. Hamas has turned to Iran and Syria for financial support in reaction to Israel and Bush's efforts to strangle it.
The one potentially hopeful element in Bush's speech was his statement that negotiations must lead to a "territorial settlement with mutually agreed borders reflecting previous lines and current realities, and mutually agreed adjustments." Optimists read this passage as U.S. endorsement of the principle enshrined in previous resolutions and in the road map that no territorial changes can be made unilaterally by Israel without Palestinian agreement. Unfortunately, while Bush is painfully precise when it comes to spelling out conditions that Palestinians must meet to get their state, he remains painfully imprecise when dealing with Israel's obligation to return to the pre-1967 border.
The distortions and misinformation in the president's speech aside, this latest initiative has no chance of advancing the peace process. For all of his gestures to Abbas, Olmert has not the slightest intention of getting "trapped" in a peace process that might oblige Israel to dismantle a significant part of its settlement enterprise. As in the past, he will not find himself at a loss for pretexts to postpone the beginning of negotiations.
More importantly, there is not the slightest chance that a peace process from which Hamas is excluded will get anywhere.
President Bush's proposal for an international conference in the fall has all the earmarks of a last minute, half-baked idea that no one at the White House or the Department of State thought through. Clearly, none of the "neighbors" Bush plans to invite to this conference were consulted in advance. And if, as Bush said, only those who recognize Israel's right to exist and accept all previous agreements will be invited, then not only most of Israel's neighbors but Israel itself would not qualify. Having exhorted Israel in his speech - however gently - for the umpteenth time to stop expanding settlements and to dismantle "illegal" outposts, Bush should know that Israel is in flagrant violation of virtually all previous agreements and UN resolutions.
If, as Bush apparently expects, his speech will in fact define Tony Blair's mandate as the Quartet's emissary, the former prime minister would be well advised to stay home.
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