[Peace-discuss] overview

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Interesting analysis from a Lebanese daily.  This and the last piece I
sent around, and much else besides, can be found thru the website
"Electronic Intifada."  --CGE]


Sharon, Bush and the race for 'Greater Israel'

By Patrick Seale

The Daily Star
17 October 2003

http://dailystar.com.lb/opinion/17_10_03_d.asp

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his friends in Washington are in a
hurry. They are racing to achieve their objectives before anyone stops
them. And when they are in a hurry, they are particularly dangerous. Syria
and Iran are in their sights, with further down the road Saudi Arabia, and
even Egypt. Political and economic pressure, financial penalties,
sanctions, intervention, regime change by military force, these are their
chosen instruments for bending the Arabs to the will of Israel and its
United States patron.

Sharon's main objective is the building of a "Greater Israel" on the ruins
of Palestinian nationalism. His latest instrument is the wall or
separation barrier which is imprisoning the Palestinians on a fraction of
their territory, cutting them off on all sides from contact with their
Arab neighbors. The wall is due to be finished in eight months' time.
Sharon is determined that nothing must prevent its completion.

At the UN Security Council this week, he won a major victory when the
United States vetoed a resolution, proposed by Syria, condemning the wall.
Within hours, a radical Palestinian group attacked the motorcade of an
American delegation in Gaza, killing three Americans and wounding a
fourth. Sharon will no doubt exploit this latest incident to rally
American opinion against the beleaguered Palestinian president, Yasser
Arafat.

Sharon's main worry, however, and the reason for his haste, is that George
W. Bush could be thrown out of office at next year's US presidential
election -- and with him the whole band of pro-Israeli neoconservatives
which have set the administration's agenda since Sept. 11, 2001. These are
the men who pressed for war against Iraq as a first step toward reshaping
the geopolitics of the entire Middle East. But the sluggish US economy,
the mess in Iraq, and the anti-American anger sweeping the Arab and Muslim
world are now making Bush look vulnerable. A Democrat in the White House
may not be so tolerant of Israel's foolhardy ambitions or so ready to
endorse the neocons' aggressive policies. Sharon has other worries closer
to home. The political fallout from the current police investigations of
his two sons, Omri and Gilad, for alleged sharp practice and bribe-taking
could drive Sharon himself from office in 2004. And to compound his fears,
the Israeli left which for the past two years has seemed terminally ill
and politically irrelevant is showing faint signs of revival. Leading
opposition figures such as Yossi Beilin, Amram Mitzna and Avraham Burg
have joined with Palestinian moderates, led by Yasser Abed Rabbo, in
drafting a detailed peace plan for a two-state solution -- the so-called
Geneva Accords. The plan, the result of two years of secret negotiations
funded by the Swiss government, is due to be signed formally in Geneva
next month, putting flesh on the bones of the tentative agreements reached
at Taba in January 2001.

It represents everything that Sharon and his friends detest and which he
has spent his life seeking to destroy. It provides for an Israeli
withdrawal to the 1967 borders (with some marginal modifications) to allow
for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state; some major settlements
close to the Green Line to be annexed to Israel but those deep inside
Palestinian territory to be evacuated; Jerusalem as a shared capital;
Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount); Israeli
sovereignty over the Wailing Wall and the Jewish quarter of the Old City;
and -- a major Palestinian concession -- the abandonment of the "right of
return" to towns and villages lost in 1948. An international force would
monitor implementation of the plan while radical Palestinian groups would
be tamed and shut down.

These Geneva Accords may, in the present climate, seem hopelessly utopian.
They have no chance whatsoever of being implemented while the Sharon
government, or anything resembling it, is in power. Their potential
importance, however, lies in offering the Israeli public what it lacks and
longs for most -- hope that the nightmare of killing and counter-killing
can be brought to an end. In other words, a change in Washington, and a
move back to the center by an Israeli public won over by a credible peace
plan, could yet pose a threat to Sharon's ambitions.

He has reacted to the Geneva Accords with barely suppressed rage. "By what
right," he snorted, "are left-wing people proposing moves that Israel can
never do, nor will ever do!"

Sharon has always wanted one 100 percent of Palestine, an ambition which
would have involved expelling most, if not all, of the Palestinian
population of the West Bank to Jordan, which would then have become a
Palestinian state. As the obstacles to such a project are formidable,
Sharon has opted for something a shade more modest: the seizure of about
90 percent of historic Palestine, confining the Palestinians to some 10
percent of the overall territory behind the notorious wall. No doubt he
calculates that, once the wall is finished, it will in due course come to
be accepted by the international community, and by the Palestinians
themselves, as defining Israel's borders.

Hence, his determination, and that of his American supporters, to move
ahead with all possible speed while the regional and international
environment is in their favor.

Sharon's major asset is President Bush himself. Backing off from
engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Bush administration appears
to have decided to leave Israel to manage the Palestine problem on its own
terms. So much is clear from its veto of UN Resolutions condemning the
wall and Sharon's recent strike inside Syrian territory, from its silence
over continued settlement expansion and from its failure to react to
Israel's massive destruction of Palestinian property at Rafah, on Gaza's
border with Egypt, which this week left 1,500 Palestinians homeless.

As he nervously prepares for his election campaign, his ratings slipping
in the polls, Bush's collapse before Sharon must be judged one of the
blackest pages in recent American history. It has provoked incredulity in
Europe and, more ominously, bitter hatred of the United States in Muslim
communities around the world.

Yet, Sharon has much cause for satisfaction: While Israel faces no
strategic threat, its enemies tremble. A shattered Iraq is under American
occupation; Iran, facing great international pressure over its alleged
nuclear weapons program, is wracked by internal conflicts between
conservatives and reformers; the Arab Gulf, seemingly indifferent and
content, lies under America's military umbrella; Egypt, neutralized by its
peace treaty with Israel and by America's annual subsidy, hardly dares
open its mouth in defense of the Palestinians; while Syria faces harsh and
threatening pressure on all sides -- from Washington, now preparing to
vote into law the economic and diplomatic boycotts enshrined in the Syria
Accountability Act; and from Israel, which last week sent its planes to
strike at Syria and seems ready to do so again.

Sharon still thinks he can bludgeon the Palestinians into submission. The
attack on the Palestinian camp near Damascus, together with Israel's
repeated incursions at Rafah, are clearly intended as warnings to Syria
and Egypt to halt all support for the Palestinians -- or face the
consequences. But Sharon has not yet found an answer to the suicide
bombers who have traumatized the Israel public, ruined the economy, killed
the tourist trade and cut off foreign investment. They are a profound
embarrassment to Sharon, but he may think it a price worth paying. His
priority is land, not security. That, he believes, will follow once the
wall is built and the Palestinians surrender.

Patrick Seale, veteran journalist and commentator, writes a reguar
commentary in THE DAILY STAR

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