[Peace-discuss] Shlaim slimes Rice & Sharon: Beyond Chutzpah

[David Green]

Comment: Withdrawal is a prelude to annexations:
hypocrisy is not new but Condi Rice has taken it
beyond chutzpah

Avi Shlaim Wednesday June 22, 2005

Guardian

Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to
destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza
as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a
fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous US
secretaries of state of the postwar era. American
foreign policy has habitually displayed double
standards towards the Middle East: one standard
towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just
one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad
in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single
Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38
years. 

The two main items on America's current agenda for the
region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of
the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however,
insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not
for its friends. As for the peace process, it is
essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America
try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American
hypocrisy is nothing new. But with Dr Rice it has gone
beyond chutzpah. With Ariel Sharon, by contrast, what
you see is what you get. He has always been in the
destruction business, not the construction business.
As minister of defense in 1982, Sharon preferred to
destroy the settlement town of Yamit insignia rather
than hand it to Egypt as a reward for signing a peace
treaty with Israel. 

George Bush once described his friend Sharon as "a man
of peace". In truth, Sharon is a brutal thug and
land-grabber. Sharon is also the unilateralist par
excellence. The road map issued by the quartet (US,
UN, EU and Russia) in the aftermath of the Iraq war
envisaged three stages leading to the establishment of
an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by
the end of 2005. Sharon wrecked the road map, notably
by continuing to expand Jewish settlements on the West
Bank and building an illegal wall that cuts deep into
Palestinian territory. He presented his plan for
disengagement from Gaza as a contribution to the road
map; in fact it is almost the exact opposite. The road
map calls for negotiations between the two sides,
leading to a two-state solution. Sharon refuses to
negotiate and acts to redraw unilaterally the borders
of Greater Israel. 

As he told rightwing supporters: "My plan is difficult
for the Palestinians, a fatal blow. There's no
Palestinian state in a unilateral move." The real
purpose of the move is to derail the road map and kill
the comatose peace process. For Sharon, withdrawal
from Gaza is the prelude not to permanent settlement
but to the annexation of substantial sections of the
West Bank. Sharon decided to cut his losses in Gaza
when he realized that the cost of occupation is not
sustainable. Gaza is home to 8,000 Israeli settlers
and 1.3 million Palestinians. The settlers control 25%
of the territory, 40% of the arable land and most of
the water. This is a hopeless colonial enterprise,
accompanied by one of the most prolonged and brutal
military occupations of modern times.

Bush publicly endorsed Sharon's plan to withdraw from
Gaza and retain the four main settlement blocks on the
West Bank without consulting the quartet - a reversal
of the US position since 1967 that viewed the
settlements as an obstacle to peace. Last year Sharon
proposed handing the remaining Israeli assets in Gaza
to an international body. Now he proposes to destroy
the homes and farms. The change of plan is prompted by
Israeli fear that Hamas will claim credit for the
withdrawal and raise its flag over the buildings
vacated by the settlers. This is inevitable both
because Hamas, not the PA, is the liberator of Gaza
and because Israel is refusing to coordinate its moves
with the PA. Another fear is that Hamas, supported by
35-40% of the Palestinian population, will emerge as a
serious electoral challenger to Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah
movement.

This is Condi's conundrum. If she is serious about
spreading democracy in the Arab world she must accept
the outcome of free elections; in most of the Arab
world they would produce Islamist, anti-US
governments. Israel has contributed more than any
other country to this sorry state of affairs. Condi
and the American right regard Israel as a strategic
asset in the war on terror. In fact Israel is
America's biggest liability. For most Arabs and
Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq,
Iran or democracy but Israel’s oppression of the
Palestinian people and America's blind support for
Israel. America’s policy towards the Middle East is
myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated
settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to
the area. And only America has the power to push
Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US
got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main
obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon's selfish,
uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza
is not a historic step on the road to peace.

Avi Shlaim is a British Academy research professor at
St Antony's College, Oxford, and author of The Iron
Wall: Israel and the Arab World. Guardian Unlimited ©
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005.


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