AIPAC Hijacks the Roadmap
By Jeffrey Blankfort, CounterPunch, May 27, 2003
How Israel's US Lobby is Stacking the Deck -- It would be a mistake to view the Israeli cabinet's narrow approval of the Bush administration's "road map" on Sunday, (or Sharon's use of the word "occupation") as steps towards resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict or as a victory for President Bush. If there is any gloating to be done, it will be by Israel's domestic US lobby and it will largely be done in private. Had the administration not surrendered on Friday to Ariel Sharon's demands for significant revisions in the "road map," the Israeli cabinet might not even have taken the vote. Moreover, the president would not have been forced to make those concessions had not the Israeli prime minister been backed solidly by the pro-Israel lobby and by the majority of both houses of Congress. And thus, the supposedly immutable "peace plan" has foundered at the starting gate. As his part of the deal, and before the cabinet vote, Sharon publicly accepted the plan's broad outlines, but not the phased steps contained in the original which carried the stamp and presumably the input of the "Quartet," (Britain, the European Union and the Russians plus the US). During the debate, Sharon told his cabinet that the 14 reservations about the plan that Israel presented to Washington were not negotiable. (BBC, May 25) One that has been prominently mentioned is Israel's refusal to recognize the right to return of Palestinians who were expelled or who left in 1948, an issue that was not to be raised until the "road map's" final phase. Its prospects can best be understood by a metaphor that arose from a press conference with Secretary of State Colin Powell who up to Friday had been insisting that "no changes" would be made in the "road map." Faced with yet another humiliation at the hands of the Israeli prime minister, Powell downplayed criticism that the US was simply kicking the can down the road by agreeing to address Israel's concerns "fully and seriously." "At least we have a can in the road," Powell told reporters. "We have to get started. And so the can is in the road now. We will start moving it down the road with perhaps little kicks as opposed to a 54-yarder." "It's easy to say, why don't you solve this up front - because you couldn't. You have to get started," Powell said, adding that issues like dismantling some Israeli settlement outposts may be "very, very difficult" to resolve. (Ha'aretz May 24). And if those are hard for Powell to contemplate, one can imagine the problems the administration will face if it attempts to deal seriously with those that can no longer be euphemistically described as settlements and have become well-established and well-populated towns that the US no longer considers to be illegal.

US looking for intelligent answers
By B Raman, Asia Times, May 27, 2003
It is doubtful whether the truth regarding the use or misuse of the intelligence agencies by the Bush administration for building up a case for attacking and occupying Iraq would ever come out since the US media itself appear to be disinterested in it in the name of patriotism. Unless the truth is brought out and corrective action taken, not many outside the US may, in future, take seriously even correct US intelligence reports relating to nuclear and missile proliferation by North Korea and Iran and the activities of bin Laden's al-Qaeda and International Islamic Front. -- James Risen of the New York Times reported on May 21 that a review has begun to determine whether the US intelligence community erred in its pre-war assessments of Saddam Hussein's government and Iraq's weapons programs. According to his report, George J Tenet, director, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in his capacity as the director, Central Intelligence (DCI) has ordered the review. It would be based on an an examination by a team of retired intelligence officers of all the reports sent by the CIA and other agencies to the various departments of the government before the war on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the country's alleged links with al-Qaeda in order to see how many of those reports proved to be correct and, if they did not, why. Tenet wears two hats. As the director, CIA, he supervises the day-to-day functioning of the agency and as DCI he acts as the intelligence adviser to the president and as the coordinator of the functioning of all the agencies of the US intelligence community, civilian as well as military. Such reviews, called retrospective analysis in the intelligence jargon, are normal in all intelligence agencies after any war or conflict or after any serious breach of national security. They help the agencies not only to identify gaps in intelligence coverage, but also to assess the performance of individual sources and their handling officers and the analysts of the agencies. Often, sources which are thought of highly prove to have been giving incorrect information, and sources which were not taken seriously prove to have been giving valuable intelligence which was not acted upon. Similarly, how good an analyst is could be determined only by re-visiting his past reports in the light of what actually happened subsequently on the ground. Reputations of many sources and analysts are often damaged by such re-visits. The fact that Tenet has ordered such a review should not, therefore, be a matter of great surprise, but what has imparted unusual significance to the review is the embarrassing (to the US) fact that much of the so-called intelligence regarding Iraq's WMD capability and its links with al-Qaeda, which US Secretary of State Colin Powell placed before the United Nations Security Council, has proved to have been wrong.

The Hannibal Procedure
By Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, May 27, 2003
Hannibal crossed the Alps with his division of combat elephants and terrorized mighty Rome for years. He commanded the army of Carthage, originally a Canaanite Phoenician colony, spoke a kind of Hebrew and bore a Hebrew name ("God has been gracious"). In my youth, when we were searching for Hebrew and Semite heroes as role models, he figured high on our list. It appears that the Israeli army, too, considers him a model. This week the legendary general was at the center of a controversial public disclosure. The subject of the sensation was the "Hannibal Procedure"--an Israeli army practice instituted in the mid 80s, first in oral instructions and later as an official order bearing this name. Some time ago this order was officially amended, but many soldiers attest that the original version it is still in force. It has now been published by Haaretz. It can be summed up in eight words: Better a dead than a captured Israeli soldier. When an Israeli soldier is taken prisoner, a huge public demand arises to bring him home, even at the cost of releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. In May 1985, Israel released 1150 Palestinians in return for three Israeli prisoners-of-war, in an exchange known as the "Jibril deal" (named after Ahmed Jibril, the chief of a Palestinian organization serving Syria and fighting Arafat.) The Israeli army chiefs wanted to avoid such exchanges in the future at all costs, quite literally. They ordered soldiers to shoot at the car of the captors (guerillas generally use cars for such exploits), even if this would endanger the life of the captive soldier. Meaning: liberate the soldier by killing him. The logic behind the order is not new. It has been part of Israeli thinking for decades. It says simply: Never give in to terrorists. Giving in will just encourage them to capture more of our people. Better to have your people killed together with their captors, so as to deter others. This logic had terrible consequences in Munich, when the German police (with the encouragement of the Israeli government) opened fire on the captors of the Israeli athletes resulting in the deaths of both. Most of the hostages were presumably killed by the police, since the post mortem results were never published. A similar tragedy occurred in Ma'aloth, in northern Israel, when Palestinians took a large group of schoolchildren hostage. Many children were killed when Moshe Dayan ordered the use of force to liberate them, in the middle of negotiations with their captors. One of the most celebrated exploits of the Israeli army was in Entebbe (Uganda), when all but one of the passengers of a hijacked plane were freed. But the slightest hitch would have sufficed to turn the operation into a terrible massacre.

Of Roadmaps, Bombings & Assassinations
By Ben Granby, CounterPunch, May 22, 2003
What Rates a Headline? -- It was an all too familiar scene in Afula on Monday. Screams, sirens and blood stained ground. When Hiba Daraghmeh detonated the explosives strapped around her just outside a shopping mall, she took the lives of three innocent people in a most brutal fashion. Most of the American public knows about this, as it quickly became headline news across television screens and photographs of the horror graced the front page of most top American newspapers. On the same day, in what seemed like another world, relatives of 13-year old Khaled Naser were in mourning. He had been shot to death earlier that day by Israeli troops. His fate wasn't worth a headline, for it was suicide bombings that the press focused on in recent days as threats to a new Mideast peace proposal. Within 48 hours from Saturday, May 18, there were five suicide bomb attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. This sudden surge in attacks was pointed to by all major US media as having the potential to derail President George Bush's new Mideast "road map". The Chicago Tribune headlined on May 20 with "'Road Map' In Peril." USA Today declared it "In Tatters", and the Washington Post announced "Peace Plan in Jeopardy." A previous Post headline stated that "Bombings Undercut Peace Plan." In response to a bombing in the Jerusalem suburb French Hill (which is technically in the occupied West Bank) on Sunday, in which seven Israelis lost their lives, Israeli Prime Minister cancelled a planned trip to see President Bush where the two were to discuss the road map plan. Reuter's ran a headline that day declaring, "Suicide Bombing Threatens Peace Plan". Sharon's cancellation was accepted by the American media as a reasonable response to a surge in terrorist attacks and Palestinian factions were seen as attempting to stop what otherwise was an ongoing process. As a result, the American public is being told that Palestinian militants, if not the Palestinian Authority, is the only thing blocking the way to peace. On May 1, the very day that President Bush unveiled his road map plan, the Israeli army launched a major invasion deep into Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Backed by heavy armor and helicopter gunships, the Israeli forces fought their way to a five-story apartment where a suspected militant lived in the crowded Shijaia neighborhood. A major gunbattle ensued with bullets crashing into adjacent homes, lasting from 1am until 5pm when the Israelis finally blew up the building. In the end, 13 Palestinians including two young children and an elderly man laid dead. One of Sharon's spokesmen, David Baker, defended the attack, claiming that "these activities will continue wherever and whenever they are needed, without a connection to other outside considerations." (Washington Post, May 1, 2003)

Bush’s Mideast Moves Stir US Politics
By Ronald Brownstein, Arab News/LA Times, May 28, 2003
[The] congressional offensive inspired last week’s head-spinning response: a shot across the bow from dozens of prominent liberal Jews — from Los Angeles activist Stanley Sheinbaum and actor Richard Dreyfuss to New York mogul and President Clinton intimate Alan Patricof — to all of the Democratic presidential contenders. “As long as the administration remains actively engaged in an effort to implement the road map,’’ wrote the group, organized by the Israel Policy Forum, “we ask you not to put obstacles in the way of the president’s Mideast peacemaking policies.” -- WASHINGTON, 28 May 2003 — The politics of Middle East peace have become almost as complex in the United States as they are in the region itself. In the last month, President Bush has displayed more commitment and creativity in advancing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians than at any point in his presidency. And that movement is kicking up swirls of political maneuvering, not only in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the West Bank, but also in the United States. After mostly resisting pressure to involve himself more heavily in the conflict, Bush has taken a series of potentially significant steps — if he’s willing to risk a sustained commitment to them. First, in late April, his administration published the “road map” meant to guide the path toward co-existence between Israel and a peaceful, independent Palestinian state. Then earlier this month, in a commencement address at the University of South Carolina, he offered the Arab world a visionary prospect of social revival through the establishment of a free-trade zone with the United States that could seed economic opportunity in nations now parched of it.

An act or the real thing?
By Gideon Samet, Haaretz, May 28, 2003
Now we know what happens when a prime minister throws his full, not inconsiderable weight against the occupation: There are shouts in the Likud and near hysteria on the extreme right. Prof. Yosef Ben Shlomo cries, "A historic crime"; author Moshe Shamir screams, "Help!!!"; MK Gila Gamliel scolds Ariel Sharon, who regards the scene with a mixture of Olympic disdain and anger. The result: What he wants passes like a knife through butter, even a cliched leftist word like "occupation." But what will remain of what he doesn't want? Along with Sharon's success this week in passing the road map in the cabinet, this question still remains unanswered. As usual with him, the sudden campaign for peace contained the good and the bad, everything and its opposite. Almost every one of the items in the list of reservations could plow up the land of the map and the roads on it, and scatter salt on them. The familiar argument - that Sharon can, if only he wants to - was proved this week without surprise for its consistent formulators. But the additional achievement of the prime minister, an almost virtuoso move, was that with all this, he can still block any real progress, and lead Israeli politics away from the plan. After astonishing his friends (but not his critics on the left), Sharon will be able to exploit the 14 comments even more easily, in order to seem at one at the same time both willing to make concessions and incorrigibly stubborn.

The state Sharon is talking about  
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, May 28, 2003
Talk and declarations have more influence than facts and actions on the ground. This can be seen once again in the contradictory reactions - furious or welcoming - to the government's approval of the road map and to the fire-breathing statements by Ariel Sharon that it's wrong to rule over 3.5 million Palestinians, that occupation is not good, that there's no alternative but to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.  The facts on the ground, which don't create as strong an impression as the rhetoric, are established every day. The facts are called the separation fence and security fences around settlements, security roads and bypass roads that continue to cut off the Palestinian villages from each other and the villages from their land, and construction in the settlements that were already vastly expanded during the Oslo era to the point where they constitute about half the total area of the West Bank. These facts are determining - and will continue to determine - the area where the road map will be applied, the area where the entity known as the "Palestinian state" will be established. A visit to the area, where the Public Works  Commission, the Defense Ministry, Housing Ministry and the IDF bulldozers are busy at work, makes it possible to see why it's easy for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to talk about a "Palestinian state." A consulting team from the Palestinian negotiations department has drawn up a future map, based on these facts on the ground. The team will give it to the ambassadors and envoys who are so enthusiastic about Sharon's statements. According to the facts on the ground, the "state"will apparently be comprised of three enclaves cut off from one another inside the West Bank - in addition to the Gazan enclave, and with noguarantee the settlements inside the enclave will be dismantled. The "separation fence" has been described as "temporary," but it is a wall withhefty fortifications taking up a lot of land, and it has already scarred the Tul Karm-Qalqiliyah area, the most prosperous Palestinian farmland,thus sabotaging one of the cornerstones of Palestinian economic security.

Middle Eastern water, sanitation, energy and handgrenades
By Rami G. Khouri, Jordan Times, May 28, 2003
IF YOU want to come to grips with a vexing issue, my experience suggests, start talking to World Bank specialists to get the facts and see trends over time (whether you accept their policy recommendations is another, more subjective, matter). World Bank experts this week, at a conference here in Lebanon, helped me understand more clearly why this region remains plagued by so much political tension, anger and violence. This was not their intention, for the meeting was a regional technical workshop on water, sanitation and energy. But many political currents in our region can be indirectly traced back to family- and community-level resentments and pressures that are rooted in practical issues like access to healthcare, fuel, education, water and jobs. Scholars and analysts here and abroad have done a good job at identifying the multiple causes of our turbulence and violence (though we still do not know why and when an ordinary Arab, Iranian, Turkish or Israeli suddenly adopts a different kind of political behaviour, i.e., supports militancy, accepts or engages in terror against civilians, becomes very religious or very ideological, challenges the state's authority, emigrates, embraces criminality and corruption, or completely loses interest in the political world). My guess is that, in this respect, we should acknowledge the impact of practical, day-to-day issues in people's lives, along with the big ideological issues like imperialism, colonialism, Arab-Israeli matters, lack of freedoms and poor governance. No single factor causes ordinary people to become extraordinary terrorists or militants. It's usually a cumulative combination of indignities that drives people to the edge, and finally one small act pushes them over the edge, into indiscriminate violence. At the joint World Bank/European Commission meeting here this week on technical and reform issues related to the power and water/sanitation sectors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the data offered by experts was striking — and very worrisome. Some examples: — Some 45 million people lack access to safe drinking water and over 80 million lack access to safe sanitation in a region where per capita water resources are one-sixth of the world average. — About 60 per cent of this region's population lives in cities and towns with a high urban population growth rate of over 4 per cent a year, and where home water deliveries are almost universally erratic. — The trend is worsening, due to high population growth and poor water management; the average annual available water supply per person in the Middle East and North Africa has dropped from 3,300 cubic metres in 1960 to 1,200 metres today, and continues to drop annually. — Urban water systems are highly inefficient, with 50 per cent of water unaccounted for on its journey from the source to the end user. — Eleven MENA countries now draw more than 100 per cent of their annually renewable water supplies — they're pumping themselves dry. More troubling than this data is the potential political impact of this entire arid region comprising expanding masses of low-income people living in ever more crowded cities and receiving less and less water every year. One result of the wide income gap in most MENA countries is that the poor suffer twice: they suffer by not having the same initial access to water and energy at home as do higher-income citizens, and they suffer again when they must buy water and fuel on the market, where they can pay up to ten times as much as the cost of water pumped to homes.

Roadmap: Another Deception?
By Khalid Amayreh, Palestine Chronicle, May 27, 2003
HEBRON - The Zionist-conceived, American-backed plan for “peace” in the Middle East, known as the roadmap, is unlikely to succeed where the defunct Oslo Accords failed. Indeed, a cursory examination of the roadmap shows that it is actually a mere corruption of the Oslo Agreement. The only difference is that it is vaguer, more deformed, and far more disingenuous. Like the hapless Oslo Accords, the roadmap suffers from serious structural faults that render it utterly unfit as a reasonable base for a genuine and durable peace in Palestine. The plan speaks in general terms of creating a viable Palestinian state, but says nothing about the borders of the contemplated state and whether that will necessitate a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Indeed, the plan leaves virtually all the fundamental aspects of the proposed state to be decided in bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But anyone with minimal knowledge of the Israeli mentality could imagine the outcome of “negotiations” between an insolent Israel, enjoying unprecedented domination over American politics and policies, and a nearly decimated Palestinian Authority that has lost whatever semblance of authority it used to have prior to the Israeli reoccupation of the erstwhile autonomous enclaves. In other words, such central issues as Israeli withdrawal of the territories occupied in 1967, Jewish settlements, Jerusalem, and the refugees, would be subject to tough bargaining and maneuvering following the oblique balance of power between the PA and Israel. As such, the proposed talks would be a farcical expression of Israeli insolence and American connivance. And the outcome of such talks would only perpetuate and legitimize Zionist occupation, domination and enslavement of the Palestinian people and their ancestral homeland. And as was the case during the Oslo years, Israel would tell the PA “what you see is what you get” and the American judge, who is also Israel’s guardian and close ally, would tell the two sides, the rapist and the rape victim, “to sort it out among yourselves.” Moreover, the roadmap itself seems to be a nonstarter. The plan demands that the Palestinians, tormented by a 33 month-old Nazi-like Israeli rampage of terror, murder and collective punishment, to surrender and cease all resistance while Israel’s wanton killings and home demolitions continue unabated. But how could any dignified Palestinian agree to meet these humiliating preconditions?

The Security Council that betrayed its mission
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan Times, May 28, 2003 
APART FROM lifting the 12-year-old sanctions on Iraq, but for entirely different reasons than helping the Iraqi people, the latest Security Council resolution on Iraq, 1483, has been a flagrant betrayal of the UN Charter, a scandalous resultant of power politics and opportunistic superpower compromises, and a dangerous submission to the fait accompli of war and aggression, at the expense of principle and international legality. Earlier, in the weeks leading to the war, the council had stood firm in the face of immense American and British pressure, boldly refusing to prematurely undercut the arms inspection programme in favour of a resolution providing legal international cover for the military action against Iraq which was already planned by the US and Britain. The view, in the council, of those who strongly opposed the hasty resort to war, France, Russia, Germany, China and others, was that any further council action would have to wait and be based upon the final report of the arms inspectors whose mission was last reconfirmed and defined in Security Council Resolution 1441. The international community, world official and popular public opinion, in addition to those defiant and courageous voices in the Security Council, were gravely concerned and deeply outraged by the threat to established international order the US-British war on Iraq without council approval would have implied. That effort, spearheaded by the French-declared warning to use the veto, had successfully blocked the war resolution, rendering the attack on Iraq an illegal, naked aggression. While some accused the Security Council of failure and inaction, others, more appropriately, valued the council inaction as proper and compatible with the council's basic mission of preventing the use of force for settling conflicts. It is true that the council could not stop the war, and that is because it had no available physical means to do that, but it did, however, act correctly by depriving the war of any legitimacy. Additionally, and although the council had the power to condemn the war and demand a ceasefire, it was clearly understandable that any such move in the council would be aborted by an American or a British veto and that, for purely pragmatic reasons, many believed that any ceasefire would have only prolonged the life of a brutal regime which did not deserve to be saved. It is amazing how, on May 22, the council dramatically abandoned its steadfast position by suddenly legitimising aggression, endorsing devastation of an innocent country and its weary people, and by licensing their indefinite, unwarranted occupation.

Partition is Not the Answer
By Roger H. Lieberman, Palestine Chronicle, May 24, 2003
"Horrible as the present situation is on the ground in Palestine, it is made worse still by the inability of the Israeli “peace camp” to come to grips with the crisis .." -- NEW JERSEY - Today, in the middle of the occupied West Bank, miles to the east of Israel’s pre-1967 frontier, the Israeli Offense Force is busy erecting an encircling monstrosity of concrete, barbed wire, and guard towers. Completely, utterly illegal by anyone’s definition, it is rarely even mentioned in the Western press – except, occasionally, in Orwellian new-speak, as Israel’s new “security fence”. Like some gargantuan gray boa constrictor, it slithers though the West Bank – engulfing thousands of acres of fertile farmland, alienating tens of thousands of Palestinians from land their families have tilled for centuries, and strangling every last drop of vitality out of what was once the lovely land of Palestine. In a provocative report by Ran HaCohen, published by Antiwar.com (5/21/03), the ghastly specifics of the wall project are laid bare. When completed, this ugly barrier will stand 8 meters in height, and run a meandering length totaling nearly 1000 kilometers. It will break up the West Bank into two strangulated enclaves – one in the north encompassing Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin, one in the south around Hebron – and permit Israel to unilaterally annex huge swaths of land between them. The entire Jordan valley, East Jerusalem, and a large, verdant area south of Tulkarm and Qalqilya are to be swallowed by the Zionist State as part of “Greater Israel”. What will be left to the Palestinian Arabs, according to Sharon’s scheme, amounts to less than 50 percent of the 22 percent of historical Palestine that Israel seized in 1967, and upon which the Palestinian leadership had hoped to establish an independent state. What this means, in human terms, is that 3 and a half million men, women, and children will be imprisoned – permanently, Israel hopes – within one-tenth of their original homeland. Desperately short on water and food, deprived of virtually all means of earning a living, and languishing in the slow death of crowded ghettos and refugee camps. To compare this nightmare to the notorious bantustans of Apartheid South Africa is, if anything, to give the Israelis an unwarranted COMPLIMENT! Horrible as the present situation is on the ground in Palestine, it is made worse still by the inability of the Israeli “peace camp” to come to grips with the crisis, and understand what the times demand of them. Indeed, most members of the utterly useless Labor Party – including “Mr. Generosity” Ehud Barak – have warmly endorsed Sharon’s Ethnic Cleansing Wall. The more “liberal” members of Sharon’s “opposition” may argue for a change or two in the wall’s sinuous path – for a “kinder, gentler” apartheid – but nothing more. The idea that Palestinians are full human beings who must be treated as brothers seems too difficult for most of the “voices of conscience” in the Near East’s “only democracy” to grasp. Even a genuinely descent, peace-seeking Jewish American leader, Rabbi Michael Lerner, clings to the “two-state solution” like a preschooler to a security blanket, hoping somehow this defunct idea could produce the reconciliation between Jews and Arabs he sincerely hopes for.