[lit-ideas] Grasping the realities of the Middle East

[Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>]

For Phil's benefit, I agree with most of this article,
except that "Hizbullah fired the first shots" which I
believe needs to be further investigated. In general,
you can assume that I basically agree with the article
unless I indicate otherwise. I might not agree with
some minor points or on some details.

O.K.



The king of fairyland will never grasp the realities
of the Middle East 

A US leader in his second term should have the power
to rein in Israel. But George Bush is no ordinary
president 

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 1, 2006
The Guardian 


Of all the curious things that have been written about
Israel's assault on Lebanon, surely the oddest is
contained in Paddy Ashdown's article on these pages
last Saturday. "There is only one solution to this
crisis, and it is the same solution we have to find in
Iraq: to go for a wider Middle East settlement and to
do it urgently. The US cannot do this. But Europe
can."

The US cannot do this? What on earth does he mean? At
first sight his contention seems plain wrong. While
Israel intends to sustain its occupation of
Palestinian territory, a wider settlement is
impossible. It surely follows that the country that
has the greatest potential leverage over Israel is the
country with the greatest power to broker peace.
Israel's foreign policy and military strategy is
dependent on the approval of the United States.

Though Israel ranks 23rd on the global development
index - above Greece, Singapore, Portugal and Brunei -
it remains the world's largest recipient of US aid.
The US government dispensed $11bn of civil foreign
assistance in 2004. Of this, Israel received $555m;
the three poorest nations on earth - Burkina Faso,
Sierra Leone and Niger - were given a total of $69m.
More importantly, last year Israel also received
$2.2bn of military aid.

It does not depend economically on this assistance.
Its gross domestic product amounts to $155bn, and its
military budget to $9.5bn. It manufactures many of its
own weapons and buys components from all over the
world, including - as the Guardian revealed last week
- the United Kingdom. Rather, it depends upon it
diplomatically. Most of the money given by the US
foreign military financing programme - in common with
all US aid disbursements - is spent in the United
States. Israel uses it to obtain F-15 and F-16 jets;
Apache, Cobra and Blackhawk helicopters; AGM, AIM and
Patriot missiles, M-16 rifles, M-204 grenade launchers
and M-2 machine guns. As the Prestwick scandal
revealed, laser-guided bombs, even now, are being sent
to Israel from the United States.

Many of these weapons have been used to kill
Palestinian civilians and are being used in Lebanon
today. The US arms export control act states that "no
defence article or defence service shall be sold or
leased by the United States government" unless its
provision "will strengthen the security of the United
States and promote world peace". Weapons may be sold
"to friendly countries solely for internal security,
for legitimate self-defence [or for] maintaining or
restoring international peace and security".

By giving these weapons to Israel, the US government
is, in effect, stating that all its military actions
are being pursued in the cause of legitimate
self-defence, American interests and world peace. The
US also becomes morally complicit in Israel's murder
of civilians. The diplomatic cover this provides is
indispensable.

Since 1972 the US has used its veto in the UN security
council on 40 occasions to prevent the passage of
resolutions that sought either to defend the rights of
the Palestinians or to condemn the excesses of
Israel's government. This is a greater number of
vetoes than all the other permanent members have
deployed in the same period. The most recent instance,
on July 13, was the squashing of a motion condemning
both the Israeli assault on Gaza and the firing of
rockets and abduction of an Israeli soldier by
Palestinian groups. Over the past few days, the United
States, supported by Britain, has blocked all
international attempts to introduce an immediate
ceasefire, giving Israel the clear impression that it
has a mandate to continue its assault on Lebanon.

It is plain to anyone - and this must include Paddy
Ashdown - that Israel could not behave as it does
without the diplomatic protection of the United
States. If the US government announced that it would
cease to offer military and diplomatic support if
Israel refused to hand back the occupied territories,
Israel would have to negotiate. The US government has
power over that country. But can it be used?

A paper published in March by the US academics John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt documents the
extraordinary influence the "Israel lobby" exercises
in Washington. They argue that the combined forces of
evangelical Christian groups and Jewish American
organisations such as the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee ensure that "Israel is virtually
immune from criticism" in Congress and "also has
significant leverage over the executive branch".
Politicians who support the Israeli government are
showered with funds, the paper contends, while those
who contest it are cowed by letter-writing campaigns
and vilification in the media. If all else fails,
the"great silencer" is deployed: the charge of
anti-semitism. Those who oppose the policies of the
Israeli government are accused of hating Jews.

All this makes an even-handed policy difficult, but
not impossible. Standing up to bullies is surely the
key test of leadership. A US president in his second
term is in a powerful position to demand that Israel
pulls back and negotiates.

But if Ashdown meant that it is impossible
psychologically and intellectually for the US
government to act, he might have a point. At his press
conference with Tony Blair last Friday, George Bush
laid out his usual fairy tale about the conflict in
the Middle East. "There's a lot of suffering in
Lebanon," he explained, "because Hizbullah attacked
Israel. There's a lot of suffering in the Palestinian
territory because militant Hamas is trying to stop the
advance of democracy. There is suffering in Iraq
because terrorists are trying to spread sectarian
violence and stop the spread of democracy." The
current conflict in Lebanon "started, out of the blue,
with two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and rockets being
fired across the border".

I agree that Hizbullah fired the first shots. But out
of the blue? Israel's earlier occupation of southern
Lebanon; its continued occupation of the Golan
Heights; its occupation and partial settlement of the
West Bank and gradual clearance of Jerusalem; its
shelling of civilians, power plants, bridges and
pipelines in Gaza; its beating and shooting of
children; its imprisonment or assassination of
Palestinian political leaders; its bulldozing of
homes; its humiliating and often lethal checkpoints:
all these are, in Bush's mind, either fictional or
carry no political consequences. The same goes for the
US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the constant
threats Bush issues to Syria and Iran. There is only
one set of agents at work - the terrorists - and their
motivation arises autochthonously from the evil in
their hearts.

Israel is not solely to blame for this crisis. The
firing of rockets into its cities is an intolerable
act of terrorism. But to understand why the people
assaulting that country will not put down their arms,
the king of fairyland would be forced to come to terms
with the consequences of Israel's occupation of other
people's lands and of its murder of civilians; of his
own invasion of Iraq and of his failure, across the
past six years, to treat the Palestinians fairly. And
this he seems incapable of doing. Instead, his answers
last Friday suggested, Bush is constructing a
millenarian narrative of escalating conflict leading
to the final triumph of freedom and democracy.

So I fear that Paddy Ashdown may be right. The United
States cannot pursue a wider settlement in the Middle
East, for it is led by a man who lives in a world of
his own. 

www.monbiot.com





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[lit-ideas] Grasping the realities of the Middle East