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A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are the
same
By Robert Fisk
11/29/07 "The
Independent" -- -- -Haven't we been here before?
Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the
Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which
two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words
of Oslo.
"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to
end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.
But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House
lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?
Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital
isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is
indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is –
there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became
Israel in 1948.
And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full
text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop
a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of
negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by
one lead representative from each party." Come again?
We went through all these steering committees before – and they
never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first
session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the
faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the
usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by
2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a
capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their
entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish
settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive
war?
Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle
East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to
support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and
what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells
Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese
elections, or else...
Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading
role in the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and
Condoleezza Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really
think they're going to have a free ride for a year without the
full involvement of every party in the region? More than half of
the Palestinians under occupation are under the control of Hamas.
Reading the speeches – especially the joint document – it seems
like an exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently
a hell disaster and the President of the United States thinks he
is going to produce the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget
Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran – and Pakistan, for that matter.
The worst element of the whole Annapolis shindig is that once
again millions of people across the Middle East – Muslims, Jews
and Christians – will believe all this and will then turn –
after its failure – with fury on their antagonists for breaking
these agreements.
For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel
security and recognition by Arab states in return for a total
withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What
was wrong with that? Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will
address all the issues which thus far has been evaded". Yet the
phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories"
simply doesn't exist in the text.
Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to
enjoy these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not.
Wait for the end of 2008.
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