Palestinian
Cabinet's Success Lies with Israel
Catherine Cook (11/03)
Garden City
Telegram (Garden City, KS)
Minuteman Media
For the second time in seven months, Palestinians have
a new government. On November 12, the Palestinian Legislative Council
approved Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia's cabinet. While
the US and Israel have stressed that progress on the US-backed road
map initiative depends on the new Palestinian leadership, the question
remains whether Qureia will fare any better than his predecessor,
Mahmoud Abbas.
Qureia's cabinet must simultaneously address Israeli and US demands,
meet the Palestinian public's expectations, and negotiate the parameters
of power between the prime minister and Palestinian Authority President
Yasser Arafat. These tasks are interrelated and none will be achieved
without concrete changes on the ground. Key to Qureia's potential
success, and to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is Israel's
response and US pressure.
Qureia's government will have no legitimacy with the Palestinian public
unless it secures substantive indications that Israel intends to end
its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the campaign of
human rights abuses it employs to maintain its control. Without popular
support, Qureia's authority will be undermined and meeting US and
Israeli demands will be impossible.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly argued that Israel is prepared
to make "painful concessions" for peace, but that the process
cannot move forward until there is a complete cessation of Palestinian
violence. However, Sharon's policies of brutal repression of Palestinian
civilians have not brought Israel security. During Sharon's tenure,
the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has documented over 100 Palestinian
attacks on Israelis (both soldiers and civilians), compared with 21
from 1994 to Sharon's rise to power in February 2001.
Sharon has also argued that there is no Palestinian partner for negotiations,
but last month's release of the "Geneva Accords", negotiated
by Israeli and Palestinian teams headed by former Minister of Justice
and Labor Party leader Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Minister
of Cabinet Affairs Yasser Abed Rabbo, highlights the spurious nature
of this contention.
In between these claims, the Sharon government has continued its territorial
expansion. Despite the road map's call for an end to settlement activity,
the Sharon government continues to expand West Bank settlements. In
late October, the Israeli government issued a call for tenders to
construct over 300 new homes in Israeli-only settlements, including
some deep inside the West Bank.
Concurrently, Israel continues construction of its separation wall.
According to a report covering the first and second phases of construction
by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 89
percent of the wall's approved path encroaches upon Palestinian territory
in the West Bank. Approximately 30 percent of the Palestinian population
will be directly harmed as a result. In late October, the UN General
Assembly declared that the wall violates international law and demanded
that Israel stop and reverse its construction.
The wall's clearly political nature prompted the Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz on November 11th to declare it the "fence of folly,"
arguing that "(u)nder the guise of granting security to Israel,
the prime minister apparently means to implement in stages his anachronistic
vision of a carved-up patchwork Palestinian state. Hopefully, he will
come to his senses and retreat from this foolish plan."
The impact of Israel's policies was highlighted in late October when
Israeli armed forces chief of staff Moshe Yaalon spoke out. Referring
to the humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories, Yaalon told
the Israeli press that Israel's military policies had brought daily
life for Palestinian civilians to a standstill and were creating intense
levels of hostility. Yaalon blamed the Sharon government's unwillingness
to alleviate restrictions on Palestinian civilians for undermining
former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and contributing to the stalling
of the road map process.
This is the environment Ahmad Qureia's government enters. Only time
will tell whether his government will suffer a fate similar to Abbas's.
But while the advent of a new Palestinian leadership may spark renewed
Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic engagement, those talks are unlikely
to bring security to either of the two peoples if the Sharon government
continues with business as usual.
(Catherine Cook is senior analyst at the Middle East Research and
Information Project in Washington, DC, publishers of Middle East
Report.)
MERIP
OP-EDS
A Country at a Crossroads The Austin-American Statesman (Austin, Texas) November 9, 2007
Kamran Asdar Ali
"A
very frank discussion"— so President Bush described
his Nov. 7 telephone
conversation with Pervez Musharraf, four days after the Pakistani
general
imposed a state of emergency and dissolved the high court expected
to rule
his continued presidency unconstitutional. And frank the discussion
probably
was: In the face of spirited protest in Pakistan, and a querulous
press in
Washington, back-channel pressure succeeded in persuading Musharraf
to
promise parliamentary elections. Yet the generous U.S. aid earmarked
for
Pakistan — on top of nearly $10 billion since 2001 — is
quite evidently not
at risk.
What may be at risk is Musharraf's tenure as head
of the military government. Full
story>>
The
war debate in Washington is bogged down. Partisan rancor is one
reason why, and bipartisan desire for US hegemony in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf is
another. But many Americans are vexed by a nobler concern: that
a
“precipitous” US departure from Iraq would leave intensified
civil war,
ethnic-sectarian cleansing and massive refugee flows in its wake.
This
concern is legitimate. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that Iraq’s
civil war
and humanitarian emergency have grown steadily worse as the US
military
deployment there wears on. Full
Story>>
Should
the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between
security and liberty in the "war on terror," emulate
Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position
that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler
of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated. That people in U.S.
custody could be held incommunicado for years without charges,
and could be prosecuted or indefinitely detained on the basis of
confessions extracted with torture is worse than a national disgrace.
It is an assault on the foundations of the rule of law. Full
Story>>
There
is an oft-told Palestinian allegory about a family who complained
their house was small and cramped. In response, the father brought
the farm
animals inside -- the goat, the sheep and the chickens all crowded
into the
house. Then, one by one, he moved the animals back outside. By
the time the
last chicken left, the family felt such relief they never complained
of the
lack of elbow room again. Full
Story>>
