25 April 2008

I don’t often give props to the Bush administration, but I must give credit where credit is due. After spending seven years in office while making much stink about the need for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, George W. Bush finally decided that paying the region a visit might be a good idea. So, kudos to Bush and friends on making the realization (albeit seven years late) that, in order to negotiate stuff with people, actually sitting down with them is necessary.

Bush made his first visit as president to the Middle East in January of 2008, as part of his administration’s weird, sudden, and idiotically late determination that they want to see the founding of a Palestinian state before they yield the White House to our next president in January 2009, almost as if they were musing over their reign as it begun to wind down and realized in a panic that, oops, they forgot about that whole peace-in-the Middle-East thing, and decided then to try to slap something together real quick.

The Annapolis conference in November 2007 was the christening of this new project and, by my accounts, was nothing but pomp and circumstance with very little real hope for achieving anything at all. The conference was followed by a flurry of transatlantic jaunts made by administration officials (and one rogue dignitary).

Dick Cheney, our esteemed vice president, paid a visit on 23 March to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas the next day. No one took this seriously, including Cheney himself, who appears bored in photographs from the visit, and who said nothing unexpected or new to anyone at all. Most commentators, myself included, wonder why he was even sent. Some things that he predictably said were “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is enduring and unshakeable” and “The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps to threaten its security.” Jeez, he might as well have given Olmert a handjob beneath the table while he was at it.

Condoleezza Rice rolled through about a week later and met with Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak (a notorious jerk) and illegitimate Palestinian prime minister Salaam Fayad (a notorious sellout). After the visit, the US state department issued a statement explaining that Rice had overseen an agreement between the two sides that exchanges a renewed Palestinian effort to stop terrorism for the removal of 50 Israeli roadblocks (of the 500+ that choke up the West Bank). (I will refrain from sarcastic commentary here, for now, in the interest of fairness.)

Then, just a few days ago, Abbas traveled to Washington DC and met with Bush. From what I can gather, nothing of major significance was even discussed. They’ll be meeting again at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt on 17 May, and Abbas will meet Rice before he leaves Washington. One hopes that there’s more to the Bush administration’s plan than a bunch of fruitless meetings.

Let me break the flow here for a minute. If Bush and company succeed in pulling off this farce and establishing some kind of Palestinian state prior to January 2009, the concessions made will be overwhelmingly Palestinian. Israel will keep its illegal settlements (They’ll simply annex all that land. Make no mistake—that’s why they’ve been steadily building settlements on occupied land since 1967. They knew they would end up keeping everything they built on. Remember the adage possession is nine-tenths of the law. Remember also Ariel Sharon’s infamous quote addressed to a meeting of militants from the Tsomet party in Israel on 15 November 1998: “Everybody has to move. Run and grab as many hilltops as you can to enlarge the settlements, because everything we take now will stay ours. Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”) The 300,000 Palestinian refugees of the 1967 war will not be returning home. Much of the commerce and government of this new Palestine will remain under Israeli control. It’ll be a simpering impotent little proxy country. It won’t happen, though. It won’t stick because all that Bush and company have done is put the right kind of cowards in power in Palestine and negotiated a farcical peace with them, a hollow peace that will be unenforceable, less than tenuous, that will exist nowhere but on paper.

Rather than sidestepping our Hamas like this, there are many who feel that there is no one with whom it is more important that we sit down and talk than our fiercest enemies. Former president Jimmy Carter, for example, recently visited the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, Syria.

On Sunday 13 April, Carter (who, as president, negotiated the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which was the first peace treaty agreed between Israel and an Arab country, and who also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002) met with Israeli president Shimon Peres, which was a pretty meaningless meeting, given that the Israeli presidency is essentially a ceremonial position with little power and that Peres is merely a figurehead. Carter didn’t meet with any other Israeli officials. He claimed that he was snubbed because of his plans to meet Meshaal, who is a tad unpopular among Israelis, in Damascus, Syria after leaving Israel. (More on that momentarily.)

While still in Israel, Carter also went to the southern Israeli town of Sderot, the target of frequent rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, where he was taken on a tour of stockpiles of spent rockets that have fallen on or around Sderot over the years. “I'm obviously distressed to see this happen,” Carter said about the rocket attacks. “I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians. My hope is that there will be a ceasefire soon that will stop all this.”

In Damascus, Carter first met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and then met with Meshaal. He attempted to broker a ceasefire in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, though he said that he was not explicitly attempting to mediate between Israel and Hamas. He merely feels that it’s important to talk with Hamas and with Syria, rather than excluding from the peace process.

Following Carter’s visit, Mohammad Nazzal, a Hamas spokesman, said, “Carter suggested a truce and that Hamas should stop its rockets against Israel. We support a truce, but Israel should support it too.”

Then, not uncoincidentally, on Friday 25 April, Hamas offered Israel a truce. The proposal for a six-month truce was passed via former Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahhar to Egyptian mediators, who have been working tirelessly (and fruitlessly) throughout Israel’s siege of Gaza to broker ceasefires and truces. “The truce must be mutual and simultaneous and the blockade must be lifted and the crossing points must be opened,” Zahhar said. Some Israeli officials have already scoffed at the offer, but we’ll see what happens.

Despite that nearly everyone criticized Carter for visiting Meshaal, including Bush (who called it “not wise”) it has, it seems, achieved some results, something that a handful of visits by Bush’s cronies has been unable to do. Let’s see what comes of it.