US-backed Abbas risks being tagged 'quisling' | Ed O'Loughlin | June 18, 2007
BY SACKING his elected Hamas government this weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas regained the blessing of Israel, the US, Europe, Egypt and Jordan, plus the promise of hundreds of millions of dollars in funds. Despite all this, he has never been weaker.
The events of the past week in Gaza, where Hamas militants seized control from Abbas' Fatah movement, have left him dependent on outside forces to cling to power in the West Bank.
And the flight of his security chiefs from Gaza weeks before the final clash with Hamas, which claimed about 100 lives, has stripped the Fatah leadership of what little credibility it still enjoyed among ordinary Arabs and its own rank and file.
Chief culprit is Mohammed Dahlan, a 45-year-old Gaza strongman with close ties to the US, whom Abbas placed in command of all Palestinian Authority security forces.
But Dahlan left Gaza when feuding intensified two months ago, supposedly to seek medical treatment for a knee injury, and failed to return last week to lead his troops in the field.
Nevertheless, on Saturday he was at Abbas' side when he visited the American consul in Jerusalem. When they emerged it was with the full backing of the US against what the US, Europe and the UN have all accepted was a Hamas "coup". ..
Friday, June 15, 2007 by CommonDreams.org | US and Israel Stir Up Palestinian Crisis | by Ira Chernus
It’s so obvious that Fatah and Hamas should work together to achieve an independent Palestine. Not long ago, they were proclaiming their unity. So why are they now destroying each other? If you get your news from the mainstream U.S. media, you might well think that they are just two irrational factions, driven crazy by lust for power.
But if you know how to read between the lines, even our mainstream media tell a much more complicated story, one that implicates Israel and the U.S. government too. All the quotes that follow are from reporting on the crisis in the mainstream’s flagship newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
“An Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs, Danny Rubinstein, said the ‘primary reason for the break-up is the fact that Fatah has refused to fully share the Palestinian Authority’s mechanism of power with its rival Hamas, despite Hamas’s decisive victory in the January 2006 general elections.’” “Fatah leaders failed to heed warnings that the party’s corruption and arrogance were alienating voters.” “Fatah ‘was forced to overrule Palestinian voters because the entire world demanded it do so,’ Mr. Rubinstein added. ‘Matters have come to the point where Hamas attempted to take by force what they believe they rightfully deserve.’”
The U.S. and Israel have led the world in forcing Fatah to resist Hamas’ democractically-won power. In a just-released document, “the United Nations’ former top Middle East envoy has sharply criticized U.S. and Israeli efforts to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian government, saying the policy has further radicalized Palestinian opinion and undercut long-term efforts to establish a viable Palestinian state. The broadside by Alvaro de Soto was contained in a confidential 52-page report he filed before resigning from the United Nations last month. Starting in May 2005, de Soto directed U.N. efforts to ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” “With all the focus on the failings of Hamas,” De Soto observed, “the Israeli settlement enterprise and barrier construction has continued unabated.”
But Hamas’ complaint is more specific. “Hamas wants a restored unity government where the security forces would all report to the interior minister.” Why is that so important? The security forces have been controlled by Fatah and its security chief Mohammed Dahlan. “During 12 years in power, Fatah had repeatedly cracked down on the [Hamas] Islamists, including in 1996 when the Preventive Security Service, then led by Dahlan, arrested Hamas leaders.” “Many of those who were imprisoned remember the treatment they received as cruel and humiliating.”
Now “Hamas spokesmen said the movement had no political goal except to defend itself from a group within Fatah collaborating with Israel and the United States. They said they wanted to bring the security forces under the control of the unity government.” “A Hamas spokesman said the movement was defending itself, not reaching for unalloyed power. He said Hamas ‘is doing the work that Fatah failed to do, to control these [security] groups,’ whom he accused of crimes, chaos and collaboration with Israel and the United States.”
...
In the midst of the current crisis, the Bush administration continues to take sides and stir up the conflict. “Administration officials were pushing Mr. Abbas to dissolve the power-sharing agreement between Fatah and Hamas [and] dismiss the entire government.” When Abbas did just that, “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support for Mr. Abbas’s decrees.” Also, “administration officials were weighing the possibility of … pressuring Egypt to seal the tunnels leading from its territory into Gaza; American and Israeli officials say the tunnels are often used to smuggle weapons to Hamas. One administration official suggested Wednesday that the United States might then try to prod Israel into taking down Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a way to shore up Mr. Abbas.” ...
US warns Palestinians not to abandon truce with Israel | Tue Apr 24, 11:46 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States warned Palestinians on Tuesday not to abandon a spotty ceasefire with Israel, saying the "pathway to Palestine" and an independent state lies through negotiations, not violence.
The armed wing of the movement Hamas earlier Tuesday declared its five-month truce with Israel over after Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in a series of raids over the weekend. ...
April 2, 2007 | Bush, AIPAC and Palestine | The Political Economy of a Disaster | By JAMES PETRAS
On Monday, March 26, 2007 in Northern Gaza a river of raw sewage and debris overflowed from a collapsed earth embankment into a refugee camp driving 3,000 Palestinians from their homes. Five residents drowned, 25 were injured and scores of houses were destroyed.
The New York Times, Washington Post and the television media blamed shoddy infrastructure. The Daily Alert (the house organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations) blamed the Palestinians who they claimed were removing sand to sell to construction contractors thus undermining the earth embankment. The disaster at Umm Naser (the village in question) is emblematic of everything that is wrong with US-Israeli politics in the Middle East. The disaster in this isolated village has its roots first and foremost in Washington where AIPAC and its political allies have successfully secured US backing for Israel's financial and economic boycott of the Palestinian government subsequent to the democratic electoral victory of Hamas.
AIPAC's victory in Washington reverberated throughout Europe and beyond ñ as the European Union also applied sanctions shutting off financing of all new infrastructure projects and the maintenance of existing facilities. At the AIPAC conventions of 2005 through 2007, the leaders of both major American parties, congressional leaders and the White House pledged to re-enforce AIPAC's boycott and sanctions strategy. AIPAC celebrated its victory for Israeli policy and claimed authorship of the legislation. In addition to malnutrition, the policy undermined all public maintenance projects.
Equally central to the disaster, Israel's massive sustained bombing attack on Gaza in the summer of 2006, demolished roads, bridges, sewage treatment facilities, water purification and electrical power plants. Northern Gaza was one of its many targets, putting severe strain on already precarious infrastructure and government budgets ñ including the maintenance of sewage treatment plants and cesspools.
The Israeli economic blockade of Gaza increased unemployment, poverty and hunger to unprecedented levels. Out of work Gazans reached over 60% of the population ñ large families with young children were reduced to one meal a day. Family heads desperately looked for any way to earn funds to buy a pound of chickpeas, oil, rice and flour for bread. It is possible that forced by the AIPAC- induced US-EU boycott and Israeli bombing and blockade, that some desperate workers removed some sand around the cesspool. The pretext cited by the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) for blaming the Palestinian victims for their own suffering, and exonerating the Israelis, AIPAC and their congressional clients. ...
Most Palestinians see Rice role as negative - poll | By Agence France Presse (AFP) |
Thursday, March 29, 2007
JERUSALEM: An overwhelming majority of Palestinians think US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is playing a negative role in efforts to budge the stalled peace process, said a poll published on Wednesday. Eighty-two percent of those questioned think Rice is playing either a negative or a very negative role, compared with 11 percent who think her contribution is positive, according to the survey. Forty-four percent think Rice's diplomatic efforts have worsened the image of the United States in the region, compared with 46 percent who see the image unchanged and 5 percent who think it has improved. The poll was conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre. - AFP
Rice hints the US may push for creation of Palestinian state | RAW STORY | Published: Saturday March 24, 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Egypt that an about-face by the Bush administration the creation of a Palestinian state is not out of the realm of possibility, reports the New York Times.
"I don’t rule out at some point that might be a useful thing to do," she said.
"Trying to impose an American-made solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for years, been the very thing that Bush administration officials have steadfastly said they would not do," says the Times.
But the Iraq war has now significantly eroded the standing of the United States in the Arab world. Many administration officials now feel that the only way to restore that standing is to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the direction of the creation of a Palestinian state.
"Several State Department officials say that there is now an acknowledgment within the administration that the hands-off policy has caused prospects for peace to deteriorate," writes the NYT. ..
Former US United Nations Ambassador John Bolton told the BBC today that he was “damned proud” of how the U.S. intentionally blocked efforts to achieve a ceasefire last summer when Israel was bombing Beirut and many other locales in Lebanon.
The BBC summarized Bolton’s comments: “A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.”
Bolton said it was “perfectly legitimate and good politics” for Israel to seek to crush Hezbollah. The fact that the Israelis used U.S. bombs to wreak death and destruction throughout Lebanon is apparently irrelevant. More than a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed by the Israeli government, with the Bush team cheering on each detonation.
AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in DC, bragged of its role in blocking any ceasefire. (A good critique of AIPAC’s role in the Lebanon carnage is here). ...
Bolton admits Lebanon truce block | Thursday, 22 March 2007,
A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah's military capability.
Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".
He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel's campaign wasn't working. ...
...
Mr Bolton now describes it as "perfectly legitimate... and good politics" for the Israelis to seek to defeat their enemy militarily, especially as Hezbollah had attacked Israel first and it was acting "in its own self-defence".
Mr Bolton, a controversial and blunt-speaking figure, said he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
...
More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed in the conflict.
Israel lost 116 soldiers in the fighting, while 43 of its civilians were killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.
