[WCUSP] Israel seems determined to dig its own grave.

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

"...the United States, is bogged  down in an unwinnable war, waged in large 
part because Israel's American  friends, the Washington neo-conservatives, 
thought that if America smashed Iraq,  Israel would no longer have anything to 
fear from the east. It could then  continue its West Bank land-grab and its 
destruction of Palestinian society  without risking any serious Arab reaction...
"The neo-cons are now pressing hard for a U.S. war  against Iran, as if 
unaware that the long-suffering American public is  increasingly uneasy about their 
country being dragged into distant and costly  wars on Israel's behalf."
---------------

Israel Seems Determined to Dig  its own Grave

Patrick Seale
Al-Hayat 
22/06/07
_http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/contributors/06-2007/Article-20070622-5
37a929a-c0a8-10ed-01b1-6996ee6d515a/story.html_ 
(http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/contributors/06-2007/Article-20070622-537a929a-c0a8-10ed-01b1-6996ee6
d515a/story.html) 

What would it take to persuade Israel to rethink its  attitude towards its 
Arab neighbours - and primarily towards the Palestinians?  The Hamas victory in 
Gaza is surely a clear signal that an Israeli change of  direction is urgently 
needed. 

All Israel's efforts to break the  democratically-elected Hamas government 
have failed. Its policies of boycott,  siege and starvation, of bombing and 
shelling, of extra-judicial murder, of  withholding tax revenues, of the 
systematic destruction of Palestinian  institutions have served only to create a 
time-bomb of hunger, despair and  defiance on Israel's flank.

Yet  Israel appears to have learned nothing. Instead of seeking peace with 
the Arabs  - instead of seizing their outstretched hand - it persists in 
rejecting all  peace overtures, preferring to rely on force and still more force, and 
on its  ability to manipulate its American ally.

In Washington this week, Israel's Prime Minister  Ehud Olmert managed to 
abort a tentative American initiative to restart  Israeli-Palestinian 
negotiations. He persuaded George W Bush - a President  painfully out of his depth in 
Middle East politics -- that this was not the time  for peace talks with either 
the Palestinians or the  Syrians.


The appointment as  Israel's new defence minister of Ehud Barak, a former 
prime minister and chief  of staff, who defines his primary task as restoring 
Israel's deterrent  capability, is another ominous sign that wars rather than 
peace talks lie  ahead.

Israeli sources report that  Barak will not admit, even in private, that he 
made some mistakes in 1999-2000  when, as prime minister, he missed the chance 
of peace with both the Palestinian  leader Yasser Arafat and the Syrian leader 
Hafez al-Assad. This is a bad start  for a man who is likely to play a 
prominent role in Israeli politics in the  months and years ahead.

Condoleezza Rice, the unfortunate U.S. Secretary  of State whom some had 
thought was planning a new push for Arab-Israeli talks,  has clearly been 
outgunned by pro-Israeli hawks, such as Elliott Abrams at the  National Security 
Council.

The  word from Washington is that combating 'terror' remains the U.S.-Israeli 
 priority. President Mahmud Abbas, who rules courtesy of the IDF and the 
settlers  over three or four beleaguered Bantustans on the West Bank, has been 
instructed  to join the war against his Palestinian brothers, if he is to earn a 
few crumbs  from the rich man's table.

To most  independent observers it seems plain that Israel's cruel, aggressive 
and  expansionist policies have resulted in a steady deterioration in its 
strategic  environment.  It has acquired, or rather created, enemies on several 
fronts  - Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, large numbers of dispossessed, 
brutalized  and radicalized Palestinians eking out a living in refugee camps, 
Syria to the  north, Iran not much further away, and radical groups such as 
Al-Qaida in many  other places reflecting the angry mood of much of the Arab and 
Muslim  world.

Some other trends should  cause Israeli alarm bells to ring. Educated 
European opinion is increasingly  outraged by Israel's behavior; meanwhile the Arabs 
are getting better educated,  better armed, and far, far richer than ever 
before; and soaring Arab  demographics are producing tens of thousands, perhaps 
hundreds of thousands, of  potential recruits for the asymetric wars which 
Israel is ill-prepared to fight  but which seem to be the pattern of the future.

If this were not enough, the trend to which Israel  should perhaps pay the 
greatest attention is that its main ally, the United  States, is bogged down in 
an unwinnable war, waged in large part because  Israel's American friends, the 
Washington neo-conservatives, thought that if  America smashed Iraq, Israel 
would no longer have anything to fear from the  east. It could then continue 
its West Bank land-grab and its destruction of  Palestinian society without 
risking any serious Arab reaction.

The  neo-cons are now pressing hard for a U.S. war against Iran, as if 
unaware that  the long-suffering American public is increasingly uneasy about their 
country  being dragged into distant and costly wars on Israel's behalf.

So, is Israel rethinking its strategies? There is  no sign of it. It refuses 
to see that the regional balance of power may be  changing. It continues to 
believe that it can uproot Hizballah in Lebanon and  Hamas in Gaza, and defeat 
Syria and Iran - or get the U.S. to do the job on its  behalf.

To avoid peace talks which might  involve ceding territory, it continues to 
depict Hamas as a 'terrorist  organization' bent on Israel's destruction, 
thereby resorting to the well-worn  trick of saying, 'How can you negotiate with 
someone who wants to kill  you?'

Is Hamas, in fact, a  terrorist organization or is it a legitimate resistance 
movement to occupation  and oppression? The Americans have swallowed the 
terrorist line and so has the  timid and cowardly European Union, although several 
of its members now regret  it.

Hamas certainly carried out suicide attacks against Israeli civilians  during 
the second intifada beginning in 2000, which would qualify it for the  
terrorist label. But then, during that intifada, Israel killed more than four  times 
as many Palestinians as Hamas and other groups killed  Israelis.

More recently, in the 16 months from Hamas's election victory  in January 
2006 to April 2007, Israel killed 712 Palestinians, including many  children, 
while in the same period the Palestinians killed 29 Israelis (IDF and  
civilians). If terrorism is defined as the killing of innocent civilians for  political 
ends, which of the two qualifies as the bigger  terrorist?

Does Hamas want to  destroy Israel? No doubt it would like to, in much the 
same way as Israel would  like to destroy it. But emotions are one thing, 
policies are another. Hamas is  now busy restoring law and order in Gaza. It is 
disarming the gangs which lived  on extortion and blackmail (such as the Daghmush 
gang which is holding the BBC  correspondent Alan Johnston). And it is seeing 
to the immediate needs of the  sorely-tried population of 1.4m, densely-packed 
in a small territory which  Israel has turned into the world's largest 
outdoor prison. 

This is what Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime  minister and now the effective 
ruler of Gaza, told the French newspaper Le  Figaro last weekend:


'Our programme is clear. We seek the  creation of a Palestinian state within 
the frontiers of 1967: that is to say  in Gaza and the West Bank, with East 
Jerusalem as its capital. The PLO remains  in charge of negotiations on this 
point. We undertake to respect all past  agreements signed by the Palestinian 
Authority. We would like to see the  introduction of a reciprocal, global and 
simultaneous truce with  Israel.'


Would that Ehud Olmert or any of his colleagues said anything as  sensible! 
Instead, Israel is planning to continue, even to intensify, its policy  of 
sealing off the Gaza strip. As Tsipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, told  EU 
foreign ministers in Luxembourg last Monday, 'We should take advantage of the  
[West Bank-Gaza] split to the end.  It differentiates between the moderates  
and the extremists.' She urged the ministers to continue to isolate Hamas while  
easing the pressure on Fatah by ending the 15-month financial boycott of the  
West Bank. But will this be enough to save Mahmud Abbas? Can a policy of 
feeding  the West Bank while starving Gaza succeed?



It does not seem likely. Israel's security  establishment will not agree to 
remove the hundreds of road blocks which make  Palestinian life a misery. 
Israel's powerful settler movement will not agree to  freeze settlements, let alone 
remove them. And Israel's political leaders will  move heaven and earth to 
avoid negotiating peace with the Arabs on the basis of  the 1967 borders.

As a result,  Mahmud Abbas will move into ever greater illegality and will be 
seen more and  more as a Quisling; Fatah will continue its terminal decline; 
and Israel and its  neighbours will be doomed to decades more of violence and 
war.  As an acute  observer remarked to me this week, 'The Middle East today 
is like Europe on the  eve of the Great War of 1914-18. It needs only a spark 
to set the whole region  on fire.'  



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