Bush should stop the sliding of roadmap into reverse gear Mustapha Karkouti

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Bush should stop the sliding of roadmap into reverse gear

Mustapha Karkouti

Gulf News, 26-08-2003

The United States President, George Walker Bush, told the world at Aqaba summit he was bringing peace to the Middle East. His words were conveniently fitting as they were uttered immediately after his administration's "victory" in Iraq.

We were led to believe that by declaring the Quartet's roadmap, the president was introducing a political solution to the Israel-Palestine problem. But sadly, we are back to square one as the Bush administration seems to be backing the military solution which the Israeli government has been trying to enforce on the Palestinians since Ariel Sharon was voted in, in 2001.

By upholding the roadmap, we naïvely thought that Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had triumphed over the narrow-minded school of thoughts of neoconservative form of extremism within the administration. At last, we sensed the Bush government had recognised that the problem in Palestine is ultimately one of occupation, rather than security.

But alas, how wrong we have been. Since the Aqaba summit we have seen only more bloodshed, increased tension and further destabilisation.

Mockery

The situation as it currently stands makes mockery of Bush's promises and makes the summit look more a platform to launch Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian government, than to launch a peace process.

If you ask Palestinians in the Occupied Territories or in the Diaspora, no one expects Israel voluntarily to give up the West Bank and Gaza, despite the fine words of George Bush and the roadmap about the "imminence" of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Judging from the U.S. administration's reaction to last week's cycle of violence, both Palestinian and Israeli, it's absolutely clear now where the blame is directed. The only words we hear coming from Washington are that Abbas' Government has to do more to eliminate "terror and terrorist organisations."

Nobody is talking about the terror inflicted on the Palestinians by Sharon's government. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) succeeded, on June 29, in introducing a "hudna" (ceasefire, truce) which the militants Hamas and Islamic Jihad adhered to.

Despite the failed Israeli attempt to assassinate a Hamas political leader, Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi, a public relations man - which was intended to destroy Abu Mazen's efforts to establish the hudna - Hamas signed the truce.

Contrary to Sharon's desire, the Palestinian National Authority government of Abu Mazen produced a political solution to the militants' question who had agreed to ceasefire, expecting in return Israeli withdrawal from Occupied Palestinian towns, freezing - if not dismantling - Jewish settlements and freeing political prisoners from Israeli jails.

Instead, the combined Israeli task forces carried on till the horrific Jerusalem suicide bombing, last Tuesday, resulted in killing 20 militant Palestinians and injuring more than 50 civilians, demolishing tens of houses and confiscating more Palestinian land.

After the Tuesday bombing, the entire PNA government approve a plan to apprehend all militants responsible for such attacks and start a comprehensive operation of collecting weapons from militant organisations.

Instead of giving Abu Mazen's government the opportunity to prove whether it meant business, Israel's veracious military was unleashed and resulted in killing three Hamas activists while driving in their civilian car in Gaza.

One of the victims was Ismail Abu Shanab, one of Hamas' most moderate political leaders who was instrumental in getting his movement to endorse the hudna. Abu Shanab was also leading Hamas delegation to the truce talks sponsored by the Egyptian leadership.

It has to be realised that no government in Palestine, no matter how docile it is, can ever deliver the solution the Bush and Sharon governments require. Such a government cannot survive a day with the continuous misery, desperation, deprivation and impoverishment that the Palestinian population are facing on a daily basis.

Many of the ongoing difficulties in trying to achieve peace in the Middle East in general and Palestine in particular, are due not least to Israel's colonies expansion but also the horrific living conditions for Palestinians under curfews, checkpoints and closures.

Despite these conditions the Palestinians have generously given the three-month ceasefire agreement ample opportunity for it to work.

But, sadly, the Israeli government has rewarded them and their government with practices that have reduced Palestinian life to an almost meaningless existence and false hopes.

The Israeli wall, unstoppably erected, for instance, will only worsen the situation, cutting land from people, families from families, and a people from their freedom.

If the wall is about security why is it being built exclusively on Palestinian land, cutting up the West Bank, rather than on Israeli land? And when Israel releases 340 Palestinian prisoners out of 6,500, just over 150 of whom were illegally held without trial, all that is happening is that they are being moved into the large open-air prisons, which are Gaza or the West Bank.

They, like all Palestinians under occupation, cannot leave, travel, work, vote, hold a passport, and face the fear of Israeli invasions and incursions that have ransacked Palestinians cities, towns and villages.

For peace, Sharon needs to release 3.5 million Palestinians from captivity by ending the occupation. And if Bush is serious enough about his own peace plan, he should encourage the Israeli government in this direction.

The writer is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London. He can be contacted at mkarkouti@gulfnews.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).