[antiwar-van] Robert Fisk: Bush speech.

[givara gaza]

I wonder why Bush doesn't let Sharon run his press
office
Robert Fisk
The Independent, UK
26 June 2002

Put your flak jackets on, President George Bush has
spoken. He wants a
regime change in Palestine, just as he wants a regime
change in Iraq. He
reads the Israeli government press handouts and
accurately quotes them to
his American people.

Ariel Sharon, wants the
destruction/liquidation/resignation of Yasser
Arafat. So does Mr Bush. "Peace requires a new and
different Palestinian
leadership so a Palestinian state can be born," Bush
told the fearful
American people, waiting for the next apocalypse, be
it on 4 July or after.

So, no Palestinian state unless Arafat goes. There
were no Bush conditions
for Israel. He did not secure an end to the continuing
building of Jewish
settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab (that is
somebody else's) land.
Nor did he secure a halt to continuing Israeli
military "incursions"  how I
love that word "incursions".

Mr Sharon, in his highly mendacious demand for
Palestinian "'transparency",
has demanded Palestinian reform must be neither
cosmetic nor an attempt to
preserve Arafat. And what does Mr Bush say? Why, that
Palestinian reform
"must be more than cosmetic changes or a veiled
attempt to preserve the
status quo".

Why, I wonder, doesn't Mr Bush let Ariel Sharon run
the White House press
bureau? Not only would it be more honest  we would at
least be hearing the
voice of Israel at first hand  but it would spare the
American President the
ignominy of parroting everything he is told by the
Israelis.

All that he offers to the Palestinians is a ghastly
mockery of what the
Palestinians are told to do by the Israelis.

There never has been an "interim" state, let alone a
"provisional" state.
These are fantasies of the Israelis and Mr Bush. White
House "officials"  we
can guess who they are  believe a Palestinian state
can be "achieved" within
18 months. Let's forget international law provides for
no such entity.

Let's go over again that most crucial  and most
dishonest  part of the Bush
statement.

"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new
institutions and new
security arrangements with their neighbours," he told
us, "the United States
of America will support the creation of a Palestinian
state, whose border
and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be
provisional until resolved as
part of a final settlement in the Middle East." Let's
see what this means:
when the Palestinians have elected a leader whom the
Israelis want  a
condition that could go on to the crack of doom  the
Americans will support
a Palestinian state whose very existence will mean
nothing unless Israel
approves what that state wants to do.

In other words, the United States will be Israel's
spokesman in any
negotiations. A growing number of Americans know they
are being suckered by
their own government and their own press, that their
country's foreign
policy is being manipulated to give maximum support to
one  and only one
country in the Middle East. So will "certain aspects
of its sovereignty".
Note these weighty words. "Certain aspects" of its
sovereignty.

What, I wonder, does this mean? Do these "certain
aspects" include the
continuation of illegal Jewish settlement building? Or
the absence of any
international guarantees for this interim/provisional
state? Or perhaps a
get-out clause for the United States to wash its hands
of the whole shebang
if Israel decides to annex the entire West Bank?

Note, again, the weasel words. Palestine's borders
will be "provisional ...
until resolved as part of a final settlement in the
Middle East". Yet never
before has an occupied people been led by so pathetic
a person as Yasser
Arafat. Nineteen years ago, this same Yasser Arafat
swore to me  on a
hilltop above the Lebanese city of Tripoli  that his
"Palestine" would be "a
democracy among the guns". His Palestine, he told me,
would be unlike any
other Arab state. There would be no secret policemen,
no "regime", no
cronyism, no corruption.

Fast forward to the spring of 1998. I am listening to
a French diplomat who
has returned from Gaza. He and his delegation carried
a personal letter to
Arafat from President Chirac. Again and again, Arafat
disregarded the
letter, only interested in when the new French school
in Gaza will open. The
diplomats understand. One of Arafat's relatives will
be the headmistress of
this school. Family before nation. The Chirac letter
stays unopened.

Yes, as Nabil Shaath, one of the most loyal  and most
obsequious  of
Arafat's ministers, says, "a state is a state, and you
cannot be
provisionally pregnant and you cannot have a
provisional state". It might
have been wiser  and more honest  if he had reminded
us that the CIA trained
the gunmen and intelligence thugs who worked for
Arafat; if he had outlined
the imprisonment and torture that Arafat inflicted on
his Palestinian
opponents with the complicity of those who supported
the "peace process".

For it is becoming ever more obvious that Arafat did
not fail in his duties
as Palestinian leader. He failed in his duties as
Israel's  and thus
America's  proxy colonial apparatchik in the West Bank
and Gaza. The fact he
is a corrupt little despot does not change this.

He was given time to prove his loyalty to the West, to
America, to Israel.
He was supposed to have made Israel's settlements both
safe and sacred.

Now, when he can no longer control the people he was
supposed to control
remember the BBC's repeated question: "Can he control
his own people?"  his
usefulness is at an end. He must go, to be replaced by
our choice of leader
forget elections  who will be as democratic as the new
Afghan "interim"
government.

George Bush insulted the Palestinians and enraged the
leadership of the Arab
world. Who cares about the latter? Most of them were
appointed by us. But I
have a feeling that the Palestinians will not accept
this nonsense.



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