The factors conspiring to prolong and perpetuate the Arab-Israeli conflict are pretty obvious.
Periods of relative calm on the Palestinian side, with a reduction in resistance activities, are usually met with heightened Israeli state terrorism ­ accompanied by boasts of how measures adopted by the Israeli government and army are achieving results. This, of course, is extremely provocative to the Palestinians. And so the cycle begins anew.
It is also noticeable that at least some Palestinian resistance operations are carried out according to a political agenda that coincides with any resumption of negotiations, or in anticipation of international resolutions on the Palestine question.
This was seen most recently in Gaza. It has been proven that with the July 23 massacre his army perpetrated in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was deliberately trying to sabotage a European-mediated agreement between Israel and the Palestinians designed to stop attacks against Israeli civilians and facilitate implementation of the two-state solution envisaged by US President George W. Bush.
There is also another factor in perpetuating the cycle of violence: revenge. Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of sleeping women and children prompted Hamas to call off its plans for a moratorium on suicide attacks, and to declare instead that henceforth all Israelis, anywhere, would become targets of guerrilla operations.
It is impossible to achieve peace in the midst of such a vicious cycle of violence. Yet ­ theoretically at least ­ violence should not rule out peace talks. Reality is different. In reality, violence by both the Israeli government and some Palestinian factions has succeeded in undermining peace negotiations, to the benefit of the enemies of peace on both sides.
The impasse has led many to believe that a just peace arrangement must be worked out by outside parties and then imposed on the belligerents. Which is where Bush’s proposals come in. His June 24 Middle East policy speech provided the broad outlines of a settlement, but it failed to provide precise territorial and political details. It thus left the door open to interpretation by the various sides to the conflict.
Bush’s proposals gave the belligerents the impression that the application of force would improve their respective positions. This conclusion does not conflict with what the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia said after their July 17 meeting with Bush. The ministers declared that the US president was politically correct in calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state ­ but only if his conditions were implemented.
It is an undeniable fact that the political earthquake that shook Washington on Sept. 11 has tied the president’s hands on the Middle East. He now has to placate the Jewish lobby and the American right wing by imposing tough conditions on the Palestinians and Arabs in exchange for any settlement he might offer. He is also compelled to give the Israeli right a free hand (as well as full backing) in suppressing the Palestinians in exchange for the Israelis not objecting to his peace proposals. Sharon has never agreed to Bush’s vision of a Palestinian state. In fact, his government does not have a coherent plan for peace at all.
In other words, the Palestinians are required to make the concessions demanded by Bush as a prelude to those that Israel will require later. In the meantime, they must tolerate Israeli state terrorism without resistance.
In this context, a number of basic facts are ignored, leading to more deaths and only serving the objectives of the far right in America and Israel.
Now that the Arabs have finally come round to accepting the principle of peace that Israel used to look forward to, they find that the goal posts have been moved. The reality of Israeli occupation is being watered down and replaced by new definitions and conditions for a peace agreement that has nothing to do with territory. In other words, the very idea of withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967 is being eroded.
The forces of peace in Israel, the United States and Palestine carry no weight anymore in a decision-making process that has been hijacked by Sharon with the backing of influential quarters in the Bush administration. The president and his secretary of state, Colin Powell, find themselves having to compete with the right by making more and more demands of the Palestinians (to submit, change their leadership, etc.) and of the Arabs (to play a part in the settlement and to normalize relations with Israel even before a settlement is reached).
A vicious hidden struggle is going on between the Israeli-American right on the one hand, and Arab leaderships on the other. This struggle is over replacing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat under the pretext of democracy and reform. It has to be said, though, that other than holding elections, Israel is totally alien to democracy. Demanding that the Palestinians refrain from electing a certain person as leader cannot be seen as democracy.
If Washington pressures the Palestinians and Arabs to embrace genuine democracy now, the results will go against it and the peace process. The Americans know this, and that is why they are demanding Arafat’s replacement. They want to set a precedent that they can subsequently use against any Arab leader who dares to disobey the wishes of the American-Israeli right.
After Arafat, it will be Saddam Hussein’s turn, and so on.
Arafat did not come to office with the 99 percent majority that seems to be the norm in the Arab world. Nevertheless, “peacemaker” Sharon and “democracy champion” Bush prefer to overthrow Arafat rather than reform the Palestinian Authority.
Another obscured fact is that the free and democratic world has largely chosen to ignore the catastrophic Israeli violations of Palestinian rights. Israel has not been threatened with sanctions. The world has not even seen fit to send aid to the Palestinians, who have been afflicted with a 35-year-old Israeli occupation and a leadership imposed on them by Oslo.
The issue is no longer one of Israel exerting short-term pressure to persuade the Palestinians to accept the principle of peace ­ as Israel has alleged over the last 35 years in order to justify its use of terror. Three out of every four Palestinians are now unemployed; the only jobs are to be found in the security services, the media, and international aid organizations. More than half the Palestinian population is suffering from malnutrition. Education has been disrupted. Other public services such as healthcare are bankrupt and paralyzed. The industrial, agricultural and fishing sectors are at a standstill. These catastrophes and more are all direct results of the Israeli occupation.
We are not talking of
indirect consequences, such as the fact that Israel has lost $5 billion as a result
of the intifada. If the Palestinians choose to calculate their losses this way, they would discover that they have lost more than $50 billion since 1967 as a result of Israel stealing only their water resources.
The Palestinians are victims of racist policies. Israel is inflicting Nazi-style collective punishment on every Palestinian individual, family, city, town, village and refugee camp. Israel is violating most, if not all, international conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians. Nevertheless, no power is prepared to punish Israel or end the occupation ­ nor is any power prepared to support Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

Abdeljabbar Adwan, a Palestinian analyst, wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

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