Tuesday, December 31, 2002

US hoodwinking the world

PV VIVEKANAND


ALONG WITH the growing certainty of a US-led war against Iraq, it is becoming abundantly clear that Washington would be a fighting the war partly for Israel as much as for driving a deep stake of military control in the Gulf region that would suit its strategic interests, primarily in the international oil market.
US officials doing the rounds through the Middle East ahead of the possible war against Iraq have been known to have promised Arab leaders that Washington needs to take care of the Iraq crisis -- that is of American making in the first place in any case -- before turning the wagon to Palestine.
There is as much substance in the American pronouncements that the US is seeking a fair and just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as in there is life in the Dead Sea. The Bush administration's promises that it would get around to serious efforts to just, fair, comprehensive and durable peace in Palestine after it takes care of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad ring hollow since its track record speaks otherwise.
Indeed, the US wants to see peace in Palestine but only at Israel's terms, and that would little semblance of justice, fairness, comprehensiveness or durability.
The shape of peace that the US favours is designed by Israel, and the clearest indication of that came is in the added emphasis in the "revised road map" of the Quartet on the conditions it imposes on the Palestinians by insisting that they end their resistance against occupation while demanding little from Israel.
No doubt, US President George W Bush will definitely seek to settle the crisis in Palestine after the war on Iraq, but the outcome of the American effort would be a peace agreement being forced down the Palestinian throat, with the Arab World and the international community unable to step in and help rectify the lopsidedness.
It is a different story whether the Palestinians would accept any Israeli-designed peace, and Washington should know it better than anyone. But then it has not diluted Washington's hoodwinking assertions.
In the meantime, the sole Middle Eastern beneficiary from sought-for removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, coupled with the installation of a US-friendly (read US-controlled) regime in Baghdad, would be Israel.
For the US, a successful war would open the door for gaining absolute control of Iraq, with all that it entails -- including a base for its military in the region without being held answerable to anyone and the strategic prize of Iraq's oil wealth at its disposal.
That is not to underplay the immense dangers facing the US military in Iraq and prospects of a protracted conflict there that would put off any prospects of peace in Palestine and would only worsen the continuing cycle of violence there.
For Israel, Iraq would cease to be a source of military threat as Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and others go around executing their sinister designs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region, including Syria and Lebanon.
As such, there is indeed deceptive substance in American claims that "the road to Arab-Israeli peace will go through Baghdad," with the only difference being the conflicting interpretation of what fair, just and durable peace means.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who recently visited the Middle East and met Sharon, told a Chicago audience upon his return home: "Military force alone will neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle East."
According to Hagel, Sharon admitted as much in a private conversation with Hagel and other members of the US Congress that the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Why would Sharon hold Saddam as his arch enemy?
There are many reasons indeed. It was under Saddam that Iraq had tried to develop its nuclear programmes before Israel bombed out the country's nuclear research plant in Baghdad in 1981; Iraq has a track record of taking part in every Arab-Israeli war; its army has acquired better combat skills than any other Arab country from the 1980-88 war with Iran; Saddam refuses to recognise Israel and openly supports and even funds Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.
Many Arab political observers entertain the notion that the machinations towards a war against Iraq would be frozen if Saddam declares in public today that he recognises the state of Israel and is ready to deal with it. That might indeed be stretching the issue too far at this point in time, but that the idea exists in the Arab mind highlights the perception that the US would be removing a major thorn on Israel's side by ousting Saddam.
Concrete signs of the US moves in the Middle East are largely Israel-centric have also been given by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has been going around Capitol Hill meetings maintaining that Lebanon's Hizbollah and not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the most dangerous "terrorist" organisation and needs to be taken care of. It was as if Sharon had moved in and was speaking up.
Rice has no explanation to offer when confronted with the question that Hizbollah has no recent record of taking part in any action outside the region or mounting attacks against any government except that of Israel.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, pointed out in a recent interview that "outside this fight [against Israel], we have done nothing." Indeed, the group's anti-US rhetoric is fierce and bitter but that comes in the context of Washington's unreserved support for Israel.
Against the reality that Israel lives in perpetual fear of Hizbollah, which forced an end to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Rice's unfounded claim is nothing but a reflection that the US is being manipulated by Israel and American gunsights could turn to Hizbollah after Iraq - meaning that Bush's war against terrorism is also being redesigned to fit Israel.

Friday, December 06, 2002

Israel and world domination

PV Vivekanand

IT IS irony at its peak that Israel is seeking to add to its hi-tech arsenal deployed in its ruthless campaign to wipe out Palestinian resistance, skilfully forcing others into a position of being taken for granted that its annihilation of the Palestinian people has become business as usual.
A classic case has come up with Israel applying pressure on Germany to provide advanced armoured personnel carriers.
The relationship between Germany and Israel has always been characterised by Israel's blatant exploitation of the Germans' feeling of "guilt" over its Nazi past. Indeed, Israel has never wasted an opportunity to capitalise on what it has established as "European collective guilt for the Holocaust," but Germany had been singled out for "special treatment." Never mind that Israelis are engaged in Nazi-like practices against the Palestinians.
That is only one piece of a larger picture where Israel has consistently been successful in manipulating the elements available to it through a powerful propaganda machinery that functions round the clock, exploiting every opportunity to advance Israeli interests with no niceties and compromises.
It was no wonder that Germany was one of the main benefactors of Israel for several decades. Germany was also the first country to send its foreign minister to Israel with a cheque for $150 million and an offer of anti-missle missiles when the first Iraqi Scud landed in Tel Aviv after the US launched the Gulf war in 1991. It was a reflection of Germany's Israeli-nurtured sentiment that the long-persecuted Jews were in mortal danger of annihilation in their newfound home.
This time around also, Germany has agreed to provide US-built Patriot missiles to Israel if Iraq launches Scud missiles against it as during the 1991 war, and indeed Israel is bidding for the best of what it could get from the Germans since it knows well the German generocity might not linger for much longer.
The Berlin government cut off direct financial aid to Israel in the mid-90s when such assistance became incompatible with the base parameters adopted by the Germans: the per capita income in Israel broke the $15,000 ceiling set by Germany for recipients of direct financial assistance.
In all probability, the German sense of "guilt" would not last beyond this generation, and Israel is out to make hay. But we are faced with an immediate situation where the international community is growing accustomed to accepting Israel's use of massive military power against the Palestinians as a way of life in Palestine.
The Israeli request for German-made Fuchs armoured vehicles is a classic case of such exploitation, but it is an open challenge to German laws which ban supply of military equipment to countries involved in armed conflict. Israel has stepped up pressure on the German government to ensure that the request is granted.
Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, has the audacity to tell the Germans that he could not assure them that the APCs would not be used in Israel's brutal military oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Indeed, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder might find it immediately difficult t meet the Israeli demand for Fuchs APCs, particularly that the pacifist-oriented Greens, junior partners in the coalition, oppose the move.
However, Katsav's comments were very telling and seemed based on confidence that Israel would be able to circumvent the Greens' objections.
He said Israel would be "very disappointed" if the German answer was no. "As we usually have very good relations, I hope we will find an agreement in this matter," he said.
While the statement could mean sincerity if it was made in good faith, we know that no Israeli leader is known for good faith promises, and, as such, it is a clear affirmation that the APCs would indeed be deployed against the Palestinians.
It is not a good faith situation either; Israel has not baulked at using US-made F-15 fighter/bombers and British-made heavy tanks as well as almost every weapon in its arsenal -- save massive nuclear, chemical and biological arms -- against the Palestinians. It has made no apology to the US or the UK although "end-usage" stipulations related to the supply of military hardware bans such use. But then neither the US nor the UK has exactly been very concerned about the issue as if they could not care less if Israeli blew up the entire West Bank and Gaza -- along with the Palestinians there -- into smithereens. Britain has even started supplying hi-tech electronic gear to be fitted in F-16 fighter/bombers to be supplied by the US to Israel with little regard to any consideration that F-16s are regularly used in Israel's war to annihilate the Palestinian peole; most notable of such use was when Israel dropped a one-tonne bomb in a Gaza neighbourhood that killed 16 people, most of them children, two months ago.
There is a common theme to the Israeli and Palestinian situations with Germany and Britain in that order: If anyone accepts that the Germans has a "historical" responsibility to rally behind Israel, then it should also be noted in equally strong terms that the colonial British government was directly responsible for the plight facing the Palestinians today. The Palestinian problem is a direct result of a British conspiracy with the world Zionist movement that dates back to the turn of the century that led to the creation of the Jewish state in the land of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people who lived there in their ancestral land.
Indeed, it is the inability of the Palestinians that they could not implant in Britain the same sense of guilt as Israel has done with Germany. Then again, few in the Arab World have ever managed to do a successful public relations exercise in the West by skilfully using realities and the various elements and extensions of arguments to benefit them. It could be argued that the Israeli propaganda and public relations machinery is so effective that the Arab exercises simply bounce off the West; simply put, it has been a high-stake political battle of wits that the Arabs have lost.
The growing dispute between the United Nations and Israel after the death of at three UN employees, including a Britain who was deliberately shot and killed last month, is just another example of the high state of alert that the Israeli machinery maintains. At any given point in time, Israel has the answers -- never mind their justifiability -- and it has learnt to use them effectively.
The UN, which has censured Israel for the killings, now finds itself at the receiving end of allegations that UN vehicles were being used to transport Palestinians heading for bombing operations within the occupied territories and beyond the 1967 green line.
Israel has jacked up the allegations, which it says are based on intelligence findings, by imposing restrictions on the movement of UN vehicles in the occupied West Bank, and now the world body finds itself cornered into defending itself against the charges rather than being in a position to demand that UN personnel be spared from Israeli assaults and gunfire.
That the level of degeneration that the UN has been forced into by Israel, and, sure enough, without a concerted long-term Arab movement backed by friends of the Arab World, Israel would soon clear the last laps in its race to be in a position to call the shots anywhere in any situation -- the ultimate realisation of the Zionist dream for world domination.