Mideast - an overview

pv vivekanand

IF ANYONE thinks things could not get any worse than
what they are today in the Middle East — the crises in
Palestine and Iraq being the most critical — then the
thinking has to be reviewed. The reasons are very
clear, and I'd try to simplify them here:

Palestine: No compromise ever

The key to starting to solve the Palestinian problem
is for Israel to accept the legitimate rights of the
Palestinans to set up an independent state in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip —  the territories Israel
occupied in the 1967 war. Groups like Hamas and
Islamic Jihad which call for the total elimination of
the state of israel would gradually come around to
accepting that they could not regain the whole of
Palestine as it existed in 1948 and have to accept the
1967 lines. There are enough political indications
that there are enough forces in both groups which tend
to think that way and influence their actions.
But Israel, which is ready to withdraw from Gaza if
only because the coastal strip is the most problematic
to be kept under occupation, will never give up the
West Bank for a Palestinian state to be created there.
As far as Israel is concerned the entire land between
the Mediterranen Sea and the River Jordan is land that
God "promised" to the Jews. Therefore, any solution
that entails surrendering the territory for a
Palestinian state is totally out of question for
Israelis. Furthermore, the Palestinian demand for Arab
East Jerusalem touches upon the very core of Jewish
religious sentiments because of what the Jews consider
as the remnants of Solomon's Temple there which they
want to rebuild.
The best Israel will accept, whether under Ariel
Sharon or any other prime minister, is to grant the
Palestinians "autonomy" in parts of the West Bank
where Jewish settlements do not exist while the
Israeli army will retain absolute control of the
entire land and its exit and entry points as well as
access roads linking Palestinian towns.
Israel will allow the Palestinians to clean streets of
their towns, collect local taxes, run schools and
hospitals, and maintain death, birth and marriage
records. Nothing beyond that.
Israel will never accept the Palestinian demand that
those Palestinians who lost their homes and were
forced to flee their land during the 1948 war
following the creation of Israel and who now live as
refugees should be allowed to return home. Their
return, as far as Israel is concerned, will totally
negate the very concept of the Jewish state. The homes
and land that the Palestinian refugee wish to return
to are now in Israel proper and are inhabited by Jews.

The Palestinians will not accept any of these Israeli
positions at whatever cost, and hence the war of
resistance will only be intensified with no end in
sight as long as Israel maintains its position (which
no Israeli leader would be able to change anyway).
Thousands of Palestinians are standing ready to be
human bombs ready to sacrifice themselves in the
struggle for freedom, and no Israeli security measure
could check a determined fighter ready to blow himself
up.

Iraq: US will never quit

A review of the situation in Iraq also indicates a
deadlock when we consider the considerations behind
the US decision to wage war and occupy the country.
American policy in the Middle East has always been
based on three priorities: Energy security, Israeli
security and regional stability based on alliance with
countries in the region. On all three counts, it is
essential that the US maintains its military presence
in Iraq and ensure that an "America-friendly" regime
is running the country in a manner that serves US
interests
The key to starting to solve the crisis in Iraq is to
have the UN take over administration of the war-torn
country with absolute authority, with enough military
force to keep peace and enough funds to restore basic
infrastructure while the rest of the financial
requirement will come from exports of Iraqi oil.
The UN could administer Iraq for a predetermined
period during which it could help build a democratic
political system and then hand over sovereignty to the
people of Iraq.
Although it sounds simple, it is too complex.
Handing over Iraq to be run by the UN contradicts the
very objective of the United States, which led the
invasion and occupation of that country on the pretext
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
and was linked to Al Qaeda.
The US wants to set up a military base in Iraq to keep
watch over the region and to intervene whenever it
feels its interests are challenged. It wants absolute
control of Iraq's oil resources to not only to benefit
American oil companies but also to ensure its own
energy security.
It has already neutralised Iraq as a potential threat
to Israel's designs in the region but wants to ensure
that the situation remains that way.
On the third count, the US finds that it could no
longer count on its traditional allies such as Saudi
Arabia to maintain regional stability as Amerca's
friends. The US got its biggest jolt when it found
that 15 of the Sept.11, 2001 hijackers were Saudi
nationals and it warranted a new thinking. And it
explains why the US moved its military bases to Qatar
from Saudi Arabia last year. The American fears were
further heightened with the extremist attacks in Saudi
Arabia in the last one year and the rising
anti-American sentiments in the kingdom. Therefore,
the US has to remain in Iraq in order to ensure
regional stability to serve its interests since it
feels that it could no longer rely on regional
countries to do so.
Finally, the invasion and occupation of Iraq is very
much corporate oriented. Apart from the billions of
dollars that American private contractors are
collecting for their missions in post-war Iraq,
American oil companies, traditional bankrollers of US
politicians, also stand to gain tens of billions of
dollars from the Iraqi oil industry. Any move by the
Bush administration or its possible Kerry successor
to quit Iraq would be politically disasterous.
Quite simply, a departure from Iraq is not even
thinkable for the US. It would only pour in more
military firepower to overcome Iraqi resistance and
get more bogged down in the quagmire.

The overall picture

The crises in Palestine and Iraq would never be solved
without a dramatic volte-face in priorities, policy,
approach and strategies of the occupiers, Israel and
the US. However, such a shift is next to impossible.
Controlling Palestine in absolute terms is too crucial
for Israel to even consider accepting the Palestinian
rights to set up an independent state in the West Bank
just as maintaining its stranglehold on Iraq is
crucial to Washington's quest for global dominance,
politically, financially and militarily.
Both Israel and the US believe that the answer to
their respective problems is military force. They are
not willing to consider that freedom struggles could
not be put down through the barrel of guns and that
the occupier has to bow out at some point, sooner or
later.
They are ready to sacrifice whatever it
entails — casualties among their soldiers included —
to press for the realisation of their goals, which
means more and more military power being employed
against resistance, which could only gain strength and
intensity with every military blow from the occupier.
The net equation only means one thing: More and more
deaths and casualties on all sides, more so among the
Palestinians and Iraqis but enough on the Israeli and
American side to keep the situation boiling for the
foreseeable future.



in both cases and


THE Bush administration was caught unawares when the
scandal of prisoner abuse in Iraq blew up on its
face. It was already facing a worsening crisis, with
the majority Shiites showing their clout against
American designs in post-war Iraq, mounting casualties
among American forces deployed there and growing
international condemnation of its occupation of the
Arab Muslim country. However, there is no way out
since an Iraq under the American sphere of absolute
influence is the central pillar of the US strategy and
this means continued occupation of that country, ready
to taken on anything that challenges the American
strategic objectives. It is very similar to the
situation in Palestine, with Israel having no option
but to continue its occupation and suppression of the
Palestinian people since leaving the Palestinian
territories will question what people like Ariel
Sharon believe to be their raison d'etre.
In the meantime, the Bush administration is engaged in
a frantic exercise to cleanse its image in the wake of
the release of images depicting sadistic and
humiliating treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
However, the blemish will never be washed away and it
will go down in world history alongside the Nazi
practices and similar tales of gross disrespect for
human dignity and of cruelty against hapless human
beings overpowered through massive military force and
detained in conditions unfit even for the worst animal
on earth.
Indeed, Washington has announced court martial and
other proceedings against what it describes a
"handful" of American soldiers who were shown engaging
in abuses, torture and humiliation of Iraqis held in
its detention facilities in post-war Iraq. However,
more and more such images are emerging despite
Washington's efforts to suppress them. Worse still are
reports that American soldiers have been raping Iraqi
female prisoners detained on silly charges as refusing
to show identity cards at checkpoints. One account
says that at least two of the rape victims have gone
missing, presumably dead and buried somewhere in the
vast expanse of the Iraqi desert.
Adding to those are the emerging reports of abuses of
prisoners taken in the Afghan war and detained at the
Guantanamo Bay as well as prison camps within
Afghanistan.
Members of the US Congress who viewed fresh photos
and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse on Wednesday
affirmed that they saw photos of sexual intercourse.
Others showed military dogs snarling at cowering
prisoners, as well as shots of Iraqi women commanded
to expose their breasts, they senators said.

'Congressional responsibility'

Comments by some of the senators, as could be
expected, contained scathing criticism of the
administration. But can they escape the blame, asks
Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who was
the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.
He says: "Members of Congress decry the fact that the
administration did not inform us of these abuses and
purposely kept Congress out of the information loop.
Yet Congress made it clear to the administration from
the very beginning that it wanted no responsibility
for the war in Iraq.
"If Congress wanted to be kept in the loop it should
have vigorously exercised its responsibilities. This
means, first and foremost, that Congress should have
voted on a declaration of war as required by the
Constitution.
"Congress, after abandoning this responsibility in
October 2002, now complains it is in the dark. Who is
to say the legal ambiguity created by the
congressional refusal to declare war may not have
contributed to the mentality that prisoners need not
be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention?
Until Congress takes up its constitutional
responsibilities, complaints that the administration
is not sufficiently forthcoming with information ring
hollow.
"Congress has the power – and the obligation – to keep
itself better informed. Congress should hold hearings
on the torture allegations, exercising its subpoena
power if necessary. Demanding that the administration
investigate the matter is simply another example of
Congress passing the buck. That's what got us into
trouble in the first place."



Major General Antonio Taguba, who carried out first
investigations into the abuse after an American
soldier blew the whistle on what was going on in Abu
Ghraib, says that the mistreatment resulted from
faulty leadership, a "lack of discipline, no training
whatsoever and no supervision" of the troops.
The photos and videos available with the Pentagon show
American soldiers "having sex with a female Iraqi
prisoner," according to the New Yorker magazine.
The secret report prepared by Taguba says that US
guards videotaped and photographed naked female
prisoners and that "a male MP [military police] guard"
is shown "having sex with a female detainee."
These treatments are now classified as, if you will,
as part of preparing the detainees for interrogation
by subjecting them to stress and humiliation.
London's Guardian newsapaper quoted Huda Shaker, a
political scientist at Baghdad University, as saying
that American soldiers used sexually explicit abuse at
her when she refused to allow them to search her
handbag at a checkpoint.
That is only the lightest of the experience of others,
she told the paper adding that several women held in
Abu Ghraib jail were sexually abused, including one
who was raped by an American military policeman and
became pregnant and who has now disappeared.
According to Shaker, several Iraqi women taken to Abu
Gharib for questioning and freed after weeks of
detention are unwilling to discuss their experience,
indicating that they were sexually abused.
Rumsfeld has defended military interrogation
techniques, rejecting complaints that they violate
international rules and may endanger Americans taken
prisoner.
He says that Pentagon lawyers had approved methods
such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well
as rules permitting guards to make prisoners assume
stressful positions.
The Arab media were implictly criticised for playing
down the images that appeared on a website which
showed an American being beheaded by masked militants
who said they were avenging the abuse at the Abu
Ghraib prison.
Well, let us put the criticism in perspective. Some
of the reports critical of the Arab media treatment of
the video-taped "execution" suggested that the Arabs
could even be jubilant that an American was killed in
revenge for the abuse at Abu Gharib.
Indeed, that assertion might indeed be true. But it
needs an explanation that those who might have thought
it was befiting that an American was killed come from
a background of untold misery caused by direct
American action (in Iraq) or indirect American action
(in Palestine). For them, it is the US-Israeli
alliance that is behind the troubles of the Middle
East and Israel's denial of Arab and Palestinian
rights.
For the Arabs and a majority in the international
community, there is no question whether the top
echelons of the US government and military knew of the
abuses in Iraq. They see as hoodwinking the repeated
affirmations and declarations, including those by
President George W Bush, Defence Secretary Ronald
Rumsfled and Secretary of State Colin Powell, that the
American political and military leadership was not
aware of what was going on in the Iraqi prisons.
As far as they are concerned, everyone on Washington
was aware what was going on and kept it concealed
until they had no choice when confronted by
irrefutable evidence of the abuses. And now they are
trying to save their own skin by blaming the abuses on
a few and putting up a public relations exercise
through the court martials and other proceedings.
Nothing more, nothing less.
No apologies, no excuses, no regrets and no other
exercise will convince the world majority otherwise.
It is not because they believe it is in American blood
to be sadistic and inhuman while dealing with
prisoners. It is not because they think Bush or
Rumsfeld gave direct orders to their soldiers to abuse
the prisoners.
It is because of the backdrop to the invasion and
occupation of Iraq and the obvious American bias
against the Arabs and close alliance with Israel,
which is flouting every international convention and
law and UN resolutions, continuing to occupy Arab
territories and waging a brutal war against the
Palestinians under its occupation.
Indeed, the invasion and occupation of Kuwait is seen
as an "Israeli project" as much as an "American
project" since it removed a potential Arab military
threat against the Jewish state as much as it allowed
the US to set up an advanced military base in the
Gulf.
The all-too-powerful umbrella of protection that the
US is offering Israel and Washington's almost-blanket
endorsement of every Israeli action and decision have
made it clear to the Arabs that they could not expect
fairness and justice in any effort to solve the
Arab-Israeli conflict. It is as if the US and Israel
are working together to oppress the Arabs and dominate
the Arab World, and, in the bargain, both treat the
Arabs as worthless beings who need to be given any
human consideration.
Reports have also come out that an Israeli team of
former security officials is training the American
military in Iraq on how to deal with the Iraqis along
the same lines as the Israeli military deals with the
Palestinians.
As evident from some of the images from Abu Gharib,
the US has indeed borrowed many of Israel's
"techniques," including hooding of prisoners,
depriving prisoners of sleep, humiliating them and
subjecting them to gross abuses.
The report of the treatment given to a 23-year old
Palestinian held on "administrative detention" by the
Israelis is most telling.
The prisoner was "cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day
for 120 days . . . [(he) had his head covered with a
sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards
played loud music right next to his ears and
frequently taunted him with threats of physical and
sexual violence."
The Taguba report cites many similarities between
Israeli treatment of Palestinians and American
treatment of Iraqi prisoners, thus clearly
establishing an Israeli connection to the abuses in
Iraq.
The case of a person identified as John Israel is an
example. The name is said to be phoney and the man
did not have top security clearance, but was somehow
given unfettered access to every knook and corner of
Abu Ghraib.
Why did he not have top security clearance?
Under American regulations, interrogators of Iraqi
prisoners have to US citizens and should be given a
top security clearance.
That does not mean that people like Israel, or
whatever his true name is, could be turned away, as
the Taguba report states.
Taguba has said that non-US and non-Iraqi
interrogators were present at Abu Ghraib. The report
states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel,
third country nationals, and local contractors do not
appear to be properly supervised within the detention
facility at Abu Ghraib." Clearly, intelligence
priorities warranted sharp interrogation skills and
these in turn were acquired by US military personnel
from Israelis, the unbeaten experts in that trade.
Indeed, any perception of American actions in Iraq
could not be seen without the Israeli aura, and that
in itself is the strongest argument yet that the US
military and political leadership care little for the
human rights of the people of Iraq just as the Israeli
attitude towards the Palestinians and Arabs.
The developments in Palestine and Iraq are closely
linked. If the United States fails in its endeavours
to stabilise iraq, consolidate its grip on the country
and set up a regional military base there, with a
"US-friendly" regime in power, then Israel's plans to
swallow Palestinian land would also falter.
If the situation in Palestine turns worse, as it is
happening now with the latest round of killings, then
it would inflame the crisis in Iraq, with the
intensity of the Iraqi resistance against occupation
continuing to grow, pushing the US into adopting
further actions similar to those which occurred in
Germany during World War II.
The fundamentals on the ground are clear: There is no
way Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon retract from
his drive to deny the Palestinian people their rights
if only because that would undermine what he believes
to the rights of Israel in Palestine.
Similarly, it is unthinkable for US President George
Bush to even consider withdrawing American forces from
Iraq since it departure from the beleaguered country
would pull the rug under the feet of Washington's
drive to unchallengingly dominate the international
scene. Leaving unfinished business in Iraq also means
setting a breeding ground for militancy and adding
fuel to the already bitter anti-American sentiments
among Arabs and Muslims.
Against the impossibility of the US deciding to quit
Iraq and Sharon deciding to respect Palestinian rights
and giving up his grand designs for Palestine, the
situation in the Middle East would turn from worse to
worst (if that is possible at all, given that what
could be worse than what we are witnessing in
Palestine and Iraq today). Regional stability will be
two words alien to the Middle East, with the cycle of
violence getting completely out of control, with
neither Sharon or Bush — or the next occupant of the
White House — unable to apply any brakes.