http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Apr/24/US-court-ruling-on-POWs-may-cast-long-shadow.ashx#ixzz2axTkAK8D

In one of the first major post-Sept. 11, 2001, cases to reach the United States Supreme Court, the nine justices this week heard arguments in a case brought by some detainees held in Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legal issues are narrowly drawn but the implications and stakes, for both domestic and foreign policies, could hardly be more far reaching.

The case examines the jurisdictional issue of whether US courts have any oversight of the government’s handling of the detainees. The plaintiffs, citizens of Australia, Britain and Kuwait, are among about 600 inmates at Camp X-Ray, most allegedly captured during the invasion of Afghanistan or in Pakistan. The prisoners sought redress from civilian American courts on the lack of any mechanism by which they can challenge their detention and status as “enemy combatants.”

Even if they prevail, the case will not decide what kind of hearing process they should be afforded. The decision is likely to hinge on highly technical issues such as whether US law applies in Guantanamo, which has been under American control for over 100 years based on a perpetual lease which makes Cuba the “ultimate sovereign,” and whether there is a distinction in access to American courts between citizens and non-citizens detained outside the US.

However, the court’s ruling, which is expected by the end of June, is widely anticipated to set the tone for how it will view future civil liberties and human rights challenges to the George W. Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

It is the first in a series of contests in coming weeks and months pitting traditional American ideas of civil liberties and due process against the administration’s assertions of wartime exigency and executive authority. Next week the court will hear arguments involving the detention of US citizens as “enemy combatants,” and further difficult issues that lie beyond that.

The Guantanamo case is as much defined by its political context as its legal content, with the administration presenting itself as defending an embattled US up to the limits of the letter of the law but not beyond, and its critics charging that it has gone too far.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson encapsulated the administration’s appeal in the first sentence of his presentation: “The United States is at war.”

Olson’s presence in the court was itself a reminder of the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, as his wife, the wellknown commentator Barbara Olson, was a passenger on American Airlines flight 77 which struck the Pentagon.

John Gibbons, lawyer for the detainees, argued that by denying US courts have any jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay, the administration has set up a “lawless enclave,” and believes its “actions are absolutely immune from judicial examination.”

Many observers were struck by the degree of skepticism a number of the justices showed in their questioning of Olson. Justice John Paul Stevens immediately countered Olson’s invocation of war by asking if his arguments would be the same after the war is over. When Olson said they would, Stevens observed: “So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue.”

Justice Stephen Breyer summed up doubts about the administration’s claims when he told Olson: “It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the Executive would be free to do whatever they want … without a check.”

Not surprisingly, advocates of both sides claim to be upholding established legal norms.

Mark Moller of the libertarian Cato Institute told The Daily Star: “The Bush administration’s position is out of line with historical practice. Since the start of the Republic, courts have accepted habeas petitions from non-citizens in time of war and the federal habeas statute does not make such a distinction either.”

“History and geography suggest that such a complaint cannot be made,” countered Paul Rosenzweig of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“There were never such hearings about detainees in Vietnam, and the US Constitution never applies outside the United States.”

According to Rosenzweig, “the only laws that apply in Guantanamo are international law, insofar as the United States has agreed to it, and US domestic law, to the extent the government says it does.”

Lee Casey, a Washington attorney who was part of a group of private legal experts who submitted a brief in support of the Bush administration, went further, saying that if the court asserted jurisdiction over foreign nationals held outside the US, “such a ruling could open the floodgates for individuals detained all over the world.”

Another friend of the court brief, filed by a group of US military veterans, sided with the detainees and urged the justices to consider what kind of precedent for Americans captured in conflict was being established by the treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners.

These concerns reflect another subtext to the case – international perceptions that Camp X-Ray represents an unacceptable violation of legal norms. Even the closest US allies, such as Britain and Australia, have expressed deep concern that their citizens are being held at Guantanamo without any legal protections, since their “enemy combatant” identification places them beyond the Geneva Conventions which apply to prisoners of war or any system of domestic laws.

Critics of the administration are quick to identify the foreign policy implications of the case. Professor David Cole of Georgetown University pointed out that “it is in the United States’ interests to deal with the detainees in a manner the world perceives as fair and just, and so far we have failed to do that.”

Rosenzweig acknowledged these concerns, but insisted “international perceptions have to take a back seat to security. If the choice is between annoying the French and keeping our country safe, I opt for the second.”

While Americans have been more sensitive to concerns of European allies about Camp X-Ray, international dismay over the detentions may be most damaging in the Middle East.

The identity of most of the Guantanamo prisoners is not known. As a Human Rights Watch report said, “the public still does not know who the detainees are, what they have allegedly done and whether and when they will be charged with crimes or released.”

It is believed that many of the detainees at Camp X-Ray are Arabs, since the US military operated under the assumption that foreign fighters in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan were Al-Qaeda members, and were regarded as posing a far more serious threat than locals.

Many Afghan troops were assumed to be low-level Taleban members, and were detained in Afghanistan. In many cases, they were simply disarmed and released from custody.

According to a survey by United Press International (UPI) published on April 2, “At least 160 of the 650 detainees acknowledged by the Pentagon as being held at … Guantanamo, Cuba … are from Saudi Arabia.”

UPI added “the other top nationalities being held are Yemen with 85, Pakistan with 82, Jordan and Egypt, each with 30.”

Jumana Musa, of Amnesty International’s Washington office, had a different view, telling The Daily Star: “It is thought that about one third of the detainees are from Yemen, but we can’t be certain of course.”

The spectacle of hundreds of Arabs being held under what are widely regarded as arbitrary and onerous conditions, plays strongly into the notion that the US war on terrorism is fundamentally unjust and involves a disregard for Arabs basic rights.

Growing perceptions in the Middle East lump the Guantanamo detentions with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, US support for the policies of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon and support for human rights abuses by Arab governments as evidence of a general American hostility to Arabs.

Moller argues that the Guantanamo detentions are particularly problematic “given our role in Iraq and our stance of democracy promotion in the Middle East.”

Many observers concluded that this ruling would be determined by the positions of centrist Justices Sandra Day O’Conner and Anthony Kennedy.

Cole, who has argued a number of important civil liberties cases before the Supreme Court, told The Daily Star: “It’s clear that at least four justices were decidedly sympathetic to the detainees’ arguments, and both of the swing justices expressed at least some sympathy.

“Many people walking out of the courtroom would predict that it will be close, but perhaps five-four in favor of the detainees.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Analysis/Apr/19/Election-concerns-most-likely-behind-Bushs-flip-flop.ashx#ixzz2axU103Hj

Political observers in Washington are virtually unanimous that domestic US election concerns drove President George W. Bush’s decision last week to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for “unilateral disengagement,” agree that Israel will not have to return to the borders of 1949, and declare that Palestinian refugees will be resettled in a Palestinian state “rather than Israel.”

At first glance, these positions seem a stunning reversal of decades of US policies holding that Israeli settlements are illegal or at least “obstacles to peace.” They also appear to contradict the president’s own “road map” which reserves issues including “borders, Jerusalem, refugees, (and) settlements” to be determined through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at an international conference.

On the other hand, Bush supporters have been quick to point out that his positions  mirror those which informed President Bill Clinton’s efforts to broker a Middle East peace at Camp David and Taba in 2000.

Some say Bush is merely formalizing long-established understandings that Israel will not have to leave all its settlements and that Palestinian refugees will not be permitted to return to Israel in large numbers, in the same way he was the first president to formally call for the creation of a Palestinian state.

It is widely believed in Washington that both Bush and his father see the elder Bush’s challenge to Israel over settlements as a major factor contributing to his loss in 1992 to Bill Clinton, and that Bush junior is determined not to repeat this mistake.

A Republican insider close to Bush agreed that election concerns played a role in the his shift, but said privately: “Bush continuously returns to the theme of the creation of a Palestinian state.”

He suggested that if Bush is re-elected, he would likely rethink some of the implications of his recent statements, saying, “after the election, there will be more options for dealing with Israel, and more ways of getting leverage.”

“The bottom line is that the only thing permanent about this is that the Israelis will leave Gaza,” he added, “everything else will be subject to change.”

The administration official who has pushed most forcefully for Bush to embrace Sharon’s plan is Elliott Abrams, the senior Middle East policy official at the National Security Council and a strong supporter of the Israeli far right. Abrams and other pro-Israel neoconservatives in the administration have presented this strong tilt toward Sharon as part of a strategic vision for the future of the Middle East. They argue that if Sharon pulls out of Gaza with US support, Palestinians will be able to construct effective institutions there which can pave the way for ending the occupation in much of the West Bank as well, setting the stage for at the creation of a Palestinian state.

At an April 14 briefing orchestrated by Abrams, a “senior administration official” was spinning furiously in that direction: “There’s nothing in this paper, in what the President said or his letter, that changes our policy on settlements. What’s new is that Sharon has decided to abandon settlements, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. We think that is a very positive precedent.”

But even those sympathetic to these strategic arguments see signs of election-year calculations at work. The Jewish Telegraph Agency quotes David Makovsky of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy as saying “Iraq points to the need of the administration for some achievement,” and that it “will want to showcase the Gaza pullout as an example of its success in the region.”

Many in Washington have expressed skepticism that the president’s embrace of Sharon’s unilateral plans will enhance the administration’s aura of being in control of developments in the Middle East.

Theodore H. Kattouf, until recently US ambassador to Syria and a State Department veteran, observed, “There may well be some who hope that this will lay the groundwork for a two-state solution and force the Palestinians into what they regard as a more realistic approach to peacemaking.” “But,” he continued, “it does not appear the Administration gave enough weight to how such a dramatic tilt would affect vital US interests in the region, especially Iraq, at such a difficult and sensitive time.”

Kattouf suggested election concerns were indeed at play, saying “senior officials are aware of the contretemps that surrounded the Bush (senior) when he took a stand against further settlement activity and … reduced loans to Israel on a dollar-for-dollar basis.”

But Kattouf said there were strategic as well as political motivations for the policy shift, as Bush and his advisers “almost certainly see the value in having the architect of the settlement movement dismantle some of those settlements, (and) establishing a precedent the importance of which should not be underestimated.”

“The real question,” Kattouf said, “is, did they overpay for something that most Israelis wanted to do in any case? I would argue they did.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/04/news/war-oeibish4

If concern is growing that ideological convictions at the Defense Department resulted in costly miscalculations regarding the war in Iraq, even greater alarm is warranted by glaring missteps in the preparation for what comes after the war.

Take, for instance, the political profile of the man tapped to lead the occupation, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.

Garner’s stated opinions on Middle Eastern politics make him singularly unsuitable for the indescribably sensitive task of being the first U.S. administrator of a large Arab country. In 2000, Garner signed a statement backing Israel’s hard-line tactics in enforcing the occupation of the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This statement, which was organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank close to the Israeli far right, praised the Israel Defense Forces’ “remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of a Palestinian Authority” and advised the strongest possible American support.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Arab politics knows that any association between an American occupation of Iraq and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands poses great danger. It is guaranteed to breed deep resentment and bitter opposition, especially as U.S. checkpoints in Iraq begin to look increasingly like those in the West Bank.

Persistent reports in the British and American press suggest that Garner will be in charge of 23 ministries, each headed by an American with Iraqi advisors. Not only will this look and feel like a colonial administration, the identity of some of the Iraqi advisors rings alarms.

Most disturbing is the role apparently planned for Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-created opposition group based in London with no visible presence or support in Iraq. He is extremely popular with the neoconservatives in and around the administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

In the Middle East, however, Chalabi is also known for swindling tens of millions of dollars from a bank he headed in Jordan. In April 1992, he was sentenced in absentia to 22 years’ hard labor on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian dinar. For many months this man has been demanding that Washington appoint him prime minister of Iraq. It is cold comfort indeed to learn that he will be Garner’s “advisor” at a ministry of finance.

Other early signs for how the administration of Iraq will function are equally not encouraging.

The management of the port of Umm al Qasr, one of the few places in Iraq under complete Western control, has produced a split between British and American authorities. The British view is that the Iraqi manager, who has been in his position for years, is capable of doing the job. Our government insisted, however, in providing a lucrative contract to run the port to Stevedoring Services of Seattle.

Australia has expressed concern that its existing wheat contracts with Iraq will be transferred to U.S. interests.

This appears to be the pattern set for most such arrangements in Iraq, with not only allies, the United Nations and major nongovernmental organizations frozen out of the process but with local Iraqis as well, in favor of American corporations.

Some NGOs, of course, will be present in Iraq, and one of the first to announce its intention to follow in the footsteps of the invasion force is the evangelical organization led by Franklin Graham. Graham, who has repeatedly insisted that Islam is a “very evil, wicked religion,” will hardly be a reassuring presence to ordinary Iraqis.

The behavior of some of our troops has also provided ominous signs of political problems to come. Gestures such as naming Army bases in Iraq after Exxon and captured airstrips “George W. Bush International Airport” do not convey a message of liberation.

Between Garner, Chalabi, Stevedoring, Graham and “Camp Exxon,” not to mention the checkpoints, the prospects for winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis seem dim indeed.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/7844277.htm

The idea that Islam, and by extension Muslims, are inherently violent and irrational has become commonplace in our culture.

This misperception, with deep origins in the historical rivalry between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East, was intensified by the Arab-Israeli conflict and a slew of bigoted Hollywood movies, and gained a solid foothold in the minds of many Americans after 9/11.

Since 9/11, right-wing evangelical preachers such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and commentators such as Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes, have spared no effort to spread fear and hatred of Islam and the growing American Muslim community.

This defamation probably has its greatest parallel in the anti-Semitic ideas that took hold in American culture between the First and Second World Wars. The charges directed against the American Jewish community – now eerily echoed by anti-Muslim rhetoric – smeared a religious minority as dangerous and subversive aliens. The Father Coughlins and Henry Fords of that era, and ours, found the political space to promote prejudice yet remain “respectable.” Certainly the 19 hijackers responsible for the carnage of 9/11 saw themselves as Muslims. But so, of course, did about 300 of their victims. And it is true that the United States faces a threat from al-Qaeda and like-minded organizations.

But so, of course, does the entire Arab and Islamic world, in which almost all governments and most people are committed to the war against al-Qaeda, and which is home to most of the victims of such fanaticism.

Some point to the glories of Muslim Spain, the notable tolerance and multiculturalism of the Ottoman Empire, or the relative peacefulness of the Islamic world over the past millennium compared to Christian Europe to make the case that Islam is essentially an agent of peace.

The more complex truth is that the Islamic world, at present and historically, is composed of a vast constellation of human beliefs, experiences and endeavors, a dizzying multiplicity, not a monolith. Like all great civilizations and cultures, those of the Islamic world have produced more than enough of the good to demand the highest respect, and enough of the bad to prohibit any complacency or chauvinism on the part of Muslims.

More than 1.3 billion people are Muslims, constituting about one fifth of humanity. Hence, the entire range of human experience and orientation can be readily found among them.

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe said simply that “Africa is people.” So is the Islamic world. Not better or worse, villain or victim, but simply people. Violence, extremism and intolerance are universal human failings. They certainly are not particular to any culture or faith.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/Sep/26/Voting-on-an-ominous-future-for-Syria.ashx#ixzz2axUHQ6Dm

“The frustration we have here,” the congressman thundered at a senior State Department official at a packed hearing in Washington on Sept. 16, “is that 24 years after Lebanon was placed on the State Department’s own list of countries that support terrorism, we’re still playing the same old game with Lebanon.” Eliot Engel was still in full froth when someone gently reminded him who the target was supposed to be. “You know, we…” he was continuing to lecture the official, John Bolton, when a whisper and short pause were followed by “…oh, with Syria, yes, I’m sorry.”

There was more than a touch of the Freudian about this telling faux pas by the principal sponsor of the Syria Accountability Act, which is on a fast track toward becoming American law. Congressional support for the bill, which would slap major sanctions and trade restrictions on Syria, is overwhelming, and the only thing preventing its passage in the past has been timely intervention from the White House. Bolton’s testimony, which was the substance of the hearing, raises serious questions as to whether another intercession is likely.

The tone at the hearing was best summed up by another congressman, Gary Ackerman, who soberly reviewed “the disastrous, devastating, horrible, horrendous things that Syria has done.” Engel mused that “it would not surprise me if those weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find in Iraq wound up and are today in Syria,” demonstrating that, in Congress, not only one but two countries can be castigated for hoarding the same phantom weapons.

Bolton’s testimony reflected the split in the Bush administration between neoconservatives who advocate an aggressive agenda to reshape the Middle East and the more cautious voices of traditional conservative realists. Bolton, who is both undersecretary for arms control and an extreme neoconservative, was originally scheduled to testify on Syria in July, but was blocked by a “revolt” in the intelligence community, which believed that he was preparing to grossly exaggerate Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities and the extent to which it poses a “threat to regional stability.”

Bolton had already infuriated US intelligence officials by claiming in May 2002 that Cuba has a biological weapons program. Intelligence analysts declared themselves “fed up” with such assertions and drew the line at Bolton’s July draft testimony against Syria. It is hard to know how much of what the intelligence community regarded as unacceptable exaggeration was retained in the version he finally presented to the House Subcommittee.

Certainly, Bolton took a strong stand, grouping Syria with Iran, North Korea and Libya as “states of potential dual threat,” combining WMDs and terrorism concerns. He accused Syria of maintaining a stockpile of sarin, and of working on VX and biological weapons.

On the other hand, Bolton was careful to situate most of his statements in the context of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s preference for diplomatic solutions, and declined a number of invitations to endorse the Syria Accountability Act, maintaining that the administration had all the authority necessary to deal with the “threat” as he outlined it.

As Ackerman observed, “there seems to be somewhat of a squabble going on within the administration.” And, rather ominously, Bolton’s testimony was leaked to the notorious Judith Miller of the New York Times, who was the source of countless now-discredited reports regarding Iraqi WMD programs, as she put it “by individuals who feel that the accusations against Syria have received insufficient attention.”

The Bolton hearing was followed by a less formal session featuring three “experts” on Syria: scholar Daniel Pipes representing, in effect, the Likud Party perspective; former Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, expressing essentially the views of the Israeli Labor Party; and, to provide that all-important element of “balance,” the former head of Lebanon’s military government, Michel Aoun, a staunch opponent of Syria. Visiting Lebanese would have been deeply touched by the heartfelt anguish expressed about their sovereignty by Israel’s most passionate supporters in Congress, including Engel.

Syria lies at the very heart of divisions over the direction of US foreign policy. For neoconservatives such as Bolton, as well as those informed entirely by an Israeli perspective such as Engel, Syria is a central target in the battle to reshape the Middle East. This agenda draws little distinction between American and Israeli interests, or between Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah. Traditionally minded conservative realists who tend to dominate the State Department, CIA and other government agencies are far more skeptical about the need and the value of aggressively confronting Syria.

More rational voices that cast America’s post-Sept. 11, 2001 task in the Middle East as a confrontation with Al-Qaeda and like-minded anti-American extremists view Syria as a problematic, but extremely valuable potential ally. As Seymour Hersh reported in the July 28 issue of the New Yorker magazine: “(B)y early 2002 Syria had emerged as one of the CIA’s most effective intelligence allies in the fight against Al-Qaeda, providing an outpouring of information that came to an end only with the invasion of Iraq.”

However, as Hersh also noted: “Syria’s efforts to help seem to confound the Bush administration,” and the relationship was destroyed more or less deliberately. This was partly due to real differences over Iraq, and partly because neoconservatives such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice-President Dick Cheney and others view Syria through a strictly ideological and emotional lens as a “rogue state” and a “supporter of terrorism.” It is no secret that Syria is on the neocon shortlist of potential future targets for “regime change.”

If the Bush administration does not quietly prevent the Syria Accountability Act from coming to a vote, the effects of the sanctions it imposes will be less worrying than the ominous future it portends.

file:///Users/husseinibish/Downloads/And_the_winner_is_339_printer.shtml

It was just over a decade ago, in the build up to the first Gulf War, that I became politically engaged as a student activist, wrote my first published articles and began a series of regular radio broadcasts. As American bombs once again rain down on the cradle of civilization, I suppose it is appropriate to launch this weekly column, which will often range far beyond Arab-American and Middle Eastern themes, by returning to the issue that got me started in the first place.

Of course, this is not your daddy’s Gulf War. The unprecedented domestic and international opposition is driven by concerns about the devastation that it is likely to bring to the long-suffering Iraqi people, and well-founded fears that it is an entirely avoidable conflict which will create many more problems than it solves.

People around the world understand that fundamentally this is motivated by the strategic goal of consolidating American domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Can anyone really believe that this would be happening if the principal export of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait was dates?

Polls showing majority support among the American public reflect more a conviction that no president would recklessly lead the country into a dangerous war than any real sense of what is at stake. One detects a deep strain of uncertainty and anxiety lying just beneath the surface of this deference.

No such doubts can be detected from President Bush, who has consistently presented a blase, almost nonchalant, attitude in launching the most ambitious American adventure since Vietnam. What is truly shocking are not the usual distortions, untruths and juggled rationalizations. The deeper scandal is the refusal of the President and his advisers to acknowledge the profound risks and costs this war entails.

When the dust settles, the good news will be that Saddam Hussein is gone for good. As for the bad news, well, the parade of potential horribles is almost too ghastly to contemplate.

This war had already claimed several victims before a shot has been fired. The U.N. Charter, for one, has been badly wounded. It is to be expected that small and marginal powers, with ambitions and grievances which are not accounted for in the system of international law, will at times behave without regard to that system. But when the world’s greatest power, the principal architect and arbiter in the system, offhandedly casts it aside, then there is no law and no order.

Another early casualty is American diplomacy. The Bush Administration has succeeded in creating a united block of second-tier states, led by France, determined to place limits on American power. If you want a good laugh, check out the State Department list of countries belonging to the “Coalition of the Willing.”

Most troubling is the extreme damage being done to U.S.-Arab relations, which were already in intensive care due to September 11 on the one hand, and unconditional American support for Israel in its war against the Palestinian people on the other. The increasing alienation between Arabs and Americans, fueled in both societies by outrageously irresponsible media, requires careful consideration and urgent attention.

The fiasco at the Security Council demonstrates how ill-served the President has been by his key advisers. But a far greater miscalculation has been expressed by Vice President Cheney, among others, that this war will have a calming effect on the region by demonstrating American strength and resolve. This logic, which emanates from anti-Arab polemicists like Bernard Lewis, is a slightly prettified version of “the only language these people understand is…”

Like most other official American approaches to the region, it refuses to take Arab perceptions and opinion seriously. But, like it or not, most Arabs will probably regard the war as a rather crude form of imperialism, if not a highly sophisticated burglary, and be outraged, rather than awed and subdued by a spectacle of global discipline.

An American occupation of Iraq, dovetailing with the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, could not be better designed to lend a sudden and undeserved credibility to hysterical and paranoid rhetoric about a generalized attack on Arabs and Muslims by “Crusaders and Jews.” Al-Qaeda, which by rights should be on the road to a well-deserved extinction, is about to be given a perfect platform for winning support and recruits.

To be sure, the big loser in all of this certainly will be Saddam Hussein. But the big winner is unlikely to be President Bush, and certainly will not be the American people. Nor, in all probability, will it be the Iraqi people, at last rid of a foul tyrant only to find themselves living under the rule of a foreign army.

Given the nature, timing and perceptions of this war, the big winner, in all dreadful likelihood, will be…Osama bin Laden.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jul/24/opinion/oe-ibish24

The latest atrocity in the Middle East, in which an Israeli F-16 jet fired a missile into a civilian neighborhood in Gaza in a successful attempt to kill a noted Palestinian, is emblematic of the degree of barbarism that has come to characterize this hideous conflict. Inevitably and predictably, the attack took the lives of many innocents, including at least nine children, two of them infants.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wasted no time in crowing that this horror, which would certainly meet any reasonable definition of the term “terrorism,” should be counted as “one of the great successes.” No matter that the murder of Salah Shehada, one of the top leaders of the military wing of Hamas, left in its wake so many dead children, as well as more than 100 others wounded and at least five houses destroyed.

While apologists for Israel’s brutalities were quick to boast about the Israeli army’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties, this assassination by air raid indicated with stark undeniability the utter lack of concern for those who might have gotten in the way. Some pundits were even reduced to chiding Shehada for “making sure he was surrounded by his wife and children and other civilians,” as if a family deserves to be killed for living in the same house.

This wanton brutality and cynical apologies for it are, of course, perfectly mirrored on the Palestinian side by Shehada’s colleagues in Hamas and their apologists, who have come to regard the murder of Israeli civilians in buses, discos, cinemas and pizzerias as not only acceptable but somehow heroic.

The extent to which Palestinian extremists see themselves as fighting all of Israeli society, men, women and children in everyday activities anywhere in the country, has been well recognized in the United States because of the appalling suicide bombings. What is less well recognized, but no less significant and immoral, is the degree to which the Israeli government too has adopted an attitude in which the entire population of Palestinians is the target.

This is demonstrated by the killings of militants’ families, which look increasingly less “accidental” as the conflict drags on.

This attitude is also demonstrated when Israel destroys the homes of those suspected not just in suicide bombing attacks but other activities directed against the occupation. How else can one explain the plan–

later rejected by Israel–to expel relatives of suspected militants?

And finally, what other mind-set could have resulted in the killing of more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians in less than two years, hundreds of them children?

Both sides grope for rationalizations and evidence of their own “moral superiority.” Many Palestinians claim that the occupation justifies resistance by any means necessary. Many Israelis claim that they in fact never target civilians, and those 1,000 deaths were all the result, in effect, of tragic accidents.

Others, including Americans, openly embrace the idea that targeting civilians is a good idea. Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz has advocated the destruction of an entire Palestinian village in revenge for each suicide bombing attack, and Washington lawyer Nathan Lewin has demanded the murder of the entire families of suspected suicide bombers.

And while the Bush administration has called for restraint on both sides, it registers moral outrage only when Israelis are killed. Many, if not most, of the suicide bombings have been specifically condemned by the president or his spokespeople, which is entirely proper. Despite the fact that Israel’s use of an American-made and -supplied F-16 in an assassination outside of its borders is a clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act, this latest outrage is unlikely to break the dismal pattern of moral one-sidedness.

One has to ask what it was that the Israeli government hoped to achieve by killing such a prominent Palestinian in such a spectacularly ruthless matter. This question is particularly pertinent given that it came just hours after Hamas’ spiritual leader said the organization would consider ending suicide bombing attacks if the Israeli troops withdrew from the recently reinvaded Palestinian cities, as President Bush and the U.N. Security Council have demanded.

Sharon knows perfectly well that the inevitable result of this assassination, particularly given the extraordinary brutality with which it was carried out, can only lead to grim vengeance from Hamas. This in turn will provide him with further excuses to reinvade and reoccupy Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Pervasive moral blindness is mirrored by strategic blindness. Sharon and Hamas kill in the name of a military victory that will never come.

These nominal enemies are in reality partners in the cause of violence over negotiations and war over peace. Anyone who applauds or excuses their massacres and terrorism, on either side, is an accomplice.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/05/17/clarifying-the-obstacles-to-peace-in-palestine/

Two events that took place Sunday illustrated perfectly the elements of the diplomatic impasse that have prevented any serious progress toward peace in the Middle East. Israel’s ruling party voted never to allow any form of Palestinian statehood whatsoever, while three key Arab leaders reaffirmed their commitment to normalize relations with Israel if it withdraws from occupied Palestinian lands.

The Central Committee of the Likud, the party that leads Israel’s coalition government, voted that “No Palestinian state will be created west of the Jordan (River).” Supporters of the resolution, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted that Israel would never permit an independent Palestinian state of any kind in any part of historical Palestine. The vote endorses permanent Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is the cause of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu was no doubt attempting to undermine Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, attacking him from an extreme right-wing position and demonstrating that he, in this case at least, commanded more votes in the Likud Committee that determines party leadership. And it is certainly true that neither Netanyahu nor Likud speaks on behalf of all Israelis.

However, the fact that Israel’s governing party would slam the door so completely on the one and only chance of resolving the conflict peacefully is an indication of how radicalized Israeli society has become in recent months. What Likud was voting in favor of is a permanent state of apartheid in the occupied territories, with Israel ruling millions of Palestinians without allowing them independence but also without granting them citizenship. As Netanyahu put it, “autonomy, yes — statehood, no.”

The problem is not simply on the Israeli right. No Israeli government has ever been willing to seriously consider ending the occupation and allowing the Palestinians a completely independent state in the scraps of Palestine still not fully colonized. No Israeli government has stopped or even slowed significantly the settlement activity designed to entrench the occupation.

The most Israel has ever been willing to offer the Palestinians, as presented by Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, was nominal independence within a greater Israeli state: a fragmented “state” that would not even have controlled its own borders.

The Likud vote simply underscores the obvious point that as long as Israel refuses to fully end its occupation, the conflict cannot end. As things stand now, 3.5 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule as non-citizens with no legal, political or human rights whatsoever. The commitment of the Likud party to continue that situation indefinitely is not only a prescription for endless conflict, it is an excellent illustration of the extremist policies that have forced this hideous conflict on Palestinians and Israelis alike and precluded peace. The whole world, including the Bush administration, recognizes that Palestinian statehood is the key to peace, yet Israel’s leading party remains implacably opposed to it.

In stark contrast, following a meeting at Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, the leaders of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt reaffirmed their commitment to a peace plan adopted unanimously by the Arab League which holds that all the Arab states would create normal relations with Israel in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands occupied in the 1967 war.

The Arab League peace plan is the only serious attempt on the table at present to rethink the peace process and meet the stated needs of all parties in a fair and reasonable manner. It would create secure and recognized borders for both Israel and a Palestinian state. All that is being asked of Israel by the Arabs in general is that it bring its troops back inside its own country, and stop subjecting millions of Arabs to colonization and foreign military dictatorship. The outstretched hand is being rebuffed. Israel’s ruling party has rejected any form of Palestinian statehood whatsoever and committed itself to a future defined by more colonization and permanent inequality. That should provide clarity to all those who wonder why there is and has been no peace in the Middle East.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/44527.htm