Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the
White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and
promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the
same words of Oslo.
"It is
time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember
Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the
cycle of blood... to end"?
Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there.
And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state
– and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled)
what became Israel in 1948.
And
what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the
joint document: "The steering infomittee will develop a joint work plan and
establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all
issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." infoe
again?
We went
through all these steering infomittees before – and they never worked. True
we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called
"steering infomittee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered,
of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an
agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a
capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire
territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the
settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?
Yes of
course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the
Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least
Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to
threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of
Lebanese elections, or else...
Yes,
Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in the
opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza Rice (or
Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to have a free
ride for a year without the full involvement of every party in the region?
More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are under the control
of Hamas.
Reading
the speeches – especially the joint document – it seems like an exercise
in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster and the
President of the United States thinks he is going to produce the crown
jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran – and
Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole Annapolis
shindig is that once again millions of people across the Middle East –
Muslims, Jews and Christians – will believe all this and will then turn –
after its failure – with fury on their antagonists for breaking these
agreements.
For
more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security and
recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of Israeli
forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that? Mr Olmert
promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which thus far has
been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied
territories" simply doesn't exist in the text.
Like
most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy these
dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the end of
2008.
29/11/2007
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