When the President of United States of America delivers a speech projecting a “vision” of a solution for peace in the Middle East, the entire world must listen in. But what was this “vision”? What is the perception of such a “vision”? The speech that attracted the attention of the international community (dated Monday, June 24^th, 2002) was no more than a lousy and morbid rewrite of another speech delivered earlier in April. On occupation, the root glitch, the first speech read (italics added):

“… the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries consistent with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338.”

Only more blindness was there to the aid of Mr. Bush’s new “vision”:

“… the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognized borders.”

Bush and His Ambush

In accordance with the president’s political instinct, racist, meaningless, blind, grotesque, slanted, and improbable as it is, a rigid ultimatum was given to the Palestinians to oust their leadership, to choose a president other than Arafat, to give up their sovereign right to choose their leadership, to put up with the polite occupation for three more years, to enjoy the obstruction of movement under elongated curfew, to get rid of corruption, and to revolve their lives in a circular journey around the security of Israel.

To balance, a delicate health tip was given to the Israeli government by Mr. (Dr.?) Bush!

Mr. Bush has written and revised the history of the mayhem in the region. What he came up with is uncomplicated: “in the beginning, there was the security of Israel…”

Mr. Bush, in his ideological hallucinations, forgot that democracy is an extravagance. Democracy cannot coexist with occupation, whether for the occupier or the occupied. It only lives under freedom and justice. Without that, Mr. Bush will exceed in the meaninglessness of words like “a provisional state,” “interim,” “enhancement of the Palestinian Authority” and the like. He even obliterated all with one stroke: the Clinton offer, the Saudi initiative, the Mitchell Plan, the Oslo accords and even the international conference that was called for and dismissed as a misnomer.        

In a brilliant satirical article, written by the skillful writer and former member of the Israeli Knesset, Uri Avnery, as a secret report to the American president from his national Security advisor, Israel is shown to have:

… an autocratic one-man rule by a leader surrounded by cronies and yes-men, a leader who is a chronic liar, whose every word is untrustworthy, corruption that penetrates every echelon of government, democratic institutions which serve only as window-dressing, the lack of a constitution, the absence of a real opposition, a multi-party system that is just a pretense, media that are fully mobilized in the service of the government. Such a System is unable to move towards peace.

By showing the corruption; corruption in government spending, corruption in election campaign funding, mediocrity and mendacity, especially that of Prime Minister Sharon, a certified liar according to many Israeli public figures (the same person renowned in Israel as the “bulldozer,” and the same person that President Bush called “a man of peace”), it becomes apparent that Israel is far from a democracy, nothing like how many perceive her to be.             

But it does not matter. Palestinians must have a democratic system, when Israel does not. There must be a Palestinian constitution, when in Israel there is not. Palestinians should draw and accept the given borders, while Israel should not – all inline with Mr. Bush’s “vision.”   

The Inside and the End-Side

Corruption within the Palestinian Authority (PA) is no secret. It was even announced by a committee formed by the PA itself. Even with Arafat playing a typical Arab despot role to keep his powers, brushing off any, if not all, objections to his desperation and defeatism before the American roaring and the Israeli thundering to create a quasi-state (some coming from many respectable figures like Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi), Mr. Bush is not satisfied.

The problem with Arafat is that he used to play on both sides; his people on one hand and America and Israel on the other. As rage does not obey rules, he could not stop the Palestinian resistance and he could not fully give in to outside pressures (a state he created by agreeing to be responsible for the security of Israel in 1993). Now, even with the thirst and water drops policy of funding that Arafat used with all Palestinian factions, Muhammad Dahlan, head of the Palestinian Authority’s security organization in Gaza and a nominee to succeed Arafat, stated:

Bush is now effectively demanding a coup d’état against Arafat, because the American administration says that even if he is re-elected in new elections, it will not deal with him. The result of Bush’s speech is that the latest polls show nine out of 10 Palestinians say they would vote for Arafat. And as long as the Israelis are against Arafat, I’m with him - whatever reservations I have about some of the decisions that have been made. While the chairman is under siege, it would be wrong to criticise him - that would only serve Israel and America . There is no question of changing the leadership in these circumstances. If they try to expel or kill him - and anything is possible in the era of Bush and Sharon - they will come to regret it bitterly (The Guardian July 2, 2002).

For better or worse, Bush, involved in corruption in the scandals of Enron, World Com, the former governor of Texas, (the state with the highest rates of imprisonment, pollution, and capital punishment), a poor speaker, an economic failure who should not have been the winner in the stolen elections, was right about the Palestinian political reality. As Edward Said wrote:

Only a group of independent people well grounded in civil society, untainted by collaboration or corruption, can possibly furnish the outlines of the new legitimacy we need. We need a real constitution, not a basic law toyed with by Arafat; we need truly representative democracy that only Palestinians can provide for themselves through a founding assembly. This is the only positive step that can reverse the process of dehumanisation that has infected so many sectors of the Arab world. Otherwise we shall sink in our suffering and continue to endure the awful tribulations of Israeli collective punishment, which can only be stopped by a collective political independence of which we are still very capable (Al-Ahram Weekly, July 11, 2002).

To the benefit of Mr. Arafat, Bush’s bankrupt and isolated vision of removing him was declared a failure in the “quartet” meeting in Washington on the Middle East. All, the UN, EU, Russia and Arab representatives, voiced their disagreement on the sacking of Arafat.

A democratic political stage is a crucial requisite for the Palestinian people to fight diplomatic sabotage by the Israeli government – instrumented by the Likud – and to bunch up international support for their cause. Bush’s vision, more crisis management than solution, sees that democracy will help the situation: a classical Western colonizer pretext. Nonetheless, a transparent and democratic leadership, whether under Arafat or someone else, is a pivotal instrument for the Palestinian cause in its gallantry and struggle.  

The author encourages your comments. Please e-mail him at t.ghanem@islamonline.net