Britain and US Middle East Manoeuvring Preparing Ground to Attack Iraq

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Britain and US Middle East Manoeuvring Preparing Ground to Attack Iraq

For Your Reference:
The Deliberations of the "Quartet"

"Land for Peace"

For Your Information:
Text of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

While Diplomats Debate Land for Peace, Palestinians Are Losing Their Land and Water

King Abdullah of Jordan has held talks in London focusing on the Middle East and Iraq with Tony Blair. The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman was unwilling on Monday to give details of the talks. However, he did signal that Tony Blair could not agree with King Abdullah’s opinion that no move should be made against Iraq until firm steps are taken to improve the peace prospects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In two media interviews, King Abdullah warned it would be "somewhat ludicrous" to try to tackle Saddam Hussein without some movement on Israeli-Palestinian peace, and could open up a "Pandora's box" in the region.

"In the light of the failure to move the Israeli-Palestinian process forward, military action against Iraq would really open Pandora's box," he told The Times on Monday.

Asked whether Blair agreed there was a direct link between the two issues, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman would only say: "He (Blair) acknowledges there is a peace process (in the Middle East) that needs to be energised, and there is an issue of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq)."

King Abdullah, in the interview with The Times, voiced frustration at the "different ideas" in Washington. "There are splits in the way they look at the Middle East."

The king is due to meet US President George W. Bush later this week, and is considered to be a key US ally in the Middle East. However, he said there were those in Washington who were "fixated" with Iraq and warned that if those voices got louder, it would "destabilise American strategic interest even more in the Middle East".

King Abdullah again denied reports that Jordan would be a possible staging ground for any US attack on Iraq. He said he hoped talks in Washington and efforts by the so-called "Quartet" – the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations – could lead to an international conference later this year on devising a peace plan for the Middle East.

Earlier this month, the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Marwan Muasher, had visited Washington for talks with President Bush, along with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Marwan Muasher had put forward an outline plan for a Palestinian state which focused on the need for "security" measures to prevent Palestinian "terrorism", as well as a "parliamentary" form of government. This plan was in two phases: "Phase one takes us from now to the elections after a new constitution is approved by the Palestinians, one that has a clear separation of powers, a parliamentary system"; and another phase, "a road map that would take us from the elections to, say, mid 2005, which is the date at which a Palestinian state is supposed to be independent and to exist on the basis of the '67 borders."

The murderous actions of the Israeli occupation and so-called "incursions" and opposed to them, the just struggle of the Palestinian people under the Palestinian Authority, have together forced Anglo-US imperialism to set a timetable for the recognition of a Palestinian state. At the same time, Britain and the US are wanting to adopt the moral high ground preparatory to any armed invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, this is all being cooked up in the context of their strategic interests in the Middle East. Only when viewed in this light do the manoeuvrings of the US and Britain fall into place. The Bush/Blair plan involves also the toppling of Yasser Arafat so that a "democracy" based on the values of the Paris Charter can also be implemented in Palestine. Having moved from a "no-war, no-peace" strategy which they held to for many years, the US and Britain, while giving the green light to Israeli Zionism with their "even handed" approach, putting aggressors and oppressed on a par, are moving to bringing about a "peace" based not on the freedom of the Palestinian people to determine their own future but on their control in present circumstances of the whole Middle East region.

However, their geo-political tactics reflected in the region are both extremely risky in terms of dangers for the world’s people, but also in terms of the opposition of the Palestinian, Arab, Iranian and other peoples of the region. The timeframe for the "ending of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict" by 2005 has thus evolved to cloak in humanitarian terms what is planned to be the continued block to the emancipation of the Palestinian people. It also has been framed with the aim of mollifying Arab opposition to the nefarious objective of forcibly removing the present Iraqi regime.

The working class and people must speak out against these Anglo-US plans, and support the right of the Palestinian people to their emancipation, and of the peoples and nations of the Middle East to determine their own affairs free from all outside intervention.

Backing a statement by the diplomatic "Quartet" on the Middle East, the United Nations Security Council on July 18 called on the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to co-operate with the effort to achieve the goals set in that declaration.

During an open meeting, the current President of the Council, Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain, read a statement in which the 15-member body voiced its support for the Joint Statement issued on July 16 by the Quartet – which is comprised of the UN, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United States.

The Council also acknowledged the involvement of senior representatives of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the Quartet's discussions, which were held in New York and chaired by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In its statement, the Council also stressed the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East based on all its relevant resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference and the principle of land for peace.

Following more than two hours of talks on the situation in the Middle East, the members of the Quartet had on July 16 said they were committed to backing reform efforts by the Palestinian Authority and called on Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable Palestinian State.

In a communiqué read to the press, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the Quartet strongly supported the goal of a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement, as expressed in a statement last month by US President George W Bush, and agreed that with an intensive effort on security and reform by all, this could be reached within three years.

"We remain committed to implementing the vision of two States, Israel and an independent, viable and democratic Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," Kofi Annan said.

The Secretary-General said the Quartet pledged all its efforts to realise the goals of reform, security and peace, reaffirming "that these efforts in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields must proceed together, hand-in-hand".

The Quartet also welcomed "the strong Palestinian interest in reform, including the Palestinian 100-Day Reform Programme, as well as the willingness of regional States and the international community to assist the Palestinians to build institutions of good government and democracy, in preparation for statehood," Kofi Annan said.

As for Israel, the Secretary-General said that the Quartet noted that country's "vital stake" in the success of Palestinian reform and called on it to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, including easing internal closures, releasing frozen tax revenues, withdrawing forces and stopping all settlement activity.

Kofi Annan said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had informed him that he wanted to see a world-wide humanitarian operation to alleviate the plight of the Palestinian people, adding that the Quartet agreed that full humanitarian access would be the fastest way to begin improving their plight. The United Nations – with the full support of the group – agreed to lead that effort, he said.

"We all share the end objective of two States, living in peace, side by side," the Secretary-General said in response to a question. "What we have to do is work out how we get there."

The new Israeli policy of "land for peace" is not the old land for peace approach, under which Israel would withdraw from most Palestinian territory in exchange for recognition and acceptance.

This time, in response to the latest bus bombing in Jerusalem, the process has gone into reverse. Israel will occupy some Palestinian land and hold it until the bombings stop.

The Israeli logic is, if we have no peace, we take a piece of your land. And if there are more bombings, then more land will be taken. And so on.

The logical outcome would be for Israel to eventually re-occupy the whole of the West Bank.

Under the Oslo accords, the Palestinians had full or partial autonomy in 27% of the West Bank. This included all the main towns, except for Jerusalem.

Around 24% of the territory, containing about two-thirds of the population, is under mixed Israeli military and Palestinian civilian control.

According to the Oslo accords and a pledge to the US, Israel was supposed to make three further pullbacks from the West Bank before mid-1998 and before moving onto a final agreement by May 1999. The Palestinians have already rejected the first of these, withdrawal of just under 3%, as too small and the second withdrawal was disputed.

The US wanted an Israeli withdrawal from a further 13.1% of the West Bank. This is far less than the Palestinians originally wanted, but they indicated that they would accept it.

Israel repeatedly refused to follow through on agreements and Washington’s exclusive mediation role eclipsed what many considered the necessary international and regional "spirit" of the 1991 Madrid Conference, which was based on a land-for-peace equation. Israel insisted that its commitments to the Oslo process – such as previously agreed to military redeployments – could only be resolved in the context of a "framework" agreement that put an official end to Palestinian claims based on United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 242. This resolution calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territories occupied during the 1967 war, as well as a "just settlement of the refugee problem".

The Camp David summit of July 2000 focused on the land-for-peace formula as the basis for negotiations rather than peace with justice and the national rights of the Palestinian people.

In February this year, Saudi Arabia offered Arab peace with Israel in exchange for land to Palestinians. US officials said the proposal by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was significant because it came from a ruler viewed as a strong Palestinian supporter.

At the same time, US officials reiterated that the first step toward peace wass for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to work to stop attacks against Israelis.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, in an interview with Saudi TV called the proposal "an interesting and positive one, radiating a willingness to advance toward peace".

The proposal was outlined by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in March at the Arab League summit, to which Yasser Arafat was prevented by Israel from travelling to deliver his speech.

The Saudi proposal was that Israel would complete a "full withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories."; Israel would recognise "an independent Palestinian state with al-Quds al-Shareef (East Jerusalem) as its capital."; Israel would allow "the return of refugees."; Arab nations would establish "normal relations" and security for Israel.

But 12 of the 22 Arab leaders did not attend the opening of the summit, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, whose countries traditionally have been key players in the quest for Mideast peace, among the absentees. And Syrian President Bashir Assad expressed doubts that Israel could ever deliver on the Saudi peace plan.

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

Emphasising the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasising further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

1. Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

2. Affirms further the necessity

(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarised zones;

3. Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;

4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.

Adopted unanimously at the 1382nd meeting

WDIE is posting this article written in 1991 by Dr Romas R Mattair, for the snapshot it gives of the Palestinian situation at that time, which can be viewed in the context of present developments.

The Abu Tair clan has lived in the village of Oum Tuba, southeast of Jerusalem, for 1,200 years. Its members hold tide to the land granted in 1873 by the Ottoman Turkish authorities, who ruled much of the Arab world at that time. Last year, the clan applied to the Jerusalem municipality for a license to build some houses and a school on some of their open land, but no answer was given. Instead, in early June 1991, the family read a notice in a Palestinian newspaper that the Israeli government was confiscating 150 acres of the family's land as well as adjacent land belonging to other villages in order to build a new Jewish settlement.

The villagers of Ourn Tuba will not be able to build housing for their expanding population. The almond and olive trees and grape vines planted on this land that provide crops for consumption and for sale will be bulldozed. There will be no land left for the grazing of this village's sheep. Their legal appeals will fall on deaf ears.

This story has been repeated again and again in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip as well, during the 24 years since Israel occupied the land and subjugated the people during the 1967 war. Along with the widespread confiscation of private property of Arab landowners in order to make way for the construction of new Jewish settlements, Israeli authorities have systematically exploited the water from the West Bank's aquifer by digging wells deeper than existing Palestinian Arab wells, by preventing the Palestinians from deepening their own wells or digging new ones, by restricting the amount Palestinians can draw from their wells, and by charging Palestinians about six times as much per cubic meter of water from the aquifer as Israeli users are charged.

Israel took 500 million cubic meters of water from the aquifer last year for Jewish settlements and for Israel itself, whereas the Palestinian Arab intake from the aquifer was reduced to 100 million cubic meters to provide for villages, towns, cities, people and farmland. As a result of the curtailed Palestinian consumption of the aquifer's water, the villagers of Kufr Ein had water piped in only one day per week this summer, farmers in Jericho could plant crops on only 30 percent of their cultivable land this year, and average use in some areas of the West Bank has dropped below the 44 litres per capita per day that the UN indicates is necessary to maintain minimal health standards. Inasmuch as the West Bank's aquifer is being over-utilised by about 80 million cubic meters per year, Palestinian access to this traditional water source will further diminish in future years.

In early July, Housing Minister Ariel Sharon promised an enthusiastic audience at Maale Adumin, a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem which may soon be the first such settlement to achieve the status of a city, that Israel would never withdraw from the occupied territories and that the ambitious settlement programme the Israeli government is implementing with haste will continue.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir regularly makes the same promises. Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, can only watch the continued seizure of their land and water. Thousands of acres of land and hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water have been taken from them just since Secretary of State James Baker's first meeting with Palestinian leaders on March 12 of this year in Jerusalem.

In December of 1987, frustrated and angry with Israel's occupation policies, the Palestinian population erupted into an intifada "rising up and shaking off," that initially took the form of throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and settlers throughout the occupied territories. Almost 1,000 Palestinians –many of them children, teenagers and women– have died as the result of Israeli gunfire since the intifada began.

Fourteen year old Ibrahim Muham Abu Safiyyeh, from the village of Beit near Ramallah, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in early June when he refused to stop for identification after soldiers had been stoned in the area. Tens of thousands of Palestinians again, many of them children, teenagers and women, have been wounded, many of them left quadriplegic or paraplegic as a result of Israeli gunfire.

Many of those, like 16 year old Fikri dul Rahim. of Tulkarm, a paraplegic since being shot by Israeli soldiers in July 1990, were killed or wounded while confronting Israeli military patrols or spray painting political graffiti on the walls of their refugee can towns and villages. However, there are victims of random and unprovoked brutality as well. One of them, 25 year old Manasreh, was shot in late June from a range of one metre by a Jewish settler who stopped a taxi at gunpoint on a road near Hebron and fired pointblank through the open window at the driver and at Omar Manasreh, leaving him a paraplegic. According to Dr Fan Abdel Rahmin, the director of East Jerusalem's Makassed Hospital, the permanently disabled are an economic burden on their families that charitable institute cannot begin to alleviate.

Currently, about 14,000 Palestinians imprisoned in the territories, many of them never having been tried. Thousands more, have been imprisoned in the past and eventually released. According to Israeli reserve soldiers and Israeli human rights organisations such as B'Tselem, many of these pioneers are tortured and beaten until they provide names of others for Israeli military and security forces to go out and apprehend

Ari Shavit, an Israeli soldier who recently did reserve duty at the Gaza Beach Internment Facility, reports "hair-raising human screams" coming from Palestinians being tortured by the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security police, in the camp's interrogation sections. "And our ambassadors in Washington have explained to the networks over and over that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys," he writes. "And no one has risen to silence them in shame. No one has brought them a cassette with the screams."

In addition, extended families of 15 or more persons are exposed to the hot summer sun and the cold winter rains after Israeli military government has routinely demolished all or parts of their houses, particularly their roofs, as "collective punishment" for the violent resistance of one family member, in many cases a teenager. This is the fate of the extended family of Mar Moloch, a suspected Faith activist from the village of Kagawa Been Jedi in the West Bank. And it is the fate of the family Kaman Faith Ottoman Abu Seethed, a suspected Islamic Jihad supporter from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian leaders who have met repeatedly with US Secretary of State James Baker this year fear that they may lose popular support for their continuing diplomatic efforts if they continue to have nothing to show for such concessions and compromises as recognition of Israel's right to exist, their acceptance of a two state solution, their willingness to form a joint delegation with Jordan for upcoming peace talks and consider a solution involving a less than fully independent Palestinian state that demilitarised and confederated with Jordan.

Being able to trace their ancestors living in Palestine for more than a thousand years before Zionist immigrants came to build Jewish state at the turn of this century, Palestinians like the Abu Tiaras are stunned when Shamir calls them "brutal, savage invaders". While they bravely assert, "No force on earth can stop us from protecting land," the Shamir government's policies and the US economic and military assistance that make them possible mean that the Tiaras and others like them will continue to lose their land and water if the US does not link its aid to a cessation of Jewish settlement activity while the peace conference considers the future of the occupied territories. As Dr Faro Abdel Rahmin insists, however, "We are human beings. We deserve self-determination, not to be kept on reservations like American Indians. We hope peace will prevail, so we can enjoy our lives like most people on earth."

Dr. Thomas R. Mattair has taught at Kent State University, the University of Southern California and Cornell University. His article on The Bush Administration and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" appeared in the Spring 1991 issue of American-Arab Affairs. He travelled in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the summer of 1991.