The “new” Middle East is emerging, and it isn’t at all pretty – a child, in fact, that only its mother (the Bush administration) could love. When a massive military presence on main street Ramadi is considered freedom, you know something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. But then freedom is a very malleable word, one that enables scoundrels to sound high-minded while in fact speaking a portion of the grisly truth. “Freedom” may sound like human rights, but what they’re really talking about is the freedom to apply power at will. Pirates’ freedom, or perhaps more accurately, the freedom of the mafia don. Our standard is clear: a regime loves freedom if it is compliant with our directives. If not, it is radical, dictatorial, extreme. Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace activist, sums it up quite neatly in a recent column. Palestinians are “moderate” if they follow U.S. orders and “pragmatic” if they follow Israel’s orders.

Clearly Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is both “moderate” and “pragmatic”, joining Bush and Olmert in roundly condemning Hamas (which is neither). Rather than criticize Israel and the “Quartet” for systematically strangling Gaza while allowing the expansion of settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank, Abbas is working in coordination with the powers that have denied his people their most basic national and human rights for the last four decades. These are, of course, the same powers that sign his paycheck and provide his security forces with arms, so how can Abbas not be compromised in the eyes of most Palestinians, who have nothing… not even a national identity. They see the Palestinian Authority living relatively affluent lives, eating well amid screaming poverty, bowing to their occupiers… and so they vote for Hamas, not just in Gaza, mind you, but throughout the West Bank, as well. They exercised their right to choose their own leaders late last year, and now they are being punished for not having legitimized the “leaders” we chose for them. There’s Bush’s democracy.

If it weren’t so grim, it would be almost laughable to hear Dubya clumsily working his rhetoric around this situation when he and Olmert have so obviously undermined the very principles the claim to champion. Pundits in the U.S. media – those critical of Bush – fault him for being “disengaged” from the Israel / Palestine issue, but the problem is just the opposite. That lack of progress in reaching a comprehensive peace agreement? That’s what they’ve accomplished, with the full cooperation of the Israeli government. Bush has involved himself deeply, pouring money and arms into one Palestinian side, strangling the other (and 1.5 million civilians along with it), and fomenting this conflict under the watchful eye of their Middle East point person, Elliot Abrams, who by rights should be spooning gruel in a Nicaraguan prison right now. The result is quite typical for this administration – a total disaster, people at one another’s throats, that sort of thing. More birth pangs, and with a midwife like Abrams, you can see what this sucker is going to look like when it grows up.

The new Middle East – slouching soon towards a Bethlehem near you.

luv u,

jp

The Palestinian’s two main political factions are on the brink of all-out civil war – the first such fratricidal conflict in that unfortunate people’s modern history. How the Israeli leadership must be chortling right now. To them, this is a dream come true – at long last, Palestinians are killing one another. Forty years into the illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (not to mention the Syrian Golan, still illegally occupied), the imperial tactic of divide and conquer is finally paying dividends. Back in the 1980s, when the first intifada was brewing, Israeli intelligence made an investment in the then-nascent Hamas movement, hoping that it would undercut Fatah in the occupied territories. Of course, the intifada made Arafat’s organization, then in exile in Tunis, far less relevant, as resistance was driven by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, not in the diaspora. That was when Hamas began to take hold as a political force, providing social services while the territories were under siege.

Few will remember that in the late 80s, when Israeli leaders were saying they would never talk to the PLO, they were preparing to do just that. As the post Gulf War peace negotiations began – brokered by papa Bush – Israel took the opportunity to conduct separate negotiations with Arafat, whose witless, mapless, and self-serving representatives were more than happy to give away the store in exchange for an exclusive franchise (to wit, the Palestinian Authority) and the power/graft potential it offered. From that point on, Israel would only talk to the PLO, and not the Palestinians from inside the territories, having effectively co-opted Arafat and his organization into the native colonial administration they had always sought, with little success, since the occupation began. “President” Arafat’s cooperation allowed Israel, in essence, to expand the infrastructure of colonialism in the territories without organized harassment throughout the 1990s, until the inevitable explosion occurred in 2000, provoked by Barak and Sharon.

It’s not hard to understand why Hamas won a plurality in last year’s elections. It’s not because the Palestinians are mostly hard-line Islamists; it’s because, despite their Mossad-funded beginnings, Hamas is definitely not in the pocket of the Israelis. Abbas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is funded, trained, and dog-whipped by Israel and the United States. We Americans may be ignorant of this, but it’s only too clear to the people living in the territories. And since the election, Palestinian society has been strangled by an act of collective punishment (shamelessly supported by the Europeans) that would be condemned bitterly in any other context, touching off this fratricidal struggle. This fulfills the fervent wish of an Israeli leader decades ago who envisioned Palestinians in the territories being contained like “drugged roaches in a bottle.” Quite so, and the world looks on. Our own indifference is fueled by a mainstream media that almost never goes out on a political limb, even when ex-presidents give them cover. I just heard NPR’s Steve Inskeep talking to Brookings’ Bruce Reidel about weapons going to Hamas and Fatah, the operative question being, “where is Hamas getting guns?” Answer? Wait for it…. Hezbollah and Iran, of course, the sources of all evil, able to defy geography itself by smuggling arms into Gaza via its border with, what, Lebanon?? Crikey. (Though to their credit, NPR did talk to Rashid Khalidi the next day.)

When you look at this conflict, just remind yourself – this is the result of a 40-year illegal (and quite brutal) occupation, underwritten by us.

luv u,

jp