No solution for Palestine, no end to occupation

Nov. 19—A week before the Bush administration’s grand Middle East peace conference is scheduled to begin in Annapolis, Md., there is still no confirmed list of attendees, no confirmed date and no agenda. Up to 50 countries were to be invited.

The event, if it takes place at all, has now been downgraded from a three-day conference to a one-day meeting to set a “framework” for later talks—in other words, an empty photo-op.

That the hated war criminals in the White House could even propose such a fraudulent gathering while in the midst of brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has made many of their collaborators in the region nervous about accepting an invitation. They fear that the failure of such a gathering to reach any agreement will only further isolate the U.S. in the region and weaken their own position.

Every question of substance has already been declared off-limits by Zionist forces. These include the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state, the return of millions of Palestinian refugees, the dismantling of illegal fortress settlements that house more than half a million Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the vastly unequal distribution of water, the continued building of an apartheid wall and thousands of other barriers and police checkpoints that carve the West Bank into tiny encircled cantons, and the release of more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners.

The Bush administration has barred the participation of Hamas, the Islamic-based political party that won democratic elections in both the West Bank and Gaza.

In the latest indignity and insult, Palestinian negotiators on their way to a meeting with Israeli forces to prepare for the Annapolis meeting said they were blocked at an Israeli checkpoint. The session had to be called off.

Just a month ago, after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced with great fanfare: “Frankly, it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state.... The United States sees the establishment of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution as absolutely essential for the future, not just of Palestinians and Israelis but also for the Middle East and indeed to American interests.... Ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a top priority of the Bush administration.”

And so a conference to finally establish this limited Palestinian state was announced for Annapolis in mid-November.

But the doubtful fate of the grandly projected “peace conference” reflects U.S. imperialism’s total inability and unwillingness to provide solutions to any of the burning problems of the region.

The Annapolis meeting was always intended to further divide the Palestinian movement by isolating and excluding the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza. It was never intended to solve or even open substantive negotiations on any of the real problems that U.S. imperialism has created.

Rice, during her eight visits to the region this year, has held a series of meetings with Washington’s shaky allies and with the increasingly unstable Zionist fortress created by U.S. arms and money. These meetings dealt more with how to isolate the resistance forces in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Syria. On the top of the U.S. agenda was how to increase pressure, threats and preparations for war on Iran. Discussing the Palestinians’ stateless plight, now six decades old, was just a cover for the meetings.

The unsolvable problem is that every effort by U.S. imperialism to dominate the region has run into organized popular resistance.

Their brutal efforts to re-colonize Iraq have failed despite massive bombing, the overthrow of the Iraqi government and five years of military occupation, on top of 13 years of a starvation embargo and sanctions.

Meanwhile, Israel, despite billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and the latest high-tech weapons, was unable defeat Hezbollah or to occupy even a mile of Lebanon in last summer’s war.

Iran has continued to develop economically and industrially despite years of ever-increasing U.S. sanctions and sabotage.

But the greatest thorn in Washington’s plans has been the steadfast courage of the Palestinian people. Israel was forced to withdraw its apartheid settlements from Gaza two years ago.

In internationally monitored democratic elections, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, the Islamic-based political party with the most intransigent attitude toward Israel. Israel and the U.S. have always conspired to divide the Palestinian movement, playing one group against another.

In an effort to destroy Hamas, Israel totally encircled and cut off Gaza. A small sandy strip of undeveloped land with a population of 1.5 million, less than Brooklyn, Gaza has been turned into a walled ghetto. Deprived of funds even to pay civil servants, doctors or teachers, it is holding out under the most onerous conditions. Israel has increasingly cut off basic foods and fuel. There’s little electricity for cooking, pumping water or eliminating sewage. Israeli planes and helicopters continue to bomb apartment buildings and markets in an effort to terrorize the population.

This unrelenting pressure, while it has reopened divisions between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian movement, has not ended the resistance.

Popular resistance committees in Gaza continue to dig long tunnels under the now barricaded Rafah crossing into Egypt to bring in supplies and weapons. Hardly a day passes without Palestinian youth firing homemade rockets into Israel.

With Gaza under complete siege and all of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan under brutal occupation, it is up to the broad international movement that has long stood in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and sovereignty to raise their voices, denounce this phony meeting, demand its cancellation and demand an end to U.S. occupation and war.

In the U.S., the Troops Out Now Coalition has helped initiate a broad statement of opposition to the Annapolis meeting, available at: www.TroopsOutNow.org. Hundreds of individuals and groups have added their names. The statement also calls for protests around the country if the meeting is actually held on Nov. 27.