Not ‘peace’ but cover for a new U.S. war

The Middle East “peace” conference held by the Bush administration in Annapolis, Md., on Nov. 27 was not meant to address the just grievances of the Palestinian people. The Annapolis meeting cynically exploited the suffering of the Palestinian people as a screen to hide a pro-war alliance aimed at Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and all who struggle for self-determination in the Middle East.

Boston school bus driver Robert Traynham at Nov. 27 rally against Annapolis ‘peace’ conference. WW photo: Liz Green

Addressing the 50 representatives of organizations and states in the Middle East, George Bush called the timing of the Annapolis conference “right” because “a battle is under way for the future of the Middle East, and we must not cede victory to the extremists.” [Bush uses “extremists” to refer to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas—J.C.]

Even the terms agreed upon at Annapolis are full of contradictions. A “final agreement” is to be reached between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority by 2008, the end of the Bush term. But Israeli Prime Minister Olmert said, “We will do all we can to try to reach an agreement as soon as possible, and we can do it. It doesn’t mean you can implement it.” (New York Times, Nov 29)

Bush claims he will be the “arbitrator” of the talks, yet his National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley said the U.S. would neither impose terms of a peace treaty on the two sides, nor “force a resolution of differences.”

Joyce Chediac, a Lebanese-American activist and contributing writer for Workers World newspaper, and Larry Holmes, WWP secretariat member and Troops Out Now Coalition organizer, gave talks from a Marxist perspective on ‘Annapolis: A Meeting About War Disguised as One About Peace’ at a Nov. 29 Workers World Party forum in New York City. Nov. 29 is an international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people. WW photo: Monica Moorehead

And who has Bush appointed to follow up on the sham “peace process”? He named not a career diplomat, but the former supreme commander of NATO, Gen. James L. Jones, to follow the sham “peace process.” Jones’ real job will be to funnel overt and covert arms for use against national liberation struggles.

Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas talked “peace,” while the Israeli military waged war. Armed with U.S. weapons, Israeli attacks continued in the West Bank and especially in Gaza. The six-month U.S.-Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is slowly strangling 1.4 million Palestinians, was not even on the Annapolis agenda (see related article).

100,000 in Gaza say: “Don’t recognize Israel!”

While Palestinian Authority President Abbas attended the conference and appears willing to go along with this deception, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and in the diaspora organized angry demonstrations against the phony peace talks, and Abbas’ participation in them. In Gaza, 100,000 chanted: “Don’t recognize Israel!” West Bank demonstrations were attacked by the Abbas forces, killing one (see related article).

Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, Washington has brokered a series of peace accords. All have been meant to confuse progressive people and divide the Palestinians. Israel broke each accord while Washington sat on its hands. Since 1993, Israel has placed half a million Zionist settlers in the West Bank, has confiscated more than half of the West Bank’s territory, refuses to define its own borders, has annexed East Jerusalem, denies Palestinian refugees the right to return, and has incarcerated 10,000 Palestinians, including half the Hamas cabinet.

Mustafa Barghouti, the former Palestinian information minister, said Annapolis was “deja vu” and it was unlikely any real agreement would be reached “as long as there is no serious pressure on Israel to end occupation ... and be forced to respect international law.” (aljazeera.net, Nov. 27)

Israeli think tank calls conference “a triumph”

Even the Israelis agree that Annapolis offers little hope for peace. Michael B. Oren, a senior fellow at the Israeli think tank Shalem Center, calls Olmert and Abbas “two of the region’s weakest leaders, unpopular among their own people and discredited by corruption charges.” Bush, he says, because he refuses to enter into any direct role, “further diminishes any hope for breakthrough.” (New York Times op-ed, Dec. 2)

But Oren is really excited about Annapolis. “Yet in spite of its glaring handicaps,” he continues, “Annapolis must be deemed a triumph—not of peacemaking, paradoxically, but of girding the region for conflict,” as participants in the conference were mostly motivated to attend by their fear of Iran. “This fear has deepened with the success of the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as the expansion of Iranian influence westward into the Iraqi vacuum.”

Arab regimes “losing own youth to religious militancy”

In truth, the Arab reactionary regimes, all clients of the U.S., have entered into this anti-struggle alliance with the U.S. and Israel out of weakness. These regimes fear their own people, who feel a strong bond with the Palestinian struggle and are outraged that for 60 years Palestinian grievances have never been addressed.

“Those Arab nations fear that the tide of history is moving away from them, and that they are losing their own youth to religious militancy,” said the New York Times, Nov 28.

Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor of government at the University of Maryland, said of the Arab regimes, “They’re very worried about militancy and their public’s great sympathy with Hezbollah and Hamas. ... They were all stunned by the Hamas takeover of Gaza” in June.

Hisham Melham, the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya television, in the same source, points out that the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been the focal point for mobilization of Islamic and radical groups.”

An exception is Syria, subject of U.S. and Israeli attack, which for fear of isolation joined the other Arab League governments to attend at Annapolis.

U.S built for Iraq war on backs of Palestinians

This is not the first time the Bush administration has used the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the deep feelings the working and progressive people of the Middle East have for this struggle, to cover its war moves. Five years ago, Bush cried crocodile tears for the Palestinians and lied about “moves towards peace” in order to get the backing he needed for the invasion of Iraq.

“By June 2002, Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice realized that before the Europeans and Arabs would support an American-led invasion [of Iraq], the administration would have to prove that it cared about more in the Middle East than the security of Israel.” (New York Times, Nov. 26)

So “Mr. Bush ... called for Palestinian elections.” Then, at “the eve of the [Iraq] war in March 2003, and then only under pressure from Tony Blair, the British prime minister, the White House finally endorsed the ‘road map,’ a peace plan that was to lead to a Palestinian state in three years.”

The end result was not peace. It was the invasion of Iraq, and worsened conditions for the Palestinian people.

But today is not 2003. The brutality of Bush’s war on Iraq and the steady gains of the Iraqi resistance have exposed Washington’s predatory nature and its weakness in the face of popular resistance. The oppressed people and the liberation movements of the Middle East will not be fooled by Annapolis.

The situation here in the U.S. is another question. Here, the Palestinian struggle is still one of the most misunderstood. The imperialist maneuvers at Annapolis, however, show the centrality of the Palestinian struggle to all events in the Middle East. The anti-war movement cannot push the Palestinian struggle to the sidelines simply because the Republicans, the Democrats and the press deliberately obscure the just nature of the Palestinian cause.

To end the Iraq war and stop the Pentagon from starting new wars in the Middle East, progressives here must be armed with a firm understanding of the Palestinian struggle, and must embrace it with the deepest solidarity.