Bush, Kerry stab Palestinians in back
Endorse Israeli land grab, assassinations
By Deirdre Griswold
The people of not only the Middle East but of
the world were shocked when President George W. Bush on April
14 came out flatly in support of the latest expansionist moves
by Israel against the Palestinians--and when the so-called
"opposition" party inside the U.S., the Democrats, endorsed
them too. This bipartisan move means just one thing: more blood
and suffering in the region.
As though to prove this, on April 18 Israel launched a
missile into the Pales tinian area of Gaza that killed Abdel
Aziz Rantissi, the top leader of the militant organization
Hamas, and two of his aides. Rantissi had only recently
replaced Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who himself was assassinated by
Israel in a similar missile strike.
Gaza was engulfed in huge demonstrations vowing retaliation
for the assassination. When Israel sent in tanks two days
later, five more Palestinians were killed--three of them
teenagers who had resisted this invasion with nothing but
stones.
For many years, and especially since the beginning of the
Intifada, or uprising, of the Palestinian people to regain
their land and national rights, the U.S. has pretended to be an
"honest broker" trying to effect a compromise between the two
sides.
At the same time, however, it was arming Israel to the teeth
and bolstering its economy with billions in aid. Israel has
been a strategic ally of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, a
nuclear-armed military power which has many times attacked Arab
countries that in any way challenged U.S.-British domination of
the region and its rich oil resources.
The pretense of neutrality was abandoned when Bush, with
Israel's hawkish prime minister Ariel Sharon at his side,
endorsed Sharon's plan to permanently hold onto large Jewish
settlements in the West Bank, thus violating all United Nations
resolutions on this subject. At the same time, the U.S.
president rejected the Palestinians' right of return to their
homeland.
All this was, in words at least, a big departure from the
past, when U.S. presidents talked of "road maps" and "peace
plans" that would supposedly bring about a negotiated
settlement. So how did the Democrats respond to this shift? On
April 18, the day that Rantissi was assassinated,
soon-to-be-candidate John Kerry totally endorsed Bush's move on
NBC-TV's "Meet the Press." And former president Bill Clinton,
speaking at the Waldorf-Astoria on April 19, called Sharon's
plan "a good thing."
The Israeli state calls itself democratic, but bars
Palestinian immigration while allowing Jews from anywhere in
the world to come and live there. Palestinians who were
forcibly expelled from their homes, and their descendants, have
been trying to come back ever since Israel was founded on their
land in 1948.
Sharon today is making no pretense of negotiating with the
Palestinians. He refuses to recognize any Palestinian authority
not selected by Israel. On his return from Washington,
Sharon--a recognized war criminal for the 1982 massacres at
Sabra and Shatila--triumphantly told Israel's largest
newspaper, "They [the Palestinians] were dealt a lethal
blow."
Of course, there is a political cover for this. Sharon is
supposed to have stood up to his far-right wing by also saying
that Israel would pull its troops out of the Gaza Strip, where
they have been since the 1963 war with Egypt. A small number of
Jewish settlers there would have to leave along with Israeli
troops. But even Israel's far-right parties have now endorsed
this plan.
And why not? Israelis have not exactly been flocking to
Gaza. An arid strip of land bordering Egypt where 1.3 million
Palestinians live, Gaza has one of the highest population
densities in the world. The inhabitants are mostly Palestinian
refugees living in deplorable camps where there are no jobs and
no prospect of building a viable economy.
Israel isn't giving up anything. The New York Times of April
18 reported that "for some time after a withdrawal, Israel
wants to retain military control of Gaza's border with Egypt,
its airport, airspace and coastline." And Israel reserves the
right to re-invade Gaza, a hotbed of Palestinian resistance, at
any time.
In return, it has gotten U.S. endorsement for grabbing
valuable land from Palestinians in the West Bank and is keeping
an apartheid wall in place that cuts off Palestinian territory
equivalent in area to the state of Rhode Island.
The anger in the Arab world over all this is volcanic. Even
long-time U.S. allies like King Abdullah of Jordan and
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have expressed shock. Abdullah
canceled a scheduled meeting with Bush, bypassing Wash ington
to fly directly home after a visit to California. These heads
of state have to publicly distance themselves from both Israel
and the U.S. or face incalculable repercussions at home.
The Palestinian struggle for self-determination, along with
the resistance in Iraq to the U.S. military occupation there,
are natural and justified responses by peoples who have been
oppressed and robbed by the arrogant imperialist powers
dominating the world. Until this is rectified, these struggles
will continue.
Reprinted from the April 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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