Image Credit: White House photo by Eric Draper 2008-01-15.
Olmert 'Determined' to continue Negotiations for Peace and Security
BBSNews Analysis 2008-01-16 -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has one less government coalition partner today on the resignation of Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli hardliner who has vowed that the ethnic cleansing from Israel of most Arabs to a nascent Palestinian state is the only way forward.
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President George W. Bush joins Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, right, at a viewing of the King's prized horses Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 at the monarch's ranch in Al Janadriyah, Saudi Arabia.
Image Credit: White House photo by Eric Draper 2008-01-15. |
He and the political party he represents, Yisrael Beiteinu, has left the government and Olmert promptly accepted his resignation. The Prime Minister's office released the following statement about the resignation:
"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, this morning (Wednesday), 16 January 2008, accepted Minister Avigdor Liberman's resignation from the Government. The Prime Minister thanked him for his service in the Government and for his considerable contributions to a series of Government security and social measures.Prime Minister Olmert made it clear that there is no alternative to conducting serious diplomatic negotiations in order to reach peace. This is the order of the day and is dictated by national responsibility. The Government has also set the full assurance of Israel's security as a clear condition for the implementation of any future agreement. The Prime Minister is determined to continue the diplomatic negotiations out of recognition that they contain the only real chance to assure the peace and security of Israel's citizens."
In Haaretz, Israel's newspaper of record, Lieberman said:
"From our point of view, the concept of land for peace is out of the question," said Lieberman. "The principle must be exchanges of territory and population."
Ethnic Cleansing and Racism in Israel
Many moderate Israeli's considered Lieberman's overt anti-Arab racism troublesome upon his being brought back into the government again after being ousted in 2004 during Ariel Sharon's time in office. According to a BBC profile in October 2006:
"In the past, Mr. Lieberman has accused some Arab parliamentarians in Israel of being Nazi collaborators for meeting members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He said they should be charged with treason.'Lieberman has racist overtones when he addresses Arab issues,' says Yossi Alpher, a political analyst. 'He's not subtle, he's blustery, and he's not a strategic thinker.
'He readily advocates force to resolve complex issues. In Israel he tends to be scorned by most Israelis but he's a skillful demagogue who has built a strong following.'"
The BBC report also notes that Haaretz reported at the time that Lieberman was so overt "his unbridled tongue, comparable only to those of Iran's president."
In a report by The Nation, one of the only US news outlets to realize the depths of Lieberman's racism against Arabs, it was reported in December 2006 that Lieberman, the Russian immigrant living in the illegal West Bank settlement of Nokdim, Ben Lynfield wrote, "If Lieberman's pronouncements are to be taken seriously--and there is no obvious reason they should not be--a Lieberman government would exclude some Arab citizens from Israel, would expel others who refuse to sign a loyalty-to-Zionism oath, would turn Gaza into Grozny and would execute Arab members of the Knesset who talk to Hamas or mark Israel Independence Day as the anniversary of the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948."
More recently Lieberman basked in the idea of killing any chance for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and sinking the Annapolis meeting before it even got started by demanding that the Palestinian Authority explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish state. At the time Haaretz reported Lieberman said:
"'I aim to drag Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into demanding that the Palestinians recognize us as a Jewish state as a prerequisite for the international peace summit planned at Annapolis,' Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) told Haaretz yesterday. He added that the proposal's acceptance by the cabinet was "important and symbolic.'"
Earlier this month Lieberman's plans to bolt the coalition if "core issues" (what else is there?) were discussed, then he would take his toys and go home; Lieberman may have had a more cynical outcome in mind. Jerusalem Post, Israel's counterpart to the US's Fox News, reported that Lieberman simply has his eye on the next election and he needed some right-wing issue to quit on so he could claim he left the government on "principle."
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However to most observers, and even JPost reported, that "Losing Lieberman and Israel Beiteinu at this stage might not be bad for Olmert, and could actually be the glue that cements Labor head Ehud Barak into the coalition."
Part of the rising popularity of Avigdor Lieberman in Israeli politics may be an outcome of changing Israeli public opinion and rampant Anti-Arab racism.
Yedioth reported on January 9 that there was a new directive issued to Magen David Adom that seemed to cast all Palestinians as a risk group and as such they should all be treated as "contaminated" and ambulances should be disinfected after each medical transfer:
"An MDA paramedic told Ynet that many of the workers were puzzled by the new directive. 'The instruction marks all Palestinian hospitals as contaminated and this seems too far-reaching,' he explained."
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel was quoted in Haaretz in a new report last December saying that the number of Israeli's expressing hatred towards Arabs has doubled and only half the Israeli public believes that Jews and Arabs should have equal rights. The reports author Sami Michael said:
"'Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy," Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday.'We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery,' Michael said."
What does this mean for Annapolis?
Not much. It was not going to go anywhere anyway. It shows that efforts by president Bush are all for naught because Israel is simply not interested in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Even though there has been some new ground broken towards a just peace settlement, and hearing a US president referring to the "illegal occupation" of Arab lands, and that illegal settlements must go (Lieberman must love that given that he is a squatter in an illegal settlement), as well as reparations for Palestinian refugees and the all important notion that ongoing new construction in East Jerusalem is "unhelpful"; the Israelis have thumbed their nose at the United States president and his Secretary of State no matter the charades that have played out on American TV.
Yesterday's high death toll in yet another Israeli incursion into the occupied territories has turned out to be a lot different than initially thought.
According to a Haaretz time line of the fighting, the operation began before dawn with an elite IDF unit known as the Golani Brigade infiltrating Zeitoun.
They saw some Palestinians at daybreak and attacked and that resulted in a nearly day long gun battle.
By 8:30 a vehicle moved in with five Palestinian gunmen and the IAF targeted them. At 9:00 am the IAF fired on a group of Palestinians who were going to fire mortars on the infiltrating Israeli soldiers.
Forty-five minutes later a worker in a potato field in a Kibbutz named Ein Hashlosha was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.
Hours later at 3:00 pm the Palestinians, some news reports are saying Hamas, fired a Qassam at Ashkelon where it hit a road. Haaretz reported that an hour later the IDF started moving out and they were followed out by extensive mortar and rocket fire, at 6:00 pm the IAF attacked a rocket crew manning Qassams and killed two of them.
Predictably, Hamas ended a self-imposed restraint since the takeover of the Strip last year and began retaliatory attacks.
As is usual with those attacks, the Israeli town of Sderot once again caught a rocket barrage.
In other words, there is no peace process, it is still business as usual in the state of Israel, the government there is looking shaky if not in danger of toppling, and the words "banana republic" are being applied to what appears to be a complete inability to take the necessary steps for peace.
Robert Blecher, an editor for the Middle East Report said since Israel is "Unable to stop the rocket fire from Gaza or prevent Hamas from building its military capacity, Israel has opted for short, rolling raids to keep Hamas on the defensive. The Israeli government might not want to invade and reoccupy the entire strip, but with Bush's visit over, the Israel Defense Forces apparently feels it has a freer hand."
What about the Arab Street?
President Bush heard from many Arab governments during his Middle East jaunt and they are not at all ready to jump on the bandwagon to antagonize Iran and join in the American neocon wish for war.
On the contrary, Arab governments are acutely aware that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the, if not the most important issues facing the Middle East today.
In the Middle East Times Monday the threat by Iran was downplayed because the Arab world considers Israel's undeclared nukes (yet another problematic issue when viewed in the light of international treaty obligations) more of a problem with also the threat of Israeli military action hanging in the air above the Arab street:
"Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal made his country's position regarding Iran clear ahead of Bush's visit and before his warning speech on Iran in Abu Dhabi.
'Saudi Arabia is a neighbor of Iran in the Gulf, which is a small lake,' Faisal said. "We are keen that harmony and peace should prevail among states of the region."
Saudi diplomats told the Middle East Times that the monarch is aware of the potential threat that Iran poses in the region with its nuclear program, and its political leverage in war-torn Iraq and crisis-hit Lebanon and Gaza.
But the king would advise Bush against trying to escalate a confrontation with Iran, because of his conviction that Iran's nuclear program -- which Tehran insists is only for civilian energy purposes -- remains a lesser threat than Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal and a military confrontation."
In fact, in 2002 when then Prince Abdullah first floated the Arab Peace Plan, it was greeted positively by the United States. The Prince said, "Allow me at this point to direct myself to the Israeli people," Prince Abdullah declared, "to say to them that the use of violence, for more than 50 years, has only resulted in more violence and destruction, and that the Israeli people are as far as they have been from security and peace, notwithstanding military superiority and despite efforts to subdue and suppress. Israel, and the world, must understand that peace, and the retention of the occupied Arab territories, are incapable and impossible to reconcile and achieve."
Abdullah also said, "I would further say to the Israeli people that if their government abandons the policy of force and aggression and embraces true peace, we will not hesitate to accept the right of the Israeli people to live in security with the people of the region."
The Arab Peace Initiative was dusted off again in 2007 and unanimously endorsed at the Arab League summit in Riyadh on March 29, 2007, and it has been enthusiastically referred to by Secretary Rice and president Bush just recently.
No matter how positive a reaction there is in moving towards full normalization of Israel with the rest of the Arab world, nothing will happen as long as the Israelis keep slapping around George W. Bush and simply ignoring his efforts to get the Israelis to finally accept United Nations Resolutions, the so-called "Road Map" and the Arab Peace Initiative.
Right now, watching what is unfolding after Bush left the beleaguered Israeli state; they simply glad handed him and then sent him on his way with no intention of changing their priorities even on something as simple as stopping new construction in East Jerusalem and dismantling the hundreds of checkpoints that restrict Palestinians day to day movement and ability to jump-start their economy.
The Bush administration is apparently powerless even against an Israeli government that he asked to keep together for peace.
They didn't listen, and the death toll and number of those maimed for life (and ever more terrorist sympathizers) keeps growing.
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