[NYTr] Roundup on Annapolis Agenda, various sources

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl - Nov 28, 2007

[I suggest listening to Democracy Now for full discussion and
debate on this critical issue.  Heard on Pacifica Radio, some NPR
and various indie radio and tv cable networks.  I listen to KPFK ,
90.7 fm, in LA, 6&9:00 AM.   Here's my survey, from various sources.-Ed]

sent by Sid Shniad

The Scotsman: 27-November-07
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1857642007

US hopes peace talks will forge Arab unity against Iran

Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

Israeli and Palestinian leaders meet today in Annapolis, Maryland in the
most serious effort yet by the US president, George Bush, to relaunch
negotiations on resolving the core issues of their conflict - with Iran
as a ghost in the room.

The one-day conference comes seven years after peace efforts led by the
then US president Bill Clinton broke down. The meeting will be attended
by at least a dozen Arab states, many of which do not have diplomatic
relations with Israel, including Syria.

Mr Bush and many of the participants will be hoping to use the
gathering to forge co-operation against Iran and its suspected efforts
to attain nuclear weapons capability, according to Israeli analysts.

"Iran is the strategic subtext of this meeting," said Yossi Alpher, a
former director of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv
University. "The US has finally got interested in dealing seriously
with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of its dilemmas in the
Gulf and its need to ensure backing for its policies in Iraq and Iran."

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian negotiator said the two sides were
close yesterday to agreeing on a joint document of principles to guide
peace talks that could be announced.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said negotiations with the
Palestinians would have a better chance of a positive outcome than in
the past because "we have a lot of participation", an apparent
reference to the Arab League's decision to attend. "We and the
Palestinians will sit together in Jerusalem and work out something that
will be very good."

Mr Abbas faced criticism from hardliners back home, with the Islamic
fundamentalist Hamas movement that controls the Gaza Strip convening
its own conference in Gaza City along with Islamic Jihad "to safeguard
Palestinian rights."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, said the peace
conference was "doomed to failure" and was intended to "give assistance
to the Zionists".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, chided Saudi Arabia for its
participation in the meeting.

Galia Golan, an international affairs specialist at the
Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, said: "It turns
out that Bush has another agenda for the conference and that is Iran.
The conference will go a long way to isolate Iran, which is what many
Arab states, Israel and the US would like to see, but where things go
from there is unclear."

***
Ha'aretz - Nov 27, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927531.html

Gideon Levy: Demands of a thief

The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber.
"To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make
concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial
signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to
Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and
distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the
Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen
land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their
fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue,
the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.

No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic
concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all
negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants,
lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old
people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just
cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years.
Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over
giving or not giving.

Lawyers, philosophers, writers, lecturers, intellectuals and rabbis,
who are looked upon for basic knowledge about moral precepts,
participate in this distorted discourse. What will they tell their
children - after the occupation finally becomes a nightmare of the past
- about the period in which they wielded influence? What will they say
about their role in this? Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part
of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and
then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what
they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every
single day. Intellectuals publish petitions, "to make concessions" or
"not to make concessions," diverting attention from the core issue.
There are stormy debates about corruption - whether Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert is corrupt and how the Supreme Court is being undermined. But
there is no discussion of the ultimate question: Isn't the occupation
the greatest and most terrible corruption to have taken root here,
overshadowing everything else?

Security officials are terrified about what would happen if we removed a
checkpoint or released prisoners, like the whites in South Africa who
whipped up a frenzy of fear about the "great slaughter" that would
ensue if blacks were granted their rights. But these are not legitimate
questions: The incarceration must be ended and the myriad of political
prisoners should be released unconditionally. Just as a thief cannot
present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the
owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to
the other side as long as the situation remains as it is.

Security? We must defend ourselves by defensive means. Those who do not
believe that the only security we will enjoy will come from ending the
occupation and from peace can entrench themselves in the army, and
behind walls and fences. But we have no right to do what we are doing:
Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire
neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals
living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in
the name of our security. The question of whether ending the occupation
would threaten or strengthen Israel's security is irrelevant. There are
not, and cannot be, any preconditions for restoring justice.

No one will discuss this at Annapolis. Even if the real core issues were
raised, they would focus on secondary questions - borders, Jerusalem and
even refugees. But that would be escaping the main issue. After 40
years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally
be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral
right to continue the occupation? The world should have asked this long
ago. The Palestinians should have focused only on this. And above all,
we, who bear the guilt, should have been terribly troubled by the
answer to this question.

                        ***

sent by: "Michael Hathaway" <mwhathaway at verizon.net>


Dear Friends ---

It is CRUCIAL for any serious longterm hope in the Middle East that the
United States stop its grossly and disastrously one-sided behaviour in
Israel-Palestinian issues, and become a genuine honest broker, which
we've only pretended all these decades. Bush has been even worse,
SUPPORTING the most right wing aggressive and hate-provoking
tendencies in Israel. This is not good for the long term interests of
the region, but also not for the longterm good of Israel itself.

Tonight the supremely articulate and sincere Palestinian Saed(?)
EREKAT will be interviewed on 60 MINUTES (CBS-check for time.) I
don't know what will be asked and what he will say, but he is usually
very good. He and Hanan Ashwari are easily the most eloquent and
articulate spokespeople I've heard in this vast, difficult subject. The
most amazing thing to me is that he is able to  speak directly and
unequivocally about the Israeli outrages of 50+ years in
HONEST-YET-MILD ways. He is also much more specific---and I must say
HONEST--- than any of the Israeli spokespeople I've heard over the
years. Sharon?! Begin?! Dayan?!  (The most moving Israeli speakers have
been a whole series of retired and REPENTENT chiefs of their
intelligence agency Mossad.)

Gwen Ifill's interview tuesday with Olmert was pathetic softball
practice---she didn't challenge him on a single omission or misleading
statement he made. She did not even provide a larger context. She
simply set him up for pat answers #1 through #5.

Perhaps I am the only person still watching 60 Minutes, under the
influence of what it used to be when it began.

FAR MORE IMPORTANT: Last, if you haven't yet read The Israel Lobby,
you really must get it and begin. It is a masterful, careful work by two
widely respected professors which is, Thank God, beginning the
long-postponed debate about the U.S.'es dangerously unfair attitudes
and behaviour in the region. Our mainstream media present the
right-wing Israeli views as fact, and avoid almost all genuine
discussion, such that Americans are vastly ignorant. MOST OF THE WORLD
KNOWS THESE IMPORTANT THINGS that we DON'T. This ignorance could
most easily be overcome with a crash course in studying this book, which
collects so much crucial information in one place. In its very mildness
and restraint it is a SHOCKING book. We have been partners in a great
evil for a long time.

Michael