[NYTr] Fisk on Annapolis: Same old Pious Story

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl


The Independent - Nov 29, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3204054.ece


A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are the same

by Robert Fisk

Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White
House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and
promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the
same words of Oslo.

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I
remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time
for the cycle of blood... to end"?

Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't
there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an
Israeli state - and in reality, of course, it is - there can be no
"right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled
(or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.

And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of
the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work
plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to
address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each
party." Come again?

We went through all these steering committees before - and they never
worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of
this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr
Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that
we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians
have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state
when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish
settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?

Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but
the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this - or at
least Syrian support to control Hamas - and what do we get? Bush
continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it
must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else...

Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in
the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza
Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to
have a free ride for a year without the full involvement of every party
in the region? More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are
under the control of Hamas.

Reading the speeches - especially the joint document - it seems like an
exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster
and the President of the United States thinks he is going to produce
the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and
Iran - and Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole
Annapolis shindig is that once again millions of people across the
Middle East - Muslims, Jews and Christians - will believe all this and
will then turn - after its failure - with fury on their antagonists for
breaking these agreements.

For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security
and recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of
Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that?
Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which
thus far has been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces
from occupied territories" simply doesn't exist in the text.

Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy
these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the
end of 2008.