The Politico-Religious
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict/(PART II)
"I am aware how almost impossible it is
in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by
the Jews.... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence
here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get
Congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is
practically dictating to the Congress through influential Jewish people in the
country."
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, February
1957
"...the
American leadership is presently shaped by dangerous right wing Southern
extremists, who seek to use Israel as an offensive tool to destabilize the
whole Middle East area."
Alain Joxe (CIRPES)
"I cannot imagine a
Presidential candidate saying, 'I'm going to take a balanced position toward
the Israelis and the Palestinians', and getting reelected....It's
inconceivable. —AIPAC is smart enough to penetrate any sort of
circumlocutions."
Former President Jimmy Carter
The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political-religious conflict that has
lasted for nearly 90 years, that is to say since the British minority
government of Lloyd George, in its 1917 Balfour declaration,
decided to open the ancient Ottoman province of Palestine to Jewish settlement.
It is a conflict that pits three monotheistic
religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism)
against each other and which involves the political and economic interests of
Jewish zionists, Arab fundamentalists and Western Christian politicians.
Presently, there
is a lot of pessimism regarding the possibility of ending the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and little hope that it will ever be settled in a
civilized way, even though polls indicate
that the populations of Israel and of Palestine would like to put an end to
their more than half-century long war of attrition and would be ready to accept
a settlement that includes the establishment of a Palestinian state based on
the 1967 borders. Nevertheless, the politicians on either side and those who
reign in Washington D.C. seem to have little inclination to find a solution to
this conflict.
The last serious and nearly successful attempt to
resolve the conflict, and to put an end the Israeli
occupation of Palestine that began in 1967, goes back to the Oslo Accords of 1993. As for the so-called
present day "peace process," it is close to being completely
comatose. Indeed, the peace process in Palestine has been pretty much stalled
since the collapse of the Oslo Accords, notwithstanding the efforts made by the
so-called diplomatic Quartet, which is comprised
of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.
Indeed, before the onset of the 2003 Iraq War, it was thought that a roadmap
for a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
could be followed with some hope of success. The U.N. Security Council even
adopted Resolution 1515, which put its stamp on the quartet roadmap for peace
between Palestinians and Israel. The resolution would have legalized a
permanent agreement between Israel and Palestine.
—But this also failed.
The world is therefore entitled to know
why this conflict, which has been active since the 1967 war, is never resolved.
There is a lot of blame to be laid down on both sides of this conflict, but two main reasons stand out as explanations for the stalemate.
First religion.
The first reason why there is so much
intransigence on both sides, and why moderate voices have so much trouble being
heard, is because the conflict has religious overtones. In the past, when responsible
and pragmatic political leaders, such as the Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak
Rabin or the Egyptian President Anouar Sadate, attempted to resolve this rotten
political-religious conflict, they both were assassinated by religious
fanatics; President Sadate in October 1981, and Prime Minister Rabin in
September 1993.
On the Israeli side, ultra-nationalist
religious and political leaders reject out of hand any compromise with the
Palestinians because they have a mystical reading of history. They believe, for
example, that the Israeli military victory during the Six-day War of June 5-
10, 1967, was of divine origin. Right-wing rabbis
and their political allies are the most intransigent voices against any
political settlement of this old conflict, going so far as to forbid Israeli
students (through a December 2006 Halakhic decree, for example) from using
schoolbooks that feature the pre-1967 Israeli borders. They
go back to biblical times, thousands of years ago, to find self-serving
passages in the Bible (Genesis, chap. 15 or Deuteronomy, chap. 43) which
mention that a Jewish tribe lived in certain areas, and that such areas must be
part of contemporary Israel, no matter who has owned and occupied these
territories for hundreds of years.
On the Palestinian side, suspicion,
fanaticism and intolerance are no less rampant. While some Palestinian
organizations accept the right of Israel to exist and are open to a permanent
agreement guaranteeing the political coexistence of
Palestine with Israel, (the Fatah, for
example, which is the movement of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas),
other radical and Islamic militant organizations or parties, such as the Hamas (Islamic Resistance
Movement), presently the majority party,
denounce Israel's right to exist and vow to never accept any settlement that
encompasses any mutual recognition. The opponents to any political settlement
with Israel go back to the time of Mohammed, in 7th century
Arabia, to find historical-religious precedents when accords were signed
between tribes, with the clear intention of not respecting them and using
violence instead to attain their objectives.
The second reason behind the stalemate
is related to politics outside the region, especially to domestic politics in
the United States.
Since it is
obvious that the two conflicting parties harbor too much rancor and hostility
towards each other to reach a compromise on their own, a realistic solution has
to be the result of some outside arbitration. But the only credible conflict
resolution mechanism that the world has at present is the United Nations. And
that is where domestic American politics weighs in. The country that has the most
influence within the 15-member U.N. Security Council is the United States. Over
the years, however, the American government has used its veto
power dozens of times to prevent the U.N. from imposing sanctions on the
belligerents, thus de facto paralyzing the United Nations.
Why is this so? It is essentially because very rich
Zionist political contributors
have an undue influence on both major American political parties,
the Republican Party
and the Democratic Party, when
it comes to American foreign policy in the Middle East. Therefore, no matter
who occupies the White House, this powerful Lobby is
always in a position to call the shots at the U.N., because the American
government of the day follows its general orientation in its approaches to the Middle
East.
The
Bush-Cheney administration
has pushed this servility to a higher level than any other previous
administration. It has thus contributed more than any other to discrediting the
United Nations and prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, under
Bush II, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been close to being
Israel's foreign policy. It is a dual foreign policy, which is designed by the
same neocon advisors. In gratitude, a group in Israel is building a
center named after George
W. Bush. —And, the same political
forces are presently pushing for a U.S.-led war against Iran.
Nobody should bet against them succeeding.
In conclusion,
even though some may quarrel with details, the two main factors preventing a
solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are political-religious extremism
in Israel and in Palestine, and the bias in American politics in favor of one
side in the conflict. As long as politico-religious fanatics on both sides,
within Israel and within Palestine, are in control, and as long as the formal and informal pro-Israel
Lobby in the United States is behind American foreign
policy in the Middle East, there will not be a settlement of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the world will pay a price for it.
_______________________________________________
Rodrigue
Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also
visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com
_______________________________________________
Posted,
January 8, 2007, at 5:30 am
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