Friday, January 28, 2005
Temporary Palestinian State (with provisional boundaries)
MIDDLEEAST.ORG
- MER - Washington - 27 January: With no real Palestinian State any longer possible west of the Jordan, the U.S. and Israel have worked long and hard to get to the point where they could force a quisling Palestinian leadership of their choosing into a kind of convoluted submission while pretending it is an agreed settlement brought about by the 'Peace Process'. By assassinating Ahmed Yassin and Yassir Arafat in 2004, and then by manipulating the quick 'election' of Abu Mazen in 2005, Ariel Sharon in tandem with the Americans has set the stage for this further attempted historic deception and geopolitical triumph.
American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who received more negative confirmation votes in the Senate this week than any Secretary of State in history since 1825 -- is rushing to the region in a few days hoping to consolidate a quick deal before opposition can swell and the realities of the situation become more starkly understood.
Bottom line: Abu Mazen and the key Palestinian in the background, Nabil Shaath (the long-time PA 'Foreign Minister' operative working closely with the Israelis and the CIA), are poised to in effect accept the Sharon Plan for what will be called a 'Temporary State' with 'Provisional Boundaries' in about 25% of historic Palestine. Everywhere the Palestinian 'population centers', i.e. Bantustans and Reservations in reality, will be surrounded by the Israeli army which will continue to control all entry/exit and airspace of what is to be a permanently crippled and controlled 'Palestinian state'.
The plan is then to flood the Palestinian Bantustans with two things to give this new arrangement a chance to work -- monies largely from Europe and the World Bank to make daily life a little better (not hard to do in view of how bad things are) and guns supplied by Israel along with the U.S. and U.K. so P.A. forces will be able to enforce an end to the Palestinian Intifada and in effect become the Israeli police-force in the occupied territories (much harder to do and quite likely to erupt at some point into civil war).
It is an arrangement far worse than that rejected by the Palestinians when Yasser Arafat was alive; but the powers to be hope to get away with it by repeatedly declaring it is just a temporary State with just provisional borders and thus holding out hope for something more 'on good behavior'.
Meanwhile the actual 'on the ground' realities of the situation are quite bleak for the Palestinians as Israeli settlements in the major areas continue to expand, Jerusalem is being further disenfranchied of Arab people and property, the Apartheid Wall is being completed, and Palestinians everywhere have been turned more than ever into a modern-day kind of Indians on Reservations in what was once not that long ago their own country.
- MER - Washington - 27 January: With no real Palestinian State any longer possible west of the Jordan, the U.S. and Israel have worked long and hard to get to the point where they could force a quisling Palestinian leadership of their choosing into a kind of convoluted submission while pretending it is an agreed settlement brought about by the 'Peace Process'. By assassinating Ahmed Yassin and Yassir Arafat in 2004, and then by manipulating the quick 'election' of Abu Mazen in 2005, Ariel Sharon in tandem with the Americans has set the stage for this further attempted historic deception and geopolitical triumph.
American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who received more negative confirmation votes in the Senate this week than any Secretary of State in history since 1825 -- is rushing to the region in a few days hoping to consolidate a quick deal before opposition can swell and the realities of the situation become more starkly understood.
Bottom line: Abu Mazen and the key Palestinian in the background, Nabil Shaath (the long-time PA 'Foreign Minister' operative working closely with the Israelis and the CIA), are poised to in effect accept the Sharon Plan for what will be called a 'Temporary State' with 'Provisional Boundaries' in about 25% of historic Palestine. Everywhere the Palestinian 'population centers', i.e. Bantustans and Reservations in reality, will be surrounded by the Israeli army which will continue to control all entry/exit and airspace of what is to be a permanently crippled and controlled 'Palestinian state'.
The plan is then to flood the Palestinian Bantustans with two things to give this new arrangement a chance to work -- monies largely from Europe and the World Bank to make daily life a little better (not hard to do in view of how bad things are) and guns supplied by Israel along with the U.S. and U.K. so P.A. forces will be able to enforce an end to the Palestinian Intifada and in effect become the Israeli police-force in the occupied territories (much harder to do and quite likely to erupt at some point into civil war).
It is an arrangement far worse than that rejected by the Palestinians when Yasser Arafat was alive; but the powers to be hope to get away with it by repeatedly declaring it is just a temporary State with just provisional borders and thus holding out hope for something more 'on good behavior'.
Meanwhile the actual 'on the ground' realities of the situation are quite bleak for the Palestinians as Israeli settlements in the major areas continue to expand, Jerusalem is being further disenfranchied of Arab people and property, the Apartheid Wall is being completed, and Palestinians everywhere have been turned more than ever into a modern-day kind of Indians on Reservations in what was once not that long ago their own country.
