By colluding with the Israeli attack on Jericho, Straw has underlined the Americanisation of British policy in the region
Seumas Milne
Thursday March 16, 2006
The Guardian
Jack Straw has brought Britain's standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds to its lowest point for half a century. By withdrawing British monitors from a Palestinian jail in Jericho on Tuesday, the government as good as handed over to Israel the prisoners it had made an international agreement to protect. In doing so, it colluded with its American co-sponsor and - at the very least tacitly - with the Israeli occupation regime in an armed attack on the prison and the seizure of an elected political leader regarded by many Palestinians as a national hero.
As the ruins of the British Council building in Gaza smoulder, the foreign secretary can reflect on his contribution this week to peace in the Middle East: the humiliation of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the undermining of efforts to form a viable Palestinian administration and the confirmation in Arab and Muslim eyes that Britain cannot plausibly be regarded as an honest broker in the region. No wonder the prime minister struggled to defend the blunder in parliament yesterday.
As the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan turn ever bloodier and more disastrous, you might think that the last thing Britain would want to be responsible for was more degrading TV footage of Arab men being paraded in their underpants by another occupying army. But then this is the foreign secretary who used a recent visit to Beirut to praise Ariel Sharon's "courage and statesmanship" and "work towards a long-term peace settlement" - in the very city where he oversaw the massacre of 2,000 Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Phalangists in 1982. It's perhaps no wonder that British complicity with Israel's assault on Jericho was yesterday being compared in the Arab media to the duplicitous US deal which led to that slaughter. As anyone who has spent time in the Middle East will know, while Britons may not be familiar with the history of their country's involvement in the region, it is not forgotten by those who suffered at its hands: from the 1917 Balfour declaration, which promised Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, to the collusion with France and Israel over the 1956 invasion of Egypt.
Both Straw and Tony Blair have claimed that a security threat to the British (and US) monitors justified the decision to withdraw them from Jericho. But no credible evidence of any such threat has been offered - and the complaint that the prisoners were allowed to use mobile phones cannot be treated as a serious reason to end the four-year-old agreement. The five prisoners captured as a result - including Ahmad Sa'adat, leader of the leftwing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - are accused by Israel of responsibility for the killing of the racist cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001, carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Sa'adat's predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa. The deal to hold them in a Palestinian jail under British-US supervision later ended the siege of Yasser Arafat's compound.
But judging by last week's joint British-US letter to the Palestinian president, it was the pledge by the newly elected Hamas to release these prisoners, rather than concerns about security, that lay behind the decision to withdraw the monitors. If they had been released, it would have been the Palestinian Authority, not Britain, that broke the agreement. As it was, in the knowledge that Israel was ready to seize the men, the British-US pullout makes far more sense as a calculated warning to Hamas and a favour to the acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1731840,00.html _________________________
Britain and US complicit in Jericho raid, says Abbas
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 16 March 2006
Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the armed Israeli raid on Jericho's prison as an "ugly crime that cannot be forgiven" yesterday and strongly implied Britain and the US had been complicit in it.
Touring the ruins of the devastated jail less than 24 hours after the surrender of six wanted Palestinians after a day-long siege, Mr Abbas said their arrest had been "illegal" and that the raid by troops, bulldozers and tanks had been a "humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements".
The Israeli acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday that the six men would be indicted according to Israeli law and they will be " punished as they deserve". They comprise the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine leader, Ahmed Saadat, and five others accused of the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001. They also include Fuad Shobaki, accused of involvement in the Karin A shipment of arms to the Palestinian Authority in 2002.
In his second uncharacteristically strong denunciation of Britain and the US, Mr Abbas said that the Israeli force had arrived on Tuesday within 10 minutes of the three British monitors abandoning the jail. "I'm giving the facts," he added. "They
left at 9.20am and the Israelis came in at 9.30am. How can we explain that?"
Mr Abbas's remarks came as British officials moved to defend London against widespread and continuing condemnation for facilitating the Israeli raid by ending their 14-strong monitoring mission at the prison on Tuesday morning.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article351534.ece
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