Israeli tail wags American dog

[Comadreja]

Israeli tail wags American dog: In a U.S. election campaign that is more about foreign policy than any presidential race in decades, one issue is completely off-limits: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. http://snipurl.com/9ruy

George W. Bush and John Kerry both back Israel 100 per cent, and neither man will offer a single word of criticism about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan, even though it means abandoning the notion of a peace settlement. Once again, the Israeli tail is wagging the American dog.

Last week, Sharon's chief of staff and most trusted adviser, Dov Weisglass, indulged in a carefully calculated indiscretion in an interview with the newspaper Ha'aretz. "The `disengagement' is actually formaldehyde," he said. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." Perfectly true, of course, and yet it was a shocking thing to say out loud.

Sharon was never really going to accept a peace deal with the Palestinians that required giving up most of the illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories conquered by Israel in 1967. Indeed, he was the man responsible for starting the settlements in the first place. Yet, when he came to power in 2001 he inherited the Oslo peace accords, which imagined an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on two states living side by side — and the Palestinian state was to be created on exactly those territories.

Sharon had to pretend that he agreed with that goal because the whole international community (including the U.S.) supported the two-state solution. Over the past few years the "Oslo process" mutated into the so-called "road map" to peace, but the goal remained the same: Israeli evacuation of the occupied territories and the creation of a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel. In the past six months, however, Sharon has achieved breakout.

"Disengagement" means that Israel will evacuate its settlements in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where 7,500 Jews live surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians, and four other tiny settlements with only a few hundred people that lie beyond the "security fence" in the northern West Bank. They never made any sense in terms of the cost of protecting them anyway. But by abandoning them, Sharon can seem to be making a major concession for peace — while hanging on to all the other West Bank settlements where the vast majority of the settlers live forever.(cont)

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Once in a while somebody slips and says we are in Iraq to protect Israel

but these accidents are fairly rare.

[Jim Sagle]

2. So I guess the oil doesn't really matter, huh?

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Seems like the supply of oil was a lot more steady before all this

A long ago forgotten just pre war Frontline made a big deal about the PNAC and Israeli interests in this war, and almost completely discounted the oil motivation. Nobody seems to want to officially give reasons for this war anymore.

[Jim Sagle]

4. Just because it was on Frontline doesn't make it true.

The oil supply is fucked up because w and his regime like high prices. Duhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

[undergroundrailroad]

5. Locking per I/P Guidelines:

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