Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation (Avi Shlaim)

[Violet_Crumble]

Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous US secretaries of state of the postwar era.
American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards towards the Middle East: one standard towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years.

The two main items on America's current agenda for the region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however, insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not for its friends. As for the peace process, it is essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American hypocrisy is nothing new. But with Dr Rice it has gone beyond chutzpah.
With Ariel Sharon, by contrast, what you see is what you get. He has always been in the destruction business, not the construction business. As minister of defence in 1982, Sharon preferred to destroy the settlement town of Yamit in Sinai rather than hand it to Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel. George Bush once described his friend Sharon as "a man of peace". In truth, Sharon is a brutal thug and land-grabber.

Sharon is also the unilateralist par excellence. The road map issued by the quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) in the aftermath of the Iraq war envisaged three stages leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. Sharon wrecked the road map, notably by continuing to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank and building an illegal wall that cuts deep into Palestinian territory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1511702,00.html

[bemildred]

1. "the most vacuous US secretary of state of the postwar era"

Easily, no "one of the" required.
And it's a very competitive field too.

WRT the substance of the piece, well, it's nothing new. When has it not been about annexation? I almost have to give the Israelis and Palestinians credit, they at least are fighting over real stuff like land and water. We spend trillions fighting for and against abstract nouns like "Communism" and "Terror" and "Drug abuse" and "Democracy" and "Freedom" and so on.

Is one never allowed to ask "Freedom to do what?". What have we got in exchange for all that money that is really better than a decent social safety net and a world class educational system? Nothing, I submit.