© the eyeranian

James O. Goldsborough

It is not often that I find myself admiring a columnist. In the era of huge conglomerates dominating the world of press and certain moguls influencing the direction and focus of what is covered and how, finding independent free-thinkers who do not follow a certain doctrine is becoming more and more difficult. Having said that, I’m relieved to find one.

Copley News Services is a rather smaller player in the battle of large news corporations and by all accounts; they are not the most progressive or liberal either. However, one of their syndicated columnists keeps impressing me more and more and naturally gets plenty of negative reactions in every newspaper’s “letters to editor” section he is published in.

James Goldsborough’s articles are refreshing and carry a rather uncommon wisdom hardly found elsewhere. I am attaching one of his latest here but please look for him in your local paper or search for his other writings on any search engine and I promise you will not be disappointed. Enjoy! (continued)

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A tougher war in the Middle East
James O. Goldsborough

May 5, 2003

The Bush administration's war against Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. The goal was to remake the Middle East in ways that took the pressure of Muslim violence off Israel.

Britain's Tony Blair won Bush's agreement that, once the war was over, U.S. policy would focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Europe, both old and new, believes that the Palestinian crisis, not Iraq, is the primary cause of Muslim violence.

Israel's Ariel Sharon sold Bush the idea that Palestinian and al-Qaeda violence was the same. Bush resisted this queer idea for a while, but after Sharon accused him of Munich-like behavior, Bush gave in. Bush has consistently shunned the Palestinians he now urges to make peace with Israel.

While Bush was busy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sharon has been busy, too, re-occupying Palestinian lands and building a wall between Israel and the West Bank that extends into Palestinian territory to protect settlements. Sharon has no sympathy for Blair or Europe, no sympathy for removing the wall or the settlements, no sympathy for Palestinians. He loves Bush.

Now comes the long-awaited "road map" for peace. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was in Syria on the weekend, goes to Israel and Palestine this week to try to sell the road map to both sides. He won't meet with Yasser Arafat, for Bush has agreed, at Sharon's demand, to isolate Arafat. Powell will meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister.

The road map, like the Oslo accords signed 10 years ago, is a plan for peace within three years. It is a phased plan. Phase one, already begun, requires Palestinian government reforms, an end to Palestinian violence, Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands and an Israeli freeze on settlements.

Phase two, starting next month, leads to the creation of a Palestinian state with provisional borders. Phase three, starting next year, includes all the tough nuts – final borders, the status of Jerusalem, the so-called Palestinian right of return.

We've seen these things before, mainly in the Oslo accords. Sharon opposed and defeated the Oslo agreement, so the relevant questions are – how is the road map different from Oslo to make it acceptable to Sharon, and will those differences make it unacceptable to the Palestinians?

Enter here the Republican far right supported by its allies in the neoconservative media. Its shots across the Bush bow last week were well-timed. Newt Gingrich, in a vicious attack on Powell, and House Majority leader Tom DeLay calling on Israel not to give in to "neoappeasers" like Powell, made it clear that the right wing would not condone pressure on Israel to give up anything.

Why would it? The primary architects of the Iraq war – Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, David Wurmser – for years have urged war against Iraq as a means of taking pressure off Israel.

Iraq done, is Bush now to start putting pressure on Israel? The right wing-neocon alliance won't hear of it.

Feith, Wurmser and Perle all worked for Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to reject Oslo and re-occupy Arab lands, including "rolling back Syria." This group, bolstered by others in the neocon establishment, wrote to President Clinton in January 1998 – nearly four years before Sept. 11, urging war with Iraq.

Sharon's political career has been marked by three central ideas – hatred of Arafat, continued expansion of Jewish settlements, opposition to a Palestinian state. Thanks to Bush, he has succeeded in marginalizing Arafat. Is he ready to give up the settlements and recognize the Palestinian state called for in the road map?

Here is Bush's test:

Having gone to war against Iraq to help Israel, is he now ready to pressure Israel to accept a process leading to a real Palestinian state? Is he willing to reject Sharon's plan for a Palestinian state consisting of a handful of walled-off, West Bank settlements inside Greater Israel alongside an impoverished refugee camp called Gaza?

The tentative answer must be this: No evidence exists, not a shred, that suggests Bush would ever do such things. He can send Pentagon armies to defeat Saddam Hussein, but he will not engage the right wing armies in America joined at the hip to Sharon and his Likud Party and which are unwilling to engage the Palestinians in any way except at the end of a gun.

We are entering the arena of the shadow boxers. They will do all they can to show it is a real fight, but, like Plato's cave, it is but shadows. The goal is to look good. The audience is Europeans, Muslims and those Americans who still believe that an equitable settlement to the four-decade old Palestinian question is essential to achieve permanent Middle East stability and an end to violence.

The Palestinians will never accept what Sharon has in mind for them, nor should the world. Shadow boxing won't do it. Bush's test is upon him, but everything we know about him indicates he's not the man to take on Sharon and his American diehards. His dad did it. Bill Clinton did it. Not Dubya. It might cost him votes.

© James Goldsborough

Posted by Pedram at May 8, 2003 11:35 PM