Incrementalism

The Israeli policy has long been to build and expand Israeli settlements (colonies) on Palestinian land. Arab land is confiscated, Arabs evicted, and Arab homes bulldozed. These settlements then constitute a "reality on the ground," designed to guarantee permanent Israeli occupation. Thus, President Bush in his Middle East address, 7/17/2007, stipulated that peace talks must reflect "current realities," i.e. settlements. The settlement policy has been enabled by the favored US/Israeli peace process of Incrementalism, which affords time for building settlements and also ensures that the goal of peace is never attained.

As reported in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," US negotiator Dennis Ross insisted that the 1993 Oslo agreement included a promise by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to prevent violence. (p. 137) Even though the CIA and Israeli intelligence provided "assistance and training," and "heavy-handed" means were used, including torture and assassination, Arafat was never able to achieve the zero violence required. (p. 138-139) This of course was the whole point of the incrementalist policy! Meanwhile Israeli settlements kept multiplying and were connected by Israeli-only roads, creating the apartheid state. Swisher describes "Dennis Ross's slow moving incrementalist mediation," (p. 164), and this indeed led to the downfall of Arafat. His people had yearned for peace, but peace was not in the US/Israeli game plan. President Bush's "Road Map" is just another incrementalist policy devised so as to never reach a destination. Thus, it was not surprising that the Palestinians voted in Hamas in 2006; the Fatah party of Arafat and Abbas had only achieved settlement expansion.

Division Through Trickery

Sixty years ago, the UN divided Palestine roughly equally into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Today Israeli greed demands more and more, and thus even the Arab League Peace Plan, offering Israel 78% of Palestine, is not enough. Over the years, Israeli policy has been to divide Arab states by making peace with each singly, with the goal of leaving Palestinians without allies or hope. Egypt and Jordan have fallen prey to this plan, and Syria has been the most recent target.

As detailed in Clayton E. Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," Syria's King Asad was tricked into taking part in the Geneva Summit in March 2000 because he had been falsely led to believe that a just settlement would be proposed, i.e. a return of Syrian land in exchange for peace. Previously, Egypt's President Sadat had agreed to the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978 because Israel returned all Egyptian land, having uprooted all Israeli settlements. However, as described in Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," Israel had also agreed, as part of the Camp David Peace Accords, to end the occupation of Palestine, but this turned out to be just a trick. President Sadat was then assassinated.

At the 2000 Geneva Summit, Israeli Prime Minister Barak, President Clinton, and US negotiator Dennis Ross made it clear they had no intention of returning all the stolen Syrian land for peace. Of course they then blamed the summit failure on President Asad, who had not wanted to attend in the first place, suspecting such trickery. The scenario was then repeated at Camp David II with Yassir Arafat. (See previous blog "The Myth of the Generous Offer" 5/13/07) Is it any wonder there is such anti-American hatred in the Muslim world and that American motives, in Iraq and elsewhere, are so distrusted?

Bush's Brainless Peace Plan

Perhaps because President Bush is so famously brainless, he believes that we are too. Thus he presents his recent Israeli/Arab peace strategy believing that we won't notice the Israel Lobby parading him around with a ring through his nose. For instance, the Arab League Peace Plan offers peace (an end to violence) and recognition of Israel, including diplomatic relations, in exchange for Israel ending the occupation. So Bush believes he is very clever to offer a re-starting of peace negotiations in exchange for an end to violence and recognition of Israel, including diplomatic relations. Who would be so dense as to fall for that? Perhaps Bush? The Arabs are supposed to offer everything in exchange for a promise to discuss whether Israel will offer anything? Bush probably wonders why all the intelligence reports state the obvious: our occupation of Iraq has increased terrorism. Obviously the Israel Lobby (clearly Bush's only source of information) has never divulged to him the fact that it was American support of Israel's occupation of Palestine which led to the 9/11 attacks (See "The 9/11 Commission Report" p. 147). Bush keeps parroting his stipulation that an end to all violence is a precondition for talks on ending the occupation, yet he is too brainless to realize that occupations always have and always will result in violence.