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WORD COUNT
683
JUNE 25, 2008
PRESIDENTIAL
PANDERING ON PALESTINE – by Bayann Hamid
At the annual policy
conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
earlier this month, presidential candidates John McCain and Barak Obama
competed over who would become the “candidate for
Israel.” The match
came to a draw when both candidates pledged undying and unconditional
support for Israel. While their support for “Israel right or wrong” was
unquestionable, at the end of all the commotion, the most pertinent
question for Americans and the world remained unasked and unanswered:
Who is the candidate for peace?
If their AIPAC
speeches are any indication of how they would fare in brokering an
Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the prospects for peace in the
near future are dim. Both candidates will have to revise their positions
if peace is to be attainable in the next five years.
Both McCain and Obama
assert that American and Israeli security are intertwined, yet their
statements hardly show appreciation for what that means since they fail
to acknowledge -- and even deny -- that a key factor in building a
secure America is a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The plight of the Palestinians is a source of outrage throughout the
Arab and Muslim world and
America’s
unconditional support for Israel in the face of Israeli violations of
human rights and international law, has damaged America’s standing in
the Middle East and beyond.
Both candidates are
adamant that as president they would isolate Hamas and continue the
current administration’s failed policy of propping up Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This strategy has failed because it
is impossible to achieve a tenable final status agreement that excludes
Gaza.
No leadership in the
West Bank could
afford to sign a peace deal with
Israel
while Gazans live under siege. Moreover, a peace agreement signed by a
leadership that is not representative of its people will never be
viable. Only by engaging all the key players, including Hamas (as
Israel
has done recently through the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire), can peace be
achieved. The hope that isolating Gaza would bring Hamas to its knees
has proved false. In fact, Hamas has strengthened its hold on Gaza and
attacks on Israel from the Strip have increased.
Perhaps the most
disappointing position taken at the AIPAC conference was when Obama,
true to his campaign slogan of “change,” declared that
Jerusalem must remain
the “undivided” capital of
Israel.
While in line with AIPAC talking points, the comment put him at odds
with the position of every U.S. administration on the status of
Jerusalem to date, and to the right of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert and some hawkish Israeli parliamentarians. In doing so, Obama
also sowed the mistrust of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, not to
mention Arabs and Christians. This is neither progressive change nor
clever foreign policy.
A U.S.-brokered
resolution to this century-old conflict can be achieved only if the
United States
is willing to take a truly even-handed approach. If the next
administration is serious about peace, it must be willing to use its
considerable leverage to persuade Israel to comply with international
law. It should take punitive measures when Israel continues settlement
expansion in the West Bank, since the settlements present the greatest
obstacle to the two-state solution advocated by the State Department. As
of 2005, there were some 450,000 settlers in the occupied territories.”
Comprising 4 percent of the West Bank population (excluding occupied
East Jerusalem), these settlers control 40 percent of the land and
divide the West Bank into numerous enclaves detached from one another.”
If settlement expansion continues, it will spell the death of the
two-state solution. (To his credit, Obama did call on
Israel
to “refrain” from settlement expansion in his speech before AIPAC.)
If there is to be
peace, the
United States should respect the will of the Palestinian people to elect
their own leaders. It should not cast aside key players like Hamas,
which holds the support of 40 percent of the population in the occupied
territories. If the next U.S. president, whoever he may be, wants peace,
he will have to come to terms with the fact that peace is not made
between friends but between adversaries.
--
Bayann Hamid is media
coordinator at the Middle East Research and Information Project. The
Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a non-profit,
non-governmental organization based in
Washington, D.C., was
established in 1971. MERIP publishes the quarterly magazine “Middle East
Report” and maintains one of the most informative websites on
Middle East
politics, culture and society.
www.merip.org
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