Sharon's banana republics

[Comadreja]

Sharon's banana republics :

Bush and Blair have allowed Israel to dictate their Middle East policy
and carry out a Palestinian politicide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1194795,00.html


Last week was a sad moment for international diplomacy. The world's two most powerful leaders, Bush and Blair, caved in to the most unscrupulous politician in the Middle East, who was found to be "unfit for public office" by an Israeli inquiry committee after the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in 1982.

Sharon is not hiding his game. In a recent interview with the leading Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, he said Israelis should see his plan of unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip not as a reward but as a punishment of the Palestinians. He announced that the Palestinians could operate neither a port nor an airport in Gaza, and that Israel intended to keep control of territorial water and airspace. Nor would they have control of the borders. He added that this would delay the discussion of a Palestinian state for many years. He forgot to mention was that Gaza, with its 1.3 million inhabitants, is only about 1% of historic Palestine.

Why Bush considered Sharon's intentions "courageous" and "a golden opportunity" can be explained by the electoral considerations of an embattled president. But I remain puzzled by Blair's enthusiasm for Sharon's machinations and his conviction that they are in harmony with the road map. He has more experience in power than Bush, is better advised, and electoral considerations in Britain run in the opposite direction. Opinion polls show a 2-1 ratio in favour of Palestinian aspirations as compared with the Israeli position. Debates in parliament, across the political divide, should encourage him to be more assertive. All indicationsshow that, on Palestine/Israel, Blair does not reflect the depth of feeling in Britain.


Sharon has been dealing with the US and Britain as though they were his own banana republics. To his intransigence they constantly respond with abdication of responsibility and self inflicted impotence. The way ahead under the road map would have been to secure a reciprocal cessation of violence that all Palestinian factions accept; pressure Sharon to couple a complete withdrawal from Gaza with a pull-out of the urban centres in the West Bank to allow the creation of a Palestinian state "with temporary frontiers"; and to make Palestinian elections possible - presidential, parliamentary and municipal - and pave the way for final-status negotiations.

[number6]

1. Sharons a banana brain

all mush