25 April - 1 May 2002
Issue No.583
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 April - 1 May 2002 Issue No.583 |
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Man of peace?
Reports of a revived US role in Middle East peace-making are exaggerated, writes Hassan Abu Talib*
There is an element of absurdity in life, an idiotic streak which occasionally surfaces into reality, to compete with and even triumph over the voice of reason. George W Bush has just provided one example of this absurdity, when he called Ariel Sharon a "man of peace."
He may have facilitated the Sabra and Shatila massacres, destroyed the old town of Nablus, and just completed a two-week crash course in murder in Jenin and other Palestinian towns. But, for the US president, Sharon is, nevertheless, a "man of peace."
For his part Sharon, hands still dripping with Palestinian blood, is not averse to a bit of fantastic posturing. He himself proposed a peace conference to be attended by some Arab countries but not -- and here's the rub -- by the Palestinian president. There is, apparently, no end in sight for the cascade of idiocy that has engulfed Middle Eastern affairs. What a fitting moment this would be for some fly-in-the-night US organisation to honour Sharon for his peace-making handiwork. Any takers?
The US president has outdone even his most biased predecessors. Israel and the United States are now bonded, both in precepts and priorities, in ways that boggle the mind. Never before have two countries become so close, indeed interchangeable, in their political attitudes. It is getting increasingly hard to tell who is running the show in the United States, where US interests end and Israel's begin.
One explanation for Bush's extraordinary remark is that the US president has a latent aspiration to become a "man of peace" himself, perhaps on account of what he accomplished in Afghanistan in the course of his so-called war against terror. After all, the similarities between US hostilities in Afghanistan and Israel's behaviour in the Palestinian areas are compelling. In both cases, excessive use of force was evident and international law was regularly flouted.
US forces dropped a total of 22,000 shells on Afghan targets (rockets, laser-guided bombs, cluster bombs, bombs weighing 6.8 tons of explosives, etc.) of which 85 per cent are said to have hit their intended targets. Think of what kind of "collateral damage" the remainder, about 3,000 shells, have inflicted on civilian life in Afghanistan. Think of the entire villages that have been razed to the ground. And then think of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. According to these conventions, excessive use of force is a war crime and its perpetrators should be tried as war criminals.
Once the dust had settled in Afghanistan, the Americans bundled up Afghan and foreign detainees and sent them, handcuffed and blindfolded, to Guantanamo Bay, where they are kept incarcerated in cells fashioned after animal cages. Sharon would undoubtedly approve.
Likewise, in their recent onslaught against the Palestinians, the Israelis took young men from their homes, forced them to take off their clothes, lie flat on the ground in front of tanks, or stand in the rain for hours, without food and medicine. Only a sick mind could come up with such wanton depravity, and only George W Bush could call the architect of such depravations a "man of peace." If there were a special award for brutality, for ingenious house-to-house searches, for willful murder of civilians, the Israeli army would be a definite candidate.
President Bush's baffling reference to Sharon as a man of peace offers a glimpse into the political and moral abyss into which his administration has sunk. It is no wonder that the Arabs, both people and governments, have lost faith in US policy. Any call for an international conference under the current situation would be little more than an exercise in futility. Before that can happen, the United States has to regain a measure of moral and political integrity.
One of President Bush's most memorable feats to date has been his shameless back- tracking on Israel's "immediate" withdrawal from Palestinian areas. His insistence that President Arafat is responsible for the recent mayhem was also remarkable.
When a great power can no longer distinguish murder from murderer, culprit from victim, right from wrong, what means are left to deter those bent on genocide? And, what roads are left open for peace? The task of establishing peace in the Middle East is one that requires political vision, humanitarian sense, and solid commitment to international law. It is not a task that can be achieved by morally comatose politicians and trigger-happy leaders.
The UN Security Council has been trying to send an international commission of inquiry into Jenin in the face of strong US opposition. What kind of credibility can the US expect to gain from such a conduct?
What kind of accomplishment is there in covering up war crimes? This total lack of moral direction is not just offensive. It is politically untenable.
* The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and chief editor of the Arab Strategic Report.
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