Al-Ahram Weekly | Editorial | So-called statesmanship

		8 - 14 August 2002 Issue No. 598 Editorial	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

So-called statesmanship

US President George W Bush stunned the world when he decided to describe Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace". Last week, former US President Bill Clinton -- in an indication of the kind of "honest brokers" with which the Palestinians have had to deal -- openly declared that he would be ready to die in Israel's defence. And this week it was the turn of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld who, in statements to Pentagon employees on Tuesday, continually referred to the West Bank and Gaza as "so-called occupied territory".
His analysis of the 1967 War was breathtaking in its crudity. It would have been crass enough in the backroom of some red-neck bar, repeated in the corridors of power it becomes terrifying. Israel occupied territory, said Rumsfeld, after defeating countries "who jumped in and lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in the conflict".
He withheld his backing for the position adopted by consecutive US administrations, including his own, on Jewish settlements in occupied territories -- that they are illegal, and must be removed. Yet he was perfectly willing to repeat the new Washington mantra, that the present Palestinian leadership should replaced by "some expatriates coming back into the region to provide responsible government".
Rumsfeld, as he prowls the corridors of the Pentagon, is clearly happy to shred the UN Charter. It does, after all, contain clauses concerning the inadmissibility of occupying land by force. And he appears equally happy to abrogate the Fourth Geneva Convention on Human Rights, if only because the building of settlements and forcible removal of original inhabitants violates the convention. An impressive agenda for just one US politician, this ripping up of the documents that are the foundations of internationa legitimacy.
Rumsfeld's statements amplified alarm bells that have been ringing for months now in major capitals. In the meantime Arab governments wait for some US official to declare that Rumsfeld was expressing his own, not his administration's, views. They may be waiting a long time.

Send a letter to the Editor Recommend this page

ARCHIVES
Letter from the Editor
Editorial Board
Subscription
Advertise!

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation