Educating Rice

US Secretary of State Condeleza Rice’s recent visit to the Middle East was billed as aimed at shoring up support for Mahmoud Abbas, the embattled President of the Palestinian Authority, and at reviving the moribund Middle East ‘peace process.’

This ‘peace process’ is, officially at least, driven by the plan endorsed by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations and known as the ‘roadmap’. A fundamental obligation of the roadmap is that Israel stop all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It is a matter of documented evidence that the Israeli leaders have done precisely the opposite: multiplying settlement activities by expanding existing settlements and confiscating ever more Palestinian land for the construction of the separation wall. Instead of dismantling the 20 so-called ‘illegal posts’ in the West Bank as they had promised in 2001, Israeli leaders allowed more posts to be established, now estimated at around 100 ‘illegal posts’, in addition the already existing 150 settlements

In July 2004, The International Court of Justice found that “the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.” It also found that the construction of the separation wall was in breach of international law.

A few days before Rice arrived in Israel, and the timing could not have been coincidental, the Israeli government announced the establishment of a new settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Washington responded with the usual slap on the wrist, albeit with unusually strong language for the Bush administration. A spokesman for the State Department said:” “The establishment of a new settlement or the expansion of an existing settlement would violate Israel’s obligations under the road map.” The spokesman then added: ““The U.S. calls on Israel to meet its road map obligations and avoid taking steps that could be viewed as pre-determining the outcome of final-status negotiations,” (NYT. December 28, 07)

In the Middle East, Rice used Kissingerian speak to claim that the war against Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Iraq war had created a unique geopolitical alignment that finally made peace in the Palestine conflict possible. One would be excused to think that Rice came with a bold and courageous approach to finally and seriously tackle the Palestine question.

For example, you would think that if Rice was seriously interested in reviving the moribund Middle East ‘peace process’, the issue of Israel’s continued violations of the roadmap ban on settlement would be an important agenda item in her discussion with Israeli leaders.

One would think that if Rice wanted to bolster Abbas’ standing she would have pressed Israeli leaders to free the Palestinian government officials and legislators the Israeli forces kidnapped and illegally imprisoned. One would think she would ask Israeli leaders to hand over the US$500 million in Palestinian tax revenues they illegally withheld to punish the Palestinians for exercising their democratic right to elect a Hamas government.

Instead, according to the Israeli press, Rice and Olmert repeated the usual condescending platitudes about the need for the occupied, not the occupier, to meet the conditions set by the occupier: recognition of Israel, relinquishing violence, and acceptance of previous agreements with Israel.

As to the fiction of the roadmap, Rice and Olmert were in total agreement: “a Palestinian government would have to abide by the road map.” This is laughable considering that the Israeli leaders never hid their intention to use the roadmap as an excluse to delay and abort the peacee process.

Even the Israeli press recognised that the reference to the roadmap was “Olmert's way of foiling various recent attempts by Europeans and other elements to call for an international peace summit.” (Haarezt, January 16, 07)

President Mahmoud Abbas was aghast and felt betrayed. Instead of being bolstered by the Americans and by Rice’s visit, he felt weakened and more vulnerabl as Hamas’s predictions were being verified by Rice’s preposterous definition of the problem and its solution.

To ask the Palestinians to implement the dead roadmap while the Israelis are busy stealing their land and building settlements, is, as one Abbas’ aid put it, “ a joke.” (Time Magazine, January 14, 06).

Perhaps Abbas should have invested some effort in educating Rice, notoriously ignorant about the Middle East and given to oversimplifications, by giving her a copy the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem’s 2006 annual statistics report.

Rice would then have learned that during 2006, the Israelis killed 660 Palestninans including 141 children, as opposed to 17 Israelis, including one minor, killed by Palestinian actions. In addition, Israeli forces demolished, during the same year, 292 Palestinian houses in the occupied Palestinian territories, in addition to 42 houses in occupied East Jerusalem.

Rice would have learned that the Israelis maintain in the West Bank some 52 permanent checkpoints in addition to hundreds of physical obstacles such as concrete blocs to restrict access to Palestinian communities. At the same time the Jewish settlers enjoy access to some special 41 roadways, while the Palestinians are denied access to these Jews-only roads.

As a frequent praiser of Israel’s vibrant democracy, Rice would have been interested in learning that Israel holds some 9000 Palestninans, including 345 children, in prison, and that of these some 738, including 22 children, are held without trial and without knowing the charges against them.

Rice would also have learned that former President Jimmy Carter’s use of the term Apartheid to describe the Israeli occupation in his recent book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid- and for which he was criticised by the Washington establishment, was not gratuiteous.

The Israeli human rights group reached the same conclusion in the report cited above: “Israel has established in the Occupied Territories a… discrimination regime, in which it maintains two systems of laws, and a person’s rights are based on his or her national origin. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and brings to mind dark regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa. “

President Carter has now concluded that “ Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights.” (Washington Post. Jan 18.07)

Had Rice taken the trouble to learn any of these facts, conveniently sanitized from public debate in the United States, she might have learned the need to define the Israeli-Palestine conflict with more fairness and intellectual honesty.

She might have detected the fallacy underlying the usual Israeli strategy of confiscation, dispossession, dispersion and the systematic shattering of the Palestinian society, while blaming the victim for the absence of peace.

Prof. Adel Safty is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His latest book, Leadership and Democracy, is published in New York