After
the 1991 Gulf War, the PLO was diplomatically isolated and
on the brink of crisis.
US
and Israeli failure to respond meaningfully to PLO moderation resulted
in the PLO's opposition to the US-led attack on Iraq during the
1991 Gulf War. The PLO did not endorse Iraq's annexation of Kuwait,
but it saw Saddam Hussein's challenge to the US and the Gulf oil-exporting
states as a way to alter the regional status quo and focus attention
on the question of Palestine. After the war, the PLO was diplomatically
isolated. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cut off financial support they
had been providing, bringing the PLO to the brink of crisis.
After
the Gulf War, the US sought to stabilize its position in the Middle
East by promoting a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite
their turn against the PLO, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were anxious
to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and remove the potential for
regional instability it created. The administration of President
Bush felt obliged to its Arab allies, and pressed a reluctant Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to open negotiations with the Palestinians
and the Arab states at a multilateral conference convened in Madrid,
Spain, in October 1991. Shamir's conditions, which the US accepted,
were that the PLO be excluded from the talks and that the Palestinian
desires for independence and statehood not be directly addressed.
In
subsequent negotiating sessions held in Washington, DC, Palestinians
were represented by a delegation from the occupied territories.
Participants in this delegation were subject to Israeli approval,
and residents of East Jerusalem were barred on the grounds that
the city is part of Israel. Although the PLO was formally excluded
from these talks, its leaders regularly consulted with and advised
the Palestinian delegation. Although Israeli and Palestinian delegations
met many times, little progress was achieved. Prime Minister Shamir
announced after he left office that his strategy was to drag out
the Washington negotiations for ten years, by which time the annexation
of the West Bank would be an accomplished fact.
A
new Israeli Labor Party government led by Yitzhak Rabin assumed
office in June 1992 and promised rapid conclusion of an Israel-Palestinian
agreement. Instead, the Washington negotiations became stalemated
after December 1992, when Israel expelled over 400 Palestinian residents
of the occupied territories who were accused (but not tried or convicted)
of being radical Islamist activists. Human rights conditions in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip deteriorated dramatically after
Rabin assumed office. This undermined the legitimacy of the Palestinian
delegation to the Washington talks and prompted the resignation
of several delegates.
Lack
of progress in the Washington talks and deterioration of the economic
and human rights conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
accelerated the growth of a radical Islamist challenge to the PLO.
Violent attacks against Israeli targets by HAMAS (Islamic Resistance
Movement) and Islamic Jihad further exacerbated tensions. Ironically,
before the intifada, Israeli authorities had enabled the development
of Islamist organizations as a way to divide Palestinians in the
occupied territories. But as the popularity of Islamists grew and
challenged the moderation of the PLO, they came to regret their
policy of encouraging political Islam as an alternative to the PLO's
secular nationalism. Eventually, Yitzhak Rabin came to believe that
HAMAS, Jihad and the broader Islamic movements of which they were
a part posed more of a threat to Israel than the PLO.
The
debate over the war in Iraq follows a yellowing script: The minute
someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters
cry “Havoc!”
True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain
summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always
said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through
a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech
on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable,
adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless
getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he,
like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain
that withdrawal is simply
“cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full
Story>>
At
the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) earlier this month, presidential candidates
John McCain and Barack 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? Full
Story>>
Quick: Who is the strategic victor, to date, of the war in Iraq?
Nearly everyone outside the Bush administration (and perhaps some
within it) would answer: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The
catastrophe of the U.S. occupation of Iraq has bolstered the
clerical regime in Tehran, while souring ordinary Iranians on
the prospect of U.S.-delivered “democracy.” The occupation
has done so by emplacing Iranian-backed Shiite Islamists in power
in Baghdad and cooling the jets of those in Washington hoping to “shock
and awe” Iran's mullahs. Full
Story>>
Libya's Fat Cat The Topeka Capital-Journal Januwary 11, 2008
Chris Toensing
Few
dictators in the world are sitting prettier in 2008 than Col.
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. In a region full of potentates and presidents-for-life,
his reign is supreme. Having seized power in a 1969 coup, he has
ruled his country for longer than any other Arab head of state.
And now, as wintry January begins, the colonel has quietly completed
his journey back in from the cold. Full
Story>>
