dittologica

In the quest for peace in the Middle East you might think that no stone should be left unturned. Former US president Jimmy Carter turned a very large stone recently when he travelled to the region to meet with Palestinian and Syrian leaders. However, his efforts were not appreciated by the United States government and its regional mini-me, Israel. It seems that the Bush administration was so gripped by fear that Carter had endangered the status quo of hostility towards Syria that they quickly organized a CIA dog and pony show to dispel any illusions about the possibility of peace in the region.

In a performance for Congress reminiscent of Colin Powell’s February 2003 “WMD” circus for the UN security council, which paved the way for the invasion of Iraq, the CIA last week trotted out satellite photos and explanations purporting to prove that North Korea had helped Syria to construct a nuclear installation of some description. Israel had already destroyed the site in an airstrike seven months earlier. Not only was there no longer any evidence to prove what the site actually had been, but there were questions as to why the administration had waited so long to brief the legislative branch.

*   *   *   *   *

Jimmy Carter has a well-developed reputation as an international peacemaker. As president he brokered the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt and re-established diplomatic relations between China and the US. Since leaving the White House he has served as an election monitor and citizen diplomat at flashpoints around the world, earning the Nobel Peace Prize. He vocally opposed the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq.

Carter’s sin, in the eyes of Bush and his nasty band of neo-cons, is his recognition that a crisis might best be resolved by involving all relevant parties in negotiations. In order to move the Israeli-Palestinian conflict forward from the vicious cycle of attack and retribution, Carter understood that Hamas and the Syrian government would need to be recognized as legitimate players. His recent mission to the Middle East sought to sound out those parties about the prospects of reducing tensions. This incurred the wrath of the Bushites, who thrive on crisis as a means of extending US global hegemony.

According to a press release of 23 April from Carter’s charity, the Carter Center:

“Before leaving on the extended visit to monitor an election in Nepal and then to visit Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, President Carter placed a telephone call to [US Secretary of State] Rice to describe his itinerary and to inform her of his intended conversations. She was in Europe and her deputy returned his call. They had a very pleasant discussion for about fifteen minutes, during which he never made any of the negative or cautionary comments described above. He never talked to anyone else.” [Link]

The situation changed, however, once Condi heard what was afoot and became personally involved. At a State Department press conference on 22 April Rice stated:

“I want to be very clear. We counselled President Carter against coming to — against going to the region, and particularly against having contacts with Hamas. We wanted to make sure that there would be no confusion and that there would be no sense that Hamas was somehow a party to peace negotiations which [Palestinian President] Abu Mazen has undertaken with the Israeli Prime Minister, and that is the Annapolis process and that is what we support.” [Link]

In one sweep Condi dismissed Carter’s effort and confirmed that she and her boss would talk only with pre-approved parties, thus ensuring that such “negotiations” would be a one-sided farce and condemning the region to indefinite strife.

Hamas, which is the majority party in the Palestinian parliament, reiterated to Carter what it had said at various points in the past regarding its willingness to accept a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders. For the Bush administration, which had refused to accept the outcome of the 2006 Palestinian elections and helped engineer the abortive coup by Fatah against Hamas in 2007 (see the article by David Rosen in Vanity Fair: [Link]), this was seriously upsetting. The Bush clique perpetuates the fiction that Hamas is wedded to the idea of destruction of the Israeli state.

According to an article in the New York Times on April 22nd:

“Mr. Carter… found the Hamas leadership, including Mr. Meshal [chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau], to be clear-thinking, educated people who gave no sign of fanaticism, although he did condemn in harsh terms their use of violence.” [Link]

Carter took away from the meeting with Hamas a commitment that it would respect any agreement reached by Fatah with Israel regarding a two state solution if it were ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people, a similar position to the one taken by Abu Mazen. Though not without potential complications, such an undertaking by Hamas gave the lie to the Bush party line that Hamas is inflexible on the issue of the existence of the state of Israel.

In his meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Carter said he was told that 85% of the issues between Syria and Israel were already resolved and that relatively few details remained to be worked out to achieve a peaceful resolution.

With such positive undertakings from people portrayed by the Bush clique as the Middle East’s most rabid “terrorists”, there was a clear danger that peace might be about to break out in the region. The Bush administration was having none of that and quickly set to work to address the threat, first of all by painting Carter as a loose canon engaging in unauthorized dealings with the enemy. Furthermore, within days the matter of Syria’s supposed nuclear facility was taken out of the deep freeze and paraded before Congress and the public. The correct public reaction when confronted with images of the dastardly Syrian endeavors would have been a collective sharp intake of breath and a renewed resolution to smash the North Korean-Syrian Axis of Evil. As Bush put it:

“We… wanted to advance certain policy objectives through the disclosure. One would be to the North Koreans to make it abundantly clear that we may know more about you than you think.

“Then we have an interest in sending a message to Iran and the world, for that matter, about just how destabilising nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East” [Link], perhaps meaning that any time the US sees an opportune target they will send Israeli jets in to destroy it.

Unfortunately for Bush and Co., the reaction to the show was actually somewhat muted. Syrian spokesmen, of course, directly denied that the building was a nuclear facility of any type and pointed out that Syria, unlike nuclear-armed Israel, is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, condemned Washington for failing to make its claims known earlier, and Israel for bombing the facility rather than allowing the IAEA to verify the nature of the site [Link]. Most in the US Congress appeared to be taken in by the performance, but both Democratic and Republican members showed irritation about the Bush administration’s delay in providing information. Many commentators in the media suggested that the current allegations are just a little bit difficult to swallow given the administration’s record on Iraqi WMD.

Carter’s talks were probably not the sole reason for the timing of the CIA’s briefing–Bush also hoped to score points against North Korea at a time when negotiations with that country appear to have stalled. However, there is every reason to believe that any positive publicity generated by Carter’s mission was seen by the Bush gang as something which had to be buried.

Like so many previous episodes in the history of the Bush administration, this one has the hallmarks of both farce and tragedy. Rice’s reaction to Carter’s initiative is farcical but the tragedy is that a significant opportunity to end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians has been torpedoed and countless more lives will be lost as a result. It is farcical that the Bush administration would put on another WMD show to drown out signals from Syria which should have led to reductions in regional tensions. The tragedy is that the US continues to beat the drums of war and gives many indications that the Israeli raid was merely a rehearsal for an impending massive strike against both Syria and Iran.