Lame duck American presidents in their final year in office often turn to foreign policy to bolster their diminishing influence and burnish their legacy. President Bush is proving no exception. Regarded by many as America’s most hawkish president in recent decades, and dismissed as the worst ever among some historians, President Bush seeks the mantle of a peacemaker in the killing fields of the Middle East. The prospects for the Bush peace initiative in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are dim. So are the prospects of a Bush charm offensive in Africa (his current visit to Egypt is encapsulated in the colonialist cartography of the Middle East) which he plans to visit soon to showcase, predictably, America’s mercy industrial complex for our much-maligned continet. This is part of his unprecedented tours around the world that will also take him to Asia and South America in 2008. The following commentaries from writers in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere assess American mediation, Bush style, in this most protracted quagmire of world conflicts, whose turmoil has been stoked by the misguided policies of his Administration. P T Zeleza, Editor.  

• Mediation Bush-style By Saleh Al-Naami
• A 'Helping' Hand By Khaled Amayreh
• Him and Them By Dina Ezzat
• Why the President Now Seems to be Implementing the Iraq Study Group Report:
• Bush in the Middle East By Marwan Bishara
• Bush's Visit to the Middle East: Triumph of Form Over Substance By Mazin Qumsiyeh
• Welcome, Mr President, ToThe Misery You've Created By Jonathan Steele

Mediation Bush-style By Saleh Al-Naami

Bush's visit to Israel was preceded by the seizure of swathes of Palestinian land and the announcement that there will be no halt in settlement building. What hope for negotiations then, asks Saleh Al-Naami

Mohamed Al-Nuseir, 57, who lives in Bethlehem, had no warning that Israel was about to confiscate his family's land. The first he heard was on Saturday, when he was sitting in front of the television with his family and the satellite news presenter announced the Israeli government's decision to seize Palestinian territory south of the Mount Abu Ghoneim settlement bordering occupied Jerusalem in order to build 1,000 units to house yet more settlers. Nor had he conceived such a thing possible, not on the eve of American President George Bush's visit to Israel. His family, like all the others in the area, has all the documents to prove its legal ownership of the land.

Yet Bush's visit has been preceded by the announcement of the seizure of wide swathes of Palestinian territory for the construction of residential units for Israeli settlers. The move has surprised even the Israelis. It suggests, says Israeli writer Emmanuel Aharoni, that "either Israel realises that settlement expansion is not a concern for Bush, or Olmert's government is making light of Bush's simplistic position."

It is not only the building of settlements that flourished on the eve of Bush's visit. The Israeli army also increased the number of military checkpoints, further restricting Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank where, theoretically at least, the government of Salam Fayyad -- a man Bush has several times hailed as a role model for politicians in the Middle East -- is in charge.

At dawn last Monday Fatima Sidr, 32, was forced to give birth in the middle of the street after occupation soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Hebron in the southern West Bank prevented her husband from taking her to hospital.

The positions Bush expressed in interviews with major Israeli television channels and newspapers last Friday are even more shocking than Israeli actions on the eve of his visit. They mark a clear regression from the stances Bush had declared in his opening speech at the Annapolis meeting. In most interviews, Bush said he no longer thought it was possible for an agreement to be reached on establishing a Palestinian state before the end of 2008 and that the most that could be hoped for was an "agreement on the definition of the Palestinian state" leading Alof Ben, a political commentator with Haaretz newspaper, to write that "it appears Bush's vision has shrunk from trying to establish a Palestinian state to merely formulating a definition of it for inclusion in the dictionary."

In his interviews, Bush repeatedly stressed that he does not want to place any pressure on Israel to show flexibility in responding to the Palestinians' demands. He also contradicted himself, saying he supported Israel annexing settlements and at other times that settlements were "an obstacle blocking the success of the negotiation process".

The mechanism Bush suggested for resolving the difference between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel over the settlement issue is highly problematic -- he had proposed setting up a committee with American leadership to supervise the implementation of the first stage of the roadmap, whereby Israel is obliged to freeze settlement and the PA is obliged to quell and disarm the Palestinian resistance movements and halt incitement against Israel. Bush does not, however, object to the Israeli position that freezing settlement building can only take place after the PA fulfils its obligations, which means that implementation of this stage might continue forever.

During those interviews Bush laid out another goal for his visit to the region, saying that he would work to convince Arab leaders to accept Israel as a regional partner, as this is in "Arab interests".

Bush's support for Israel, though, continues to fall short of the expectations of the Israeli prime minister who prepared a list of demands to present to Bush when he arrives and which, if met, will pull the curtain for good on any opportunity to hold real negotiations.

Maariv newspaper revealed last Friday that Olmert and his ministers intended to ask Bush for a presidential statement acknowledging Israel's "vital interests in the West Bank". Israel's second best-selling paper also reported that Olmert had asked the heads of his security agencies to compile a list of strategic interests that should be recognised in Bush's statement. They will include the demand that the US administration accept Israeli military control of the West Bank for the foreseeable future and offer unconditional support for any military operation Tel Aviv might wage against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Maariv interpreted such demands as an attempt by Olmert to use Bush's visit to bolster his domestic political standing ahead of the publication of the Venograd Committee's final report, which is expected to be highly critical of Olmert's handling of Israel's war on Lebanon.

The PA has itself shown extraordinary keenness to display its own determination to implement roadmap obligations ahead of Bush's visit. It intensified its detentions of Hamas activists and leaders in the West Bank and closed their institutions. It went so far that the PA now has the approval of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, which issued a report saying President Mahmoud Abbas's security apparatus was waging a tireless war against Hamas and had arrested 250 of its leaders and activists in recent weeks.

Abdullah Abu Kamil, head of Palestinian intelligence in Nablus, argues that the report is part of an Israeli attempt to portray the PA and Fayyad government as Israeli agents. He notes that the Israeli army invaded Nablus and arrested scores of Hamas members just as the PA was waging its own campaign, making it look as if the PA was no more than a security agent for Israel.

For its part the PA, represented by its president and senior officials, hopes Bush's visit will pressure Olmert into halting settlement activities before negotiations begin. Yet Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and head of Israel's negotiating delegation, has already told her Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qurei that settlement in Jerusalem and its environs will continue, while Olmert's office has repeatedly stressed that negotiations will not address final solution issues.

Palestinian researcher and writer Walid Mudalil believes PA calculations on the results of Bush's visit are wide of the mark. The Palestinian leadership, he argues, should instead seek other ways to strengthen its position.

"Those who believe the Annapolis meeting pushed negotiations with Israel towards a solution to the conflict are misleading themselves. Anyone who thinks that Bush will take any steps to shake Israel from its positions is wrong," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.

From Al-Ahram Weekly [1]

 

A 'Helping' Hand By Khaled Amayreh

Israel's way of supporting its negotiating partner leaves something to be desired, observes Khaled Amayreh

Just ahead of George Bush's visit to the region, Israel was helping Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in its own peculiar way. Last week, thousands of Israeli occupation soldiers, backed by an armada of military vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, stormed Nablus, which the PA regime had just declared a "safe and secure city".

For three successive days, the invading army ransacked the city of 200,000 inhabitants, particularly its ancient quarter, raiding private homes, beating, humiliating and terrorising residents, rounding up youngsters and vandalising property. Dozens were injured, some seriously, by trigger-happy soldiers, allegedly for violating a military curfew the invading forces imposed on the town.

The PA has a few thousand security personnel in Nablus, in addition, to a back-up force of hundreds of Fatah militiamen, who had been active in persecuting and hounding Hamas supporters in the city.

However, according to an earlier understanding between the Israeli army and the Ramallah regime, all PA troops and security forces anywhere in the West Bank must remained confined to their headquarters and refrain from walking in the streets with their firearms during Israeli army incursions or presence in any given Palestinian locality.

Accordingly, PA troops just withdrew quietly to their buildings, closed their doors behind them, and waited until the end of the Israeli operation 5 January, when the invading forces left, leaving a trail of destruction that will require millions of dollars to fix.

The invading forces also arrested more than 20 Palestinians, including members of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who had been pardoned by Israel in exchange for surrendering their weapons to the PA authorities, as well as several Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters.

The incursion embarrassed the PA, portraying it in the eyes of Palestinians, especially Nablus's inhabitants, as helpless and even irrelevant. "What kind of government is it whose soldiers and policemen hasten to enter their holes when the occupation army comes to rape the city," asked Maher Kanan, a Nablus businessman. "And they claim that they have authority and sovereignty here."

PA officials, including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, protested against the Israeli incursion, complaining that Israel was "destroying everything we have been building for months." Some Fatah officials accused the Israeli army of "carrying out a coup" against the Abbas regime, while others charged that it was seeking to destroy any hope for a reasonable and dignified peace settlement with the Palestinians.

Responding to these complaints, the Israeli government and army said rather tersely that the operation in Nablus was fully coordinated with the Palestinian government. The PA denied the charges, saying that Palestinian security officials were only notified of the incursion at the very last moment.

One PA security official told Al-Ahram Weekly that the lightly-armed Palestinian security forces were only designed to keep law and order, but not confront the Israeli army. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security officials said, "we are not supposed to confront Israel. Our mission and tasks are confined to internal security."

In addition to the daily military incursions in the West Bank, the Israeli army continued to demonstrate to the Palestinians that Abbas and his government have no shred of authority save what Israel and its occupation army are willing to accord him.

On 7 January, Israeli troops raided downtown Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, and arrested two moderate Hamas leaders, Hussein Abu Kweik and Faraj Abu Rummana. Abu Kweik, a political activist, had his wife and three children murdered by the Israeli army in Ramallah in 2002 in a failed attempt on his life.

The two Islamic leaders were earlier detained by the Preventive Security Force (PSF) and subjected to a harsh interrogation for six hours in connection with remarks critical of PA policies they had made on Al-Jazeera television.

Hamas, in a statement issued on 8 January, accused the PSF of collusion with Israel in the abduction of the two leaders. "We stress that Fatah and its agencies in Ramallah are implicated from head to toe in the abduction by Israel of Abu Kweik and Rummana," said the statement.

Hamas pointed out that there was a tacit understanding between Israel and the PA whereby Israel would arrest any Palestinian activist detained by the PA security agencies and in return the PA would be allowed to operate against Hamas within areas classified as "C" where the Israeli army enjoys full security responsibility according to the Oslo Accords.

In addition to the daily incursions and rampages in the West Bank, as well as the ongoing carnage in Gaza, where the Israeli army has killed as many as 30 Palestinians (including an entire family) since the beginning of 2008, Israel has also been helping Abbas on another front.

On 8 January, the Israeli media reported that hundreds of settler units were slated to be built in Ras Al-Amud, the only remaining corridor between the West Bank and the Haram Al-Sharif of Jerusalem, which houses the Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.

This is in addition to thousands of settler units being planned and already under construction all over the West Bank, especially in the Jerusalem region where the Israeli government has embarked on an aggressive campaign to build as many settler units as possible prior to the conclusion of any possible agreement with the PA over the final status of the city.

Israel hopes that any such final-status agreement would allow the Jewish state to retain all Jewish neighbourhoods in the city. Hence, the frantic effort to seize as much as possible of East Jerusalem for Jewish settlement expansion.

The dogged and unrelenting land theft and settlement expansion in the West Bank is in contrast to the sweet talk and artificial goodwill by Israeli officials who continue to issue statements on a daily basis reasserting their commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state.

A prominent Palestinian intellectual described the current state of affair between Israel and the PA in the following words: "They meet, they exchange kisses and nice words, while Israeli bulldozers are busy pulverising what is left of Jerusalem," said Abdul-Sattar Qassem, professor of political science at An-Najah National University in Nablus.

The Weekly asked Qassem why he thought the PA was not protesting against Israel's settlement expansion more strongly. His answer was that, "the PA has already received the price for its silence [an allusion to the $7 billion pledged during last month's Paris Donor Conference]. So there is a kind of a tacit agreement between the two sides (Israel and the PA) according to which Israel would have carte blanche in terms of killing Palestinians and expanding settlements and the PA would protest against Israeli acts and behaviour for public consumption."

Meanwhile President Bush arrived in Israel 9 January on the first leg of a nine-day tour of the Middle East that also takes him to several Arab states in the region.

According to the Israeli media, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is going to assure Bush that Israel will finally "move against" dozens of settlement outposts in the West Bank which Israeli peace organisations contend were built illegally, but with a green light from the government itself and the Israeli army.

Interestingly, Israel has been promising to take steps in this direction for more than six years, but to no avail. It is very likely though that Olmert is sincere about his intentions to remove these outposts.

Earlier, the Israeli government refused to publish a database containing full details about Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, apparently for fear of besmirching Israel's image abroad and exposing official government mendacity.

Responding to a High Court of Justice petition on the matter, the Israeli Defence Ministry argued that publication of data on settlements at this time would harm state security and Israel's foreign relations.

From Al-Ahram Weekly [2] 

Him and Them By Dina Ezzat

Dina Ezzat wonders how the visit by George Bush to Egypt can help Cairo and Washington manage their differences and maintain what they used to dub a strategic partnership

"So why is he coming now? Are they going to strike Iran?" wondered Hussein, a Cairo taxi driver.

The "he" in Hussein's question referred to US President George W Bush. As for the "they", Hussein was reluctant to offer a straight answer. For him, however, it was not a strict reference to the Americans because one way or the other it also involves a hidden mention of America's regional allies: Israel and "others".

Heading towards his 60th birthday, the grey- haired taxi driver, of Palestinian origin, spends over 10 hours on the road every day during which he listens to a lot of radio news, mostly from the Arabic service of BBC.

But Hussein, who demonstrates considerable knowledge of regional and world political developments, says he is not sure of the real motives behind Bush's visit to the Middle East this week. He does not "really believe" that the current US administration has enough time to launch a new war on Iran even if it wanted to. He also "knows" that Bush is not coming to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. "Only a fool would believe that there will be aPalestinian state this year. It's only a joke," he said. As for Iraq, Hussein thinks that Bush "is no longer interested since he is leaving" the White House anyway.

"We will see," Hussein concluded.

Bush arrived yesterday in Israel on the first leg of his Middle East trip expected to last for nine days and to also include the Palestinian territories. It is Bush's first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since he took office seven years ago.

Other stops in the US presidential visit include Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt where he is expected to hold talks with President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm El-Sheikh on 16 January before he heads back home, may be after a short stopover in Iraq.

Egyptian and other Arab officials qualify the visit as "important". They argue that it is an opportunity for the US president to demonstrate commitment to keep up the pace that he induced last November in the Middle East process upon hosting the Annapolis meeting. They also argue that the visit is an opportunity for Arab leaders to offer Bush their direct accounts of the role that the US needs to play during the remaining months of Bush's term in office to help promote peace and stability in a region that many an Arab capital blame Bush and neo-cons for its increased instability.

For Egyptian and other Arab commentators the visit is about one of two things: either to promote further isolation of Iran, since many seem to think that a US military attack on Iran is getting increasingly unlikely, if not totally excluded, or to attempt to keep up the momentum of the Palestinian-Israeli talks in order to secure some sort of a final status agreement, or a framework thereof.

According to press interviews accorded this week by the US president to Arab and Israeli TV channels, the purpose of the visit is a combination of all of the above -- somehow. The number one objective seems to be for Bush to remind the world that the Iranian regime is "a danger" for which "the US always maintains the military option". Another objective is for Bush, who ignored the Arab-Israeli file for the larger part of his two terms in office, to "define a [Palestinian] state... [without] forcing the issue because of [his] timetable" and to call on Arab countries, especially in the rich Gulf states, to offer "strong support" for the Palestinians and Israelis through their direct negotiations for peace. Bush would also use his visit in the Middle East to remind Syria that it must reconsider its rules of engagement on Lebanon if it wishes to escape ultimate regional and international isolation, and to press upon his Arab allies to extricate Iraq from its current chaos and to try to improve their observation of the rules of democracy provided they keep all Hamas-like political Islamist forces in line.

While in Egypt, officials say, Bush is expected to deliberate with Mubarak on all of the above. To judge by the accounts offered by official sources, in Egypt the US president will find many points of agreement and some obvious points of disagreement.

Cairo shares Bush's concern about any potential access of Tehran to nuclear weapons but does not believe military action is the answer. In the words of one official, Cairo has repeatedly told members of the US administration and Congress that the mere threat of war against Iran prompts widespread anger in most Arab public quarters. Cairo is also expecting the US to be sensitive enough -- one official argued "tactful" -- to stop bashing Iran over its peaceful nuclear programme in view of the inevitable comparisons that public opinion draws between the case of Iran and that of Israel which is known to possess uninspected military nuclear facilities. One Egyptian official said Cairo would appreciate a clear explanation by the US president on his country's real stance on Iran "because Washington has been sending confusing signals on this matter".

It is on the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict that Bush is likely to hear some serious remarks from his Egyptian interlocutors. Press statements made by Egyptian Ambassador to Washington Nabil Fahmi indicate that President Mubarak will press his guest into securing a firm Israeli commitment to halt all acts of colonisation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Egypt, diplomats say, is genuinely concerned about the chances of a serious negotiations process to be pursued in light of the Annapolis meeting if the US maintains the current low level of direct engagement and refrains, as one source put it, "from using its influence with its Israeli friends when this influence could be of use."

According to one senior Egyptian official, President Mubarak is expected to tell Bush that while the Palestinian Authority acts to contain militant activities, the Israeli government needs to put a serious check on settlement activities that seems to have picked up "almost aggressively" since the Annapolis conference. "Otherwise [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will suffer serious image problems among his own people and Arab leaders supporting the Annapolis process. He will not be feeling very comfortable," the official said. He added that "despite its limited expectations of Annapolis right from the beginning, the failure of the process created by Annapolis is the last thing Egypt would like to see."

According to Ezzeddine Choukri-Fischere, director of the Arab-Israeli Peace Project of the International Crisis Group (ICG), pressing Washington to exercise more direct engagement in the administration of the Palestinian-Israeli talks, "which should evolve into serious negotiations [soon]", is very important.

While arguing it was "too early to argue that Annapolis is about to collapse" as some observers suggest, Choukri-Fischere argued that the next few months are crucial for the process produced by the Annapolis meeting to either succeed or fail. If it fails, he added, it would not be the end of the peace process but it would be very unfortunate for all those who invested time and effort in the process "because then everybody would have to wait for a new US administration to come into office [next year], examine the issue, select the envoys and take the decisions."

"[Bush's] visit is a sign of his interest... It increases the stakes for him to succeed," said Choukri-Fischere.

However, Choukri-Fischere does not underestimate "the disturbing signs" that have been unfolding in the region since the end of the "Annapolis euphoria". The continued "settlements expansion", the lack of US monitoring of the commitment of Palestinians and Israelis to honour the roadmap obligations, the lack "so far of serious final status negotiations" despite Palestinian-Israeli meetings and the failure to engage Hamas and to improve the situation in Gaza are for him serious problems that have to be addressed soon -- may be even during Bush's visit. "This is a moment of a decisive approach rather than the [so far dominant] lingering attitude... This is the moment to restart the engines," he said.

Egyptian officials say they are more than willing to cooperate with the US to give the Annapolis process a good push but they are not in any position to force the US to do what it takes to succeed. They add that even if they know Bush will exit the White House without going as far as defining, much less establishing a Palestinian state, they are still willing to work hard to secure progress on this front. "Whatever is achieved by this [US] administration will be there for any incoming administration to build on, whether it is an administration of Republicans or Democrats," argued one Egyptian diplomat who asked for anonymity. According to the diplomat an Egyptian- US engagement in promoting Palestinian-Israeli, and "may be even later overall Arab-Israeli" peace, is not just a matter of regional priority for Egypt but also an asset for the promotion of bilateral relations that have suffered much "friction" during the Bush tenure. "The sort of crisis we have had with Egyptian-American relations started partly when Bush decided at the beginning of his term in office that making war on Iraq rather than Arab-Israeli peace was his priority... The war was something that Egypt was not supportive of and the peace that Egypt could have helped achieve was put on the shelf," he said.

Other Egyptian diplomats and officials who work closely on Egyptian-American relations do not underestimate other points of differences especially in relation to pace and scope of promoting civil liberties and political freedoms in Egypt. "But as you see with the failure of the US war on Iraq and the success of Hamas in the parliamentary elections, the US is no longer talking much about promoting democracy in the Middle East," the diplomat said.

He added that the recent decision by Congress to freeze $100 million of the annual $1.3 billion of US military aid to Egypt was essentially prompted by the intensive protests by the Israeli lobby in Washington over what they allege is Egypt's failure to do enough to prevent arms and money smuggling from northern Sinai to Gaza.

"That problem [of smuggling arms through tunnels from Egypt to Gaza] has not been solved and has not been fixed," US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said during a briefing he held in Washington earlier this month on Bush's upcoming trip. According to Hadley, "this subject is not just an Israeli problem, but I would say it is [a problem for] all the countries of the region." He said that even the Palestinian Authority is concerned. And, he added, "the Egyptians need to be concerned about this problem."

Egyptian officials acknowledge that Cairo has been very keen to demonstrate to concerned members of the US administration and Congress that despite the Israeli allegations, Egyptian authorities are sparing no effort in keeping a close check on the borders. This week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Egypt and the US will be working closer on this issue. Rice, who's accompanying Bush on his Middle East trip, indicated, in not so many words, that a serious development on the borders could force the US administration to use its prerogative to wave the freeze imposed by Congress on the $100 million of military aid.

Following talks with President Mubarak in Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday, Steve Israel, a member of the US Senate Committee on Appropriations -- which basically decided on the $100 million freeze -- said Egypt agreed to work with US trainers and to spend some $23 million of US military aid on technical equipment to find the tunnels that Israel says are built to allow for arms smuggling.

Following earlier talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit on Saturday, Israel said that despite the disagreement over the management of the Egyptian-Israeli borders, for the US the relationship with both Egypt as well as with Israel is "critically" important for the promotion of peace and stability in the region.

Egyptian officials say they do not expect the issue of the military financial freeze to be "very present" on the agenda of the Mubarak-Bush talks next Wednesday in Sharm El-Sheikh. However, they argue that they expect the overall issue of US economic and military aid to Egypt and the Egyptian proposals presented to Washington last summer for amendments to be approached during the Egyptian-American summit.

The Bush-Mubarak meeting next week will be the first in five years. The last meeting between the two presidents was during Mubarak's last visit to the US in 2002. The visit ended on a rather unfortunate note when Bush issued visiting former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon guarantees for the continued presence of large blocks of Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The incident led to the collapse of the little chemistry the two leaders had originally enjoyed and prompted Mubarak to break a previous tradition of annual US visits. The absence of direct presidential level engagement was harmful, sources on both sides acknowledge, for the promotion of bilateral Egyptian-American relations.

"But now is not the time to look back and lament the failures of the past," commented an Egyptian diplomat. "Now is rather the time to manage the differences and to keep this bilateral relationship in the best shape possible so as to make sure that when a new administration comes into office it will not be confronted with a too fractioned relationship." He added that promoting cooperation on as many regional files as possible could help the best interests of this bilateral relationship. "We might not exactly agree on Iran but we have some points of agreement in relation to the developments in Lebanon and Sudan and in the support of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the stabilisation of Iraq."

According to this and other diplomats, Egypt needs to ignore some anti-Egypt bashing in some political and media quarters in the US. However, also according to Egyptian diplomats, the US administration needs to stop patronising Egypt over its political reforms programme.

From Al-Ahram Weekly [3]

Why the President Now Seems to be Implementing the Iraq Study Group Report: Bush in the Middle East By Marwan Bishara

To understand why George Bush, the US president, is visiting the Middle East and what he seeks to accomplish, re-read the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission from December 2006, subtract what has been implemented since then and you are left with a must-do list in this troubled region.

Bush's visit to Israel and the occupied territories underlined his intentions to continue implementing the recommendations of the commission - also known as the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) - albeit slowly, superficially and at times clumsily in order to give the impression of being bold and righteous.

Nevertheless, more than a year after its publication, the sobering bi-partisan ISG report remains the administration's only path out of the Middle East quagmire.

Chief among its 79 recommendations is the training of Iraqi forces to 'stand up' so that US troops stand down and walk away. The report also pushes for constructive regional involvement from Iraq's neighbours and serious effort to resolve the Palestinian question.

No Bush administration official understood this better than Robert Gates, an ISG member and secretary of defence.

Since he succeeded Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006, this "political realist" at the helm of the Pentagon has been implementing the commission's proposals in all but name and according to the administration's own operative-mode, calendar and priorities.

Stability in Iraq

The first recommendation Gates implemented, the surge, was the least favoured. While the ISG "rejected" a troop increase, it did support a "surge of American combat forces to stabilise Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission" if the generals deemed it necessary.

The ISG authors believed there was no military solution to the Iraq conflict and therefore strongly recommended that the administration place greater emphasis on political solutions "to ensure disaffected groups (specifically the Sunnis) are brought into Iraq's political process".

The administration convinced the Iraqi government to commit to a number of benchmarks that include building a better army, ending sectarian violence, and adopting equitable distribution of oil revenues, among others.

It also emphasised that it sent the extra troops only after the Iraqi government promised a "fundamental" change in policy.

Meanwhile, improved relations between the US military and a number of tribal opposition Sunni groups have enticed the White House to pressure the Shia-controlled government of Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to open up.

But in the absence of political reconciliation, and with Iraq's ethnic groups becoming better armed and more sectarian, an all-out civil war becomes more likely today than ever before.

Regional stability

The ISG also made it clear that reconciliation is more likely to succeed through a regional diplomatic offensive which could contain and resolve Iraq's conflicts.

The Bush administration has already participated in three mid-level talks with Iran, Syria, Turkey and other regional and international powers over Iraq, but it is far from the ISG's strongly advised regional conference.

Although the administration has been instrumental in bringing the aforementioned to the negotiating table, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has bizarrely insisted it was Iraq, not the US, who called for the talks.

Nonetheless, and despite the recent naval incident in the Persian Gulf, American and Iranian officials have sounded more conciliatory over the last four weeks than during the previous four years.

For their part, US generals speak of increased Iranian security cooperation to curb the smuggling of arms and fighters across the border and also restrain armed groups like Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.

Washington's 'psychological war' in the form of a military build-up, or 'gunboat diplomacy' in the Persian Gulf, might have failed to stop Iran from enriching Uranium, but it did convince Tehran to make positive gestures towards Washington.

Begin with Iran

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, struck a mild tone during his December 11 press conference when he called for dialogue with Washington and refrained from the usual anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric.

His participation in the Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Doha in early December 2007 followed by a Saudi Arabian invitation to perform the Hajj were not discouraged by Washington.

With the Iran nuclear roadblock mostly out of the way, thanks to the (incidental?) National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) findings, Iran's imminent threat status has now been downgraded.

This effectively removes the main obstacle which had prevented US-Iran coordination over the future of Iraq.

Likewise, US-Syrian relations have started to come out of the deep freeze with the latter's recent cooperation on border security.

According to Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, the cooperation with Syria has led to a 70 per cent decline in the number of fighters infiltrating across the border.

Israel problem

Syria and many of its Arab counterparts accepted Washington's invitation to attend the Annapolis meeting which promised to move towards negotiating the hardcore stumbling blocks to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The overdue "peace conference" is a first step in the implementation of another important ISG recommendation: seeking agreements on all final status issues of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and the repatriation of Palestinian refugees by the end of 2008.

A year behind the ISG' proposed schedule to redeploy most forces out of Iraq, US officials now believe the army could reduce its brigades to the pre-surge levels,as more soldiers take on the role of training the Iraqi Army.

This could prove to be too little and too late to salvage whatever is left of Iraq's unity and America's credibility, especially that the obstacles and challenges in 2008 are all too daunting.

Leaning on friends

It is perhaps also too late in the day for Bush to effect major change. But what he needs to do has never been clearer.

The US president must pressure his Israeli allies to be more forthcoming in their talks with the Palestinians. He must also pressure his Baghdad allies to do more for national reconciliation in Iraq.

Both governments know all too well that they must share power and resources equitably with the other inhabitants of the land as preconditions to ending the the bloodshed.

The Bush administration would be wise to ensure that Iraq delivers on the "benchmarks" and Israel fulfils its obligations on the "final status issues" to avoid escalation in the region.

But judging by Bush's statements at the end of his visit to Israel and Palestine, that looks hardly forthcoming.

Mending bridges

No less challenging to the Bush administration is the need to overcome the hawkish and neoconservative detractors in its midst in order to reverse its menacing tone toward Tehran and Damascus.

The administration also needs to be ready and willing to pay the geopolitical price for a long-term strategic cooperation over Iraq.

This includes among others, Washington's commitment to refrain from calling for regime change and instead accepting both Iran and Syria's regional roles as part of a new regional security model fashioned on the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

For Damascus, Washington should recognise that Syria's special relationship with Lebanon is paramount and also help in securing Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

To better implement the ISG recommendations, the Bush administration must also encourage the UN Security Council to invite the leaders of Iraq's neighbors to an international conference that puts the necessary pressures on the Iraqis to reach political reconciliation.

Otherwise, 2008 will witness the violent break-up of Iraq leading to terrible consequences for the region.

From Counterpunch [4]

Bush's Visit to the Middle East: Triumph of Form Over Substance By Mazin Qumsiyeh

The President's visit to the Middle East this week will show once and for all that status quo lives on under the attempt to validate the old saying that an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. In this case the image came seven years too late.

In public appearances the Bush administration claims it supports "the road map for peace". In 2218 words that "map" lacks any mention of human rights and International law. But even with this shortcoming, it calls for total freeze on settlement activities including so called "natural growth". Israel simply refuses to abide by this. Bush sent a letter to assure Israel that some settlements will be exempt since they would stay with Israel under any final deal. In so doing, Bush himself undermined his own "road map". It is not surprising that US policy evolved from describing settlements as illegal to "obstacles" to "unhelpful" and finally to Jewish neighborhood that will remain part of the Jewish state.

The US government claimed interest in advancing democracy is recognized around the world as the biggest breeding ground for promoting dictators, violence and terrorism (whether that practiced by individuals or the more deadly state terrorism). For example, Hamas was elected in the occupied Palestinian areas in a vote that this administration pushed for. Rather than pressuring Israel to comply with International law (an action which would have truly built up moderate forces in Palestine), Bush chose to pressure Abbas to take Hamas on militarily and thus increase the already high antagonism to the US and its client state of Israel.

Continuing in this policy, when Bush visits Ramallah to meet with Abbas, the city will be under curfew and a virtual marshal law according to instructions given to Palestinian police. Bush's security detail demanded no visible nonviolent demonstrations. Israeli Foreign Minister, daughter of the terrorist who oversaw the bombing of the King David Hotel will jovially agree with Bush on fighting "Islamic terrorism." Bush will look out from that same hotel to see a wall that the International court of Justice ruled illegal. Many of the US officials accompanying Bush were handpicked from lobbyists and pundits who support Israel (Clinton was not any better) so he will not hear the history of that hotel.

Considering the above, the photo opportunities in occupied Jerusalem will not accomplish any more than they did in Annapolis not even the hope of a changed policy after Bush leaves office. Thus, the decline in the U.S.'s ability to influence events around the world is becoming more visible (even in the declining value of the US dollar). There is an obvious and more honest route to peace, security, and economic prosperity for all (Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Iraqis etc): International law and human rights.

Israel is the only country in the world that gives members of a particular religion, including converts, automatic rights (citizenship, land, homes, subsidies), while denying citizenship to native Christians and Muslims who were ethnically cleansed. World leaders who are freed from the pressures of the Israel lobby have recognized this system for what it is: Apartheid. Israelis actually use hafrada (=segregation) to describe their program. President Carter wrote a book titled “Palestine: Peace not apartheid.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote: “In our struggle for justice and peace in South Africa we had to learn to speak and listen to hard truths. Our experience should encourage all who strive for justice and peace in the Holy Land. My visits to the Holy Land remind me so much of South Africa: apartheid is back, complete with the “Separation Wall” and Bantustans. History, it seems, repeats itself.”

A growing International movement of boycotts, divestment and sanctions, (BDS) coupled with truth telling is building that will succeed like we did with cutting U.S. support for Apartheid South Africa. Israel will then evolve into a democracy with equality for all (Jews, Christians, Muslims etc.) and implement international law including, allowing the refugees to return to their homes and lands. This is the only way to allow a functioning Hebrew and Israeli culture to remain while remedying the injustice committed against the native people.

Many media outlets, influenced by special interests, gave support to pro-Israel candidates while ridiculing those calling for a real change in the self-destructive US foreign policy (e.g. Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich). The jury is thus still out on whether the new President will continue the same path. More and more US citizens are seeing the devastation caused by the alternative strategy (from 9/11 to chaos in Pakistan). Citizen pressure on all political parties is what achieved ending the war on Vietnam, ending US support for apartheid South Africa, and advancing civil rights. It is time to reclaim our country.

From Z-Net [5]

Welcome, Mr President, ToThe Misery You've Created By Jonathan Steele

In eight years Palestinians have seen the bald eagle of enlightened US power degenerate into a phoney, biased, cynical lame duck

It is a well-deserved irony for George Bush that his first presidential visit to Israel coincided this week with the storm of excitement produced by the unexpected outcome of the two New Hampshire primaries. Nothing could better highlight the irrelevance of the final year of the Bush presidency.

The moment at which an incumbent becomes a lame duck fluctuates in every US administration, depending on circumstances. The day on which the first votes are cast is traditionally the symbolic date, even though the race has been under way in the media for months. This year's riveting contests in New Hampshire certainly proved that true, overshadowing whatever interest there was in Bush's plans for influencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even before the president left Washington, expectations for his visit were low. His much-trumpeted meeting of Middle Eastern leaders in Annapolis in November produced a predictably tinny follow-up. Little happened in the subsequent six weeks, and it was only courtesy to Bush that impelled Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas to meet again in advance of the president's touchdown in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and produce the blandest pretence of progress. According to Olmert's spokesman, they agreed to "authorise their negotiating teams to conduct direct and ongoing negotiations on all the core issues". Isn't this tautological statement merely a repeat of what they had already launched in Annapolis?

Bush's engagement in the world's most intractable dispute is late, piecemeal and phoney. Above all, it is one-sided. As Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian minister, remarked this week: "Palestinians agree that in the history of the United States, Bush is more biased toward Israel than any other American president." In any conflict, responsibility for making the largest concessions always rests on the stronger party, especially when most of the wrong is on its side. But, despite his rhetoric yesterday, Bush has not used Washington's enormous leverage over Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

He has not even applied pressure for an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements or the dismantling of the spider's web of roadblocks that make normal life for Palestinians impossible. A US plan for benchmarks by which to judge Israeli progress was quickly abandoned last spring at the first whiff of concern by Olmert's government. Occasional state department pronouncements disapproving of settlement expansion are not followed by measures to reflect US anger when - as happened in Jerusalem again on Wednesday - Olmert makes it clear he will continue the illegal construction of Israeli homes.

Any talk of dealing with "core issues" is meaningless without measures to reduce the daily hardships of Palestinians and end the kidnapping of hundreds of Palestinian leaders. About 40 Palestinian MPs who were seized after Hamas's election victory two years ago remain in Israeli prisons, uncharged and seemingly forgotten by Bush and other western governments. US and European policies towards Hamas remain hopelessly unjust and counterproductive.

In the first phase of the so-called roadmap that Bush boasts of having revived, Palestinians are supposed to build the institutions of a responsible state. Yet Israel and the US continue to do all they can to undermine this laudable goal by blatantly taking sides in the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas. Bush's comment yesterday in Ramallah about the situation in Gaza was one of history's most extraordinary examples of tunnel vision. "Hamas has delivered nothing but misery for Palestinians," he declared. Had he said, "My reaction and that of my Israeli and European Union colleagues to the mandate given Hamas by Palestinian voters has delivered nothing but misery for Palestinians", he would have been closer to the truth.

The human catastrophe deliberately inflicted on Gaza by western policies over the past two years is one of the great crimes of this century so far. It is especially unjustified since Hamas had been observing a truce in its attacks on Israelis for several months prior to winning the "free, fair and open elections" that the roadmap asked for. Hamas was, and continues to be, punished not for its occasional use of violence but simply for being popular. And, as often happens with sanctions, it is not the leaders who suffer, but the whole civilian population of the territory - deprived of medicine, adequate food, public services and jobs. Rather than pursuing the chimera of a final settlement that would mean nothing without Hamas's endorsement, western policy should focus on more manageable humanitarian and political goals: lifting the boycott of Hamas, promoting Palestinian unity, and forcing Israel to end its brutal siege of Gaza.

Bush is not the first US president to take an interest in the Middle East in the last year of an eight-year period of office. Bill Clinton also applied his mind to it in the dying months of his second term. Yet his performance was very different: Clinton had endorsed the Oslo process early in his first term, and showed considerable energy in pushing it forward and supporting the new Palestinian Authority.

Later, in spite of being a lame duck by the year 2000, he tried hard to get agreement between Arafat and Barak at Camp David, on a final settlement that was not loaded overwhelmingly in Israel's favour. It was a model of how American presidents can act more firmly when released from the pressures of seeking election. It only needs an effort of will for a lame duck to become the bald eagle of enlightened US power. In contrast, Bush's current visit to the region is nothing more than a display of partisan cynicism, coupled with the hope that if some sort of interim deal is signed this year between Olmert and Abbas, it would erase Washington's failures in Iraq.

Where does that leave Palestinians as the gathering wave of US primaries prepares to reveal the last two candidates for the Bush succession? Will they have to wait as long as 2016 before President Clinton or President Obama is free enough to confront Israeli intransigence and to insist on concessions? Neither candidate has yet given any sign of breaking away from traditional pro-Israeli views of the problem, so once again Palestinians may have to wait for the eighth-year miracle. Windows of opportunity open so rarely, yet the need for early action has never been more urgent.

From The Guardian [6]