THE "ROAD MAP" AND U.S. STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

THE "ROAD MAP" AND U.S. STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
By Richard Becker, International Action Center, June 2003

What is the Bush Administration seeking to accomplish with its "Road Map" for Palestine and Israel? Answering this question is key to understanding the current diplomatic offensive undertaken by Washington in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

While facing growing opposition to its colonial-style occupation in Iraq, the administration is moving forward very aggressively to reorganize and subjugate the entire Middle East, and the "Road Map" is a key element in their plans.

The defeat of Iraq and the destruction of its government and state were seen by Washington as necessary pre-conditions for opening a new round of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Since the beginning of his administration, Bush has previously refused to even speak with the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). During that time, he has hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House on eight occasions, more than any other foreign leader. The U.S. has continued, during the same period, to funnel massive economic and military aid to Israel.

Since the start of the second Intifada in Sept. 2000, Israel has re-occupied the Palestinian cities, towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza. Economic life has been largely destroyed, unemployment has risen to 80% or higher in many areas, and poverty and hunger have skyrocketed. In the past 32 months, three times as many Palestinians - more than 2,200 - as Israelis have been killed. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been injured and more than 10,000 imprisoned. Those jailed are routinely beaten and tortured by the Israeli authorities.

Despite facing overwhelming firepower (the Israeli military is rated as the 4th most powerful in the world) and widespread suffering, the Palestinians have not been defeated.

But with the crushing of Iraq, Washington views the Palestinians, and Arab people as a whole, as in a weakened position.

It was a similar combination of factors that impelled the first Bush administration to open the Oslo "Peace Process" after defeating Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war.

U.S. DEMANDS NEW PALESTINIAN LEADERS
Before officially announcing the Road Map, the U.S. insisted that the PNA reorganize itself, and choose a prime minister acceptable to Washington, namely Mahmoud Abbas, a long-time associate of PNA President Yasir Arafat. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has been critical of the Intifada and has called for an end to armed resistance to the Israeli military occupation.

Officially entitled, "A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," the document projects three phases leading to a final resolution by 2005. Overseeing the plan is the "Quartet" - the U.S., European Union, Russia and the U.N., though the pre-eminence of the U.S. role is beyond doubt. Made absolutely clear is that it will be the Palestinian "performance" that is judged.

Overwhelming emphasis in Phase I is placed on "Security," which translates as ending Palestinian "violence and terrorism." Section after section focuses on re-organizing PNA security forces, cutting off funding to Palestinian resistance organizations, creating a U.S.-Jordan-Egypt "oversight board" to train and monitor the PNA police and security. (Egypt and Jordan, it should be noted, both maintain large police forces funded by the U.S. to ruthlessly control their respective populations.)

While Israel is called on to take "no actions undermining trust," the words "violence," "terror," etc, are nowhere in the document linked to actions of the Israeli military.

As Andrea Anderson, director of Harvard University's Middle East Initiative noted in a recent commentary: "the conditionality of the agreement only applies to ending Palestinian violence."

The Israelis are supposed to stop expanding their settlements in the West Bank, which have nearly doubled in population to 235,000 since the Oslo process began to be implemented in 1993, and dismantle a small number of lightly populated "outpost" settlements.

Phase II is envisioned as beginning later this year - presumably after the Palestinian resistance has been terminated: "In the second phase, efforts are focused on the option of creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty . . " (Our emphasis - RB).

Speaking in extraordinarily patronizing and colonial tones, the Road Map continues: "As has been noted, this goal can be achieved when the Palestinian people have leadership acting decisively against terror, willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty."

In other words, when the Palestinians have "shown they are worthy," they will be awarded not self-determination, but autonomy.

After presumably meeting many more similar requirements, the Palestinians will enter Phase III sometime in 2004-2005. Then, and only then, will such fundamental issues as the Palestinian right to return and Jerusalem even be discussed.

The right of Palestinians living in exile is especially critical. In 1948, to make way for the establishment of the state of Israel 780,000 Palestinians were evicted from their homeland, or fled the fighting. Their lands, orchards, shops and homes were seized without compensation. Hundreds of thousands more were driven out in the 1967 war when Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai peninsula. Today there are an estimated 4.5 Palestinians refugees and their descendants living in exile, many existing in extreme poverty in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere.

According to Israeli law, any Jewish person from anywhere in the world has the right to "return" to Israel and immediately claim citizenship. Yet, not one Palestinian refugee has ever been allowed to return to their homeland. This despite UN Security Council Resolution 191, of 1949, that stipulated that all Palestinian refugees must be granted the right to return.

The Bush administration has conveniently left UNSC Res. 191 out of the resolutions mentioned in the Road Map. Moreover, the Sharon government has stated from the very beginning that it will never consider allowing the Palestinians back.

Sharon and the entire Israeli power structure view are opposed to any Palestinian right to return, which they view as undermining the existence of Israel as an exclusivist state in which Jewish people are given special and superior rights. The U.S. rulers support the apartheid-like character of the Israeli state, seeing it as a guarantee that Israel will remain an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle East.

Many inside and outside Israel have been surprised that Sharon has agreed to negotiations at all, even with major conditions and reservations. Sharon's whole career - which spans the existence of Israel - has been dedicated to expanding the state. His bloody history of massacres and repression against the Palestinians is well known.

Two factors explain Sharon's "new look." First, there is intense pressure from Washington- Israel's economic, diplomatic and military lifeline- to get on board with the new Bush initiative.

Second, Sharon intends to annex large sections of the West Bank, and to relegate the Palestinians to disconnected pieces of territory surrounded by Israeli military power. In addition, Israel would retain control of the borders, airspace, water and subsoil rights of all of Palestine.

Under his plan, the Palestinians would be "self-governing" within small, controllable areas that would become labor colonies for Israeli businesses.

WHAT THE U.S. WANTS
The U.S. objective in this process is the same one Washington has pursued for decades: the establishment of U.S. hegemony over a pacified Middle East. Domination of the Middle East, due to its oil riches and strategic position, has been a central goal of U.S. foreign policy since World War II.

Crushing the Palestinian resistance - which is so central to the struggle in the region as a whole- is considered to be key to establishing U.S. hegemony over the entire area. Achieving that goal is what the Road Map is all about.

Elias Rashmawi, a spokesperson for the Free Palestine Alliance-U.S., said of the negotiations: "The Road Map is the ultimate formulation by the US to fully end all forms of resistance and fragment the Palestinian national unity. The plan brings nothing new to the Palestinian people. The claim that a Palestinian state will emerge is not any different from the 'Autonomy' project of the Seventies and the first Camp David agreement. Missing are all core and fundamental issues, particularly the right of return and the principle of full national sovereignty.

"In reality this is a 'security plan' designed to destroy resistance on all fronts. The ultimate goal is not Palestinian statehood and return, but the normalization of Zionist discourse and the Israeli polity throughout the Arab World.

"This plan is part of the overall design by the US to control the Arab World in full by gutting out the core liberationist effort - the Palestinian resistance.

"The ongoing attempt to bring the Palestinian National Authority into the fold along with other Arab regimes is a dangerous attempt to strike a wedge in the Palestinian society and to further strengthen the dependency relationship on the U.S. It is geared towards the transformation of the Palestinian national movement into a functionary entity in a globalized US economy and a militarized region subject to the garrisons of Israel and the U.S. Nullified are all aspects of independence.

"This is a plan that is in tandem with other ongoing US projects worldwide, including the transformation of the Philippines as a whole into a military base, the destruction of the Cuban model, the control of the Korean peninsula, and the total grip on Latin America."

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