-Caveat Lector-
http://www.rense.com/general20/pit.htm
Arab Nations Are Lost In A
Pit Of Desperation
By Robert Fisk
The Independent - London
2-18=2
A few days ago, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called upon the
"conscience" of the American people to help the Palestinians. The Emir of
Qatar went one step further in self-abasement. The Arabs, he said - and he
apologised for using the word - had to "beg" the United States to use its
influence on the Israelis. Truly, when such words are uttered, it is the
very pit of Arab desperation.
Beg? Conscience? Washington may still turn down Ariel Sharon's request to
break all relations with Yasser Arafat, but President Bush has long ago
forgotten his "vision" of a Palestinian state - produced when he needed
Arab acquiescence in the bombardment of Afghanistan but swiftly buried
once it had served its purpose - and Arafat's role now is to remember his
job: to protect Israel from his own people.
>From his office in Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli tanks, Arafat
fantasises about his derring-do during Israel's 1982 siege of West Beirut,
but it is difficult to underestimate the degree of shame with which many
Palestinians now regard him. Last Christmas, Arafat insisted that he would
march to Bethlehem to attend church services. But when the Israelis
refused him permission, he merely appeared on Palestinian television and
preposterously claimed that Israel's refusal was a "crime" and an act of
"terrorism".
Why, the Arabic daily Al Quds al-Arabi asked, was there no explanation for
this "bizarre and incomprehensible" performance by Arafat? Why did he not
march out of Ramallah with the Christian clerics who had come to give
their support until physically stopped by Israeli troops in front of the
television cameras? The more he talks about Israel's "terrorism", the less
we examine his own record of corruption, cronyism and brutality.
In the meantime, Israel's own mythmaking goes on apace. In New York,
Shimon Peres announces the presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Lebanon and the arrival of 8,000 long-range missiles for Hizbollah; now
there hasn't been an Iranian militiaman in Lebanon for 15 years, and the
"new" missiles don't exist - but this nonsense is reported in the US media
without the slightest attempt to check the facts.
The latest whopper came from Sharon. He regretted, he said, that he had
not "liquidated" Arafat during the 1982 siege of Beirut, but there had
been an agreement not to do so. This is rubbish; during the siege, Israeli
jets five times bombed the buildings in which Sharon, then Israel's
defence minister, believed Arafat to be hiding, on two occasions
destroying whole apartment blocks - along, of course, with all the
civilians living in them - only minutes after Arafat had left. Again,
Sharon's untrue version of history was reported in the American press as
fact.
Indeed, all the participants in the Middle East conflict are now engaged
in a game of self-deception, a massive and fraudulent attempt to avoid any
examination of the critical issues that lie behind the tragedy. The Saudis
want to appeal to America's "conscience", not because they are upset at
Arafat's predicament but because 15 of the 11 September hijackers were
themselves Saudis. Sharon's attempt to join in the "war against terror" -
the manufacturing of non-existent Iranian enemies in Lebanon, for example,
along with some very real enemies in the West Bank and Gaza - is a blatant
attempt to ensure American support for his crushing of the Palestinian
intifada and for the continuation of Israel's colonisation of Palestinian
land.
Similarly, Mr Bush's messianic claim that he is fighting "evil" - "evil"
now apparently being a fully-fledged nation-state - and that America's
al-Qa'ida enemies hate America because they are "against democracy" is
poppycock. Most of America's Muslim enemies don't know what democracy is -
they have certainly never enjoyed it - and their deeds, which are indeed
wicked, have motives.
Mr Bush knows, and certainly his secretary of state, Colin Powell, does,
that there is an intimate link between the crimes against humanity of 11
September and the Middle East. After all, the killers were all Arabs, they
wrote and spoke Arabic, they came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon.
This much we are allowed to reflect upon.
But the moment anyone takes the next logical step and looks at the Arab
world itself, we step on forbidden territory. For any analysis of the
current Middle East will encounter injustice and violence and death, often
the result - directly or indirectly - of the policies of the United States
and its regional allies (Arab as well as Israeli).
At this point, all discussion must cease. Because if America's own
involvement in the region - its unconditional support for Israel, its
acquiescence in the Jewish colonisation of Arab land, the sanctions
against Iraq that have killed so many tens of thousands of children - and
the very lack of that democracy that Mr Bush thinks is under attack
suggest that America's own actions might have something to do with the
rage and fury that generated the mass murders of 11 September, then we are
on very dangerous territory indeed.
When a crime has been committed - even the most banal domestic killing -
the first thing the cops do is look for a motive. But with this most
terrible of all crimes, normal procedures are not permitted. Motive is the
last thing we can search for. To do so, to discuss the environment from
which the murderers came, then becomes "anti-American" or "anti-Semitic" -
and thus, of course, a taboo subject. Which it is meant to be.
And oddly, the Arab regimes go along with all this. The Arab people do not
- they know full well what lies behind the dreadful deeds of 11 September
- but the leadership has to pretend ignorance. It supports the "war on
terrorism" and then asks - begs - America to recognise a difference
between "terrorism" and "national resistance". The Saudis wilfully ignore
the implications of their own citizens' involvement, howling instead about
a "Jewish conspiracy" against Saudi Arabia. Arafat says he supports the
"war on terrorism" and then - let us not kid ourselves - permits his
acolytes to try a gun-running operation on the Karine A.
And Sharon, hopelessly unable to protect his people from the cruel
Palestinian suicide bombers, concentrates on presenting the intifada as
"world terror" rather than the nationalist uprising that it represents.
After all, if it's about nationalism, it's also about Israeli occupation
and, like American policy in the region, that is not to be discussed.
At the end of next month, the Arab presidents and princes are to hold a
summit in Beirut. They will issue ringing declarations of support for the
Palestinians and almost equally earnest support for a war against
"terrorism". They cannot criticise US policy, however outrageous they
believe it to be, because they are almost all beholden to it. So they will
appeal again to America's conscience. And they will do what the Emir of
Qatar did a few days ago. They will beg. And they will get nothing.
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