Politics
The chances of peace may be tiny, but that's no reason not to try
Published 29 November 2007
Whenever Colin Powell tried to engage Ariel Sharon, he had the impression that the then Israeli prime minister knew his negotiating position in advance. Powell would confide his frustration to Tony Blair and Jack Straw, suspecting that both Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney were briefing the Israelis first. Rice later admitted she did just that. Straw, who would receive despairing calls from Powell, wondered whether the neocons around George W Bush were working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day. It was indeed one and the same thing.
Five years later, Bush appears to have undergone a conversion on the road to Annapolis. A man who wore his refusal to engage in the Middle East peace process as a badge of pride now says he sees a deal as one of his goals before leaving office at the end of 2008. "I give you my personal commitment to support your work," he told Israel's Ehud Olmert and Palestine's Mahmoud Abbas at a gathering of leaders of nearly 50 states.
That it took place was an achievement in itself. That the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to an immediate resumption of talks is a further mark of success. Perhaps the biggest achievement was the statement: "For dozens of years, many Palestinians have been living in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew up, wallowing in poverty, neglect, alienation . . . I know that this pain and deprivation is one of the deepest foundations which fomented the ethos of hatred towards us." The importance lay not in the content - accepted by all but the most blinkered - but the fact that it came from an Israeli leader, and a weak one at that.
Yet delve into the detail, and one is overcome by deep scepticism. Bush has realigned policy for two reasons. He knows that Iraq destroyed his "democratisation" agenda. He therefore has nothing to fall back on in the Middle East except the old-fashioned diplomacy pursued by Jimmy Carter, Bush Sr and Bill Clinton.
He also has convinced himself that the next threat to US interests is a nuclear Iran. The issue among policymakers in Washington, and Jerusalem, is not if there will be a military attack, but when and how. Bush wants to draw in as many Arab states as possible that are worried by the rise in Iranian power (due in large part, again, to the disaster of Iraq); he knows that being seen to push for a Palestinian state will help his bigger battle against Tehran.
Motives aside, the politics of both Israel and Palestine militate against meaningful progress. Abbas spoke about his people's right of return to all areas (not just the West Bank and Gaza), their right to call Jerusalem (East) their home, and the need for Israel to dismantle the huge settlements it has built across the West Bank. Given the strength of the Israeli right and its ability to threaten the ruling coalition at any moment, one cannot but conclude that Olmert - even if he wanted to give significant concessions - knows his hands are tied. That does not even take into account the US right, which would not countenance any such deal.
Thus, Abbas is left with some prisoner releases, removal of a few roadblocks here and there, and other disparate "confidence-building" measures. All the while, Hamas, with its stranglehold on Gaza, accuses him of treason for even engaging with Israel. Meanwhile, the west, and Europe in particular, seeks solace in economic aid to the Palestinians, which will be boosted by a forthcoming conference in Paris led by Tony Blair. Such "generosity" is double-edged: more money for schools, hospitals and roads obviously does good, and must be increased, but it also legitimises the EU's acquiescence in the political and security oppression of the Palestinians.
Many Israelis have lulled themselves into thinking that the West Bank barrier is their best guarantor of peace. It may be in the short term, but for as long as Palestinians are subjugated, Israelis will enjoy no real security. Perhaps Bush finally understands that - although one should not bank on it. On the model of Nixon in China, he appears to believe he can pull off a trick that eluded his more engaged predecessors. Stranger things have happened, but the odds remain tiny. Still, that is no reason not to try, nor to applaud those who do.
Adding insult to innocence
The case of Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher arrested in Sudan on suspicion of insulting Islam, is shocking. All she did was allow the children in her class to name a teddy bear. Unfortunately, the name they picked was Muhammad, and parents complained that this was an insult to the Prophet. If convicted, Mrs Gibbons could be sentenced to 40 lashes or six months in prison.
She is not the first innocent abroad to cause inadvertent offence, though the consequences are seldom so severe. The world is full of ways for the unwitting to cause umbrage: by leaving chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice in Japan, pointing with a finger in Malaysia, or giving the thumbs-up in Iran (it means "sit on this").
More trivially, Elizabeth Hurley provoked a fuss in India this year by not taking off her shoes when she married Arun Nayar in a Hindu wedding ceremony, leading her father-in-law to disown both her and her new husband, and to one of his friends filing a court case against them.
But we in the west should not be overly quick to congratulate ourselves on being more tolerant. Our sensitivities, too, are easily aroused these days. In January, a British man was barred from a Qantas flight bound for London on the grounds that other passengers might find his T-shirt offensive. What was on it? A picture of George W Bush and the legend "World's number one terrorist". Worse, the garment was a security risk, he was told.
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