Washington Report, November 2005, pages 7-9

Special Report

Bush’s Flight From Reality

By Rachelle Marshall

Two days after the Sept. 11 departure of Israeli occupation forces, Gazans stand amid the rubble of demolished houses in the former settlement of Morag in the northern Gaza Strip. In contrast to Palestinians whose homes the Israeli army destroyed, the Jewish residents of this and other illegal settlements received between $150,000 and $400,000 in compensation, plus the guarantee of new homes (Photo Mohammed Omer).

WE’RE AN empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.—Administration official quoted in “Say Anything,” by Jim Holt in The New Yorker, Aug. 22, 2005.

To anyone following events in the Middle East, President George W. Bush and his colleagues appear to be operating from a distant planet. As war continued to rage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel swallowed up more Palestinian land, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked proudly of the progress being made in that part of the world. “Something very dramatic is changing in the Middle East,” she told reporters on Aug. 17. The president’s efforts and hers, she said, had had “a tremendous effect” in bringing these changes about.

While negotiations on the new Iraqi constitution were breaking down in bitter disagreement, Bush likened the dispute to America’s constitutional convention. When Shi’i and Kurds overrode Sunni objections and approved a charter that threatens the rights of women and secular Iraqis, Rice called their achievement “historic and in the best tradition of democracy.”

Statements by the president and his secretary of state on the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations seemed equally detached. Most Israelis regarded the Gaza settlements as an expensive burden, but Bush and Rice treated their evacuation as a major concession to peace on Israel’s part. Bush said Israel’s action was “step one in the development of democracy,” and it was now up to the Palestinian government to create a peaceful Palestinian state. Rice reiterated Israel’s claim that it had no obligation to make further concessions until the Palestinians disarmed Hamas.

David Akov, Israeli consul general for the Pacific Northwest, expressed the same views in an op-ed column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Aug. 26. Akov wrote, “Now, without an Israeli presence on the ground, Palestinians will have full responsibility for developments in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has the chance to demonstrate its ability to govern and fulfill its commitments.”

Such statements ignore the fact that the colonization is over but the occupation is not. Ramzy Baroud, writing in the Jordan Times, referred to Israel’s intention to control Gaza’s borders, ports, and airspace, and concluded, “The same sorry ending is awaiting Palestinians: the lock, the key, the prison guard and the ever familiar scene of Palestinians being held captive at checkpoints.”

Sami Abdel-Shafi, a successful computer scientist who returned to Gaza from California in 2003, believes it is “an area with tremendous potential waiting to be tapped.” Gaza lies in a strategic geographic position, he noted, and residents are desperate for jobs, so Palestinians in the diaspora would be eager to invest money if it could be used effectively. Israel’s withdrawal, according to Abdel-Shafi, would give Palestinians “a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate that we are good managers of our own affairs.” But he points out that such a prospect is not in the cards as long as Israeli border controls make it impossible to do business with the outside world, or even with the West Bank.

Gaza’s border with Egypt will in the future be patrolled by Egyptian rather than Israeli troops, but Israel will control the crossing points. The naval blockade that keeps Gaza fisherman close to shore will continue, and the fence along Gaza’s perimeter is being reinforced by a parallel fence containing electronic sensors and surveillance cameras. Israel will continue to control the movement of all goods and people in and out of the territory.

According to Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights, Israel also will be able to decide who will live and who will die. PHR’s latest report quotes Israel’s Disengagement Plan as saying, “the process of disengagement will negate the validity of the claims against Israel on the subject of her responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” For seriously ill Gazans this could be a death warrant if they are denied care in Israel. The report warns that after years of occupation during which students were forbidden to go to the West Bank for medical training, and hospital equipment was either destroyed or deteriorated, medical facilities in Gaza are dangerously inadequate. Gazans who need medical treatment will still have to go to Israel or Jordan to get it, and will still need Israel’s permission to do so.

The job of building a peaceful democratic enclave in territory surrounded by Israel would be difficult enough if the Gazans were starting with a working economy and infrastructure. Instead they must rebuild their institutions from scratch in one of the poorest, most densely populated areas in the world. During its 38 years of occupation Israel expropriated Gaza’s land and water and destroyed its public buildings, crops and orchards, along with thousands of homes. Generations of children in Gaza have been denied adequate schooling, and almost a third are severely undernourished. Sara Roy, an expert on Gaza’s economy, estimates that since 200l Israel has done more than $2.2 billion worth of physical damage to the territory.

In dismantling the settlements Israel will leave behind even more damage. The Palestinians agreed that the settlers’ homes should be demolished to make room for multi-family dwellings, but hoped that greenhouses, irrigation systems, and factories would be left. But according to Yonatan Bassi, head of Israel’s Disengagement Administration, “[The Israelis] are going to send the treads of the D-9 bulldozers over everything.” In a remarkably candid interview with Haaretz, reprinted by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Bassi said, “We are going to leave behind us an area that will look like an atom bomb was dropped on it. With monstrosities of the twisted steel of the demolished hothouses. With the jutting silhouettes of the destroyed houses...I think it is terrible. It is a nightmare. This is not what peace looks like: this is what war looks like.”

“We are going to leave behind us an area that will look like an atom bomb was dropped on it.”

With demands coming from Bush and Sharon that he maintain order in Gaza, President Mahmoud Abbas faces an enormous challenge. According to Sara Roy, Gazans will need 250,000 jobs,100 health care clinics, and hundreds of schools just to reach the standard of living of West Bank Palestinians. Meanwhile residents are impatient. Unemployed Gazans demanding jobs have tangled with security forces, and government workers have blocked traffic demanding higher pay. On Sept. 7 members of a group known as the Popular Resistance Committees assassinated Abbas’s security adviser, Moussa Arafat, charging him with corruption and threatening to kill more corrupt officials.

If the Palestinian Authority fails to produce significant improvements, the more militant Hamas is certain to do well in the January elections. Hamas provides needed social services to many Palestinians and is free of the corruption charges that taint the dominant Fatah party, but its election victory could end any hopes of negotiations with Israel. Both Sharon and his ultra right-wing challenger for head of the Likud party, Binyamin Netanyahu, brand all Hamas members as terrorists, and the Bush administration agrees. On the other hand, as long as Sharon is in office any negotiations would be a sham. In an Aug. 10 interview with The New York Times, Sharon repeated his by now familiar pledge. “The settlement blocs will continue to exist,” he said. “I will not negotiate on the subject of Jerusalem. The blocs will remain territorially linked to the state of Israel...There will be no return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees to Israel.”

Sharon is reinforcing his words with actions. The number of West Bank settlers has already increased by 12,800 this year, and is still growing. Israel is also extending the separation wall designed to make the settlements a permanent part of Israel. A section now under construction will cut deep into the West Bank, sealing off Palestinians in East Jerusalem and making it impossible for West Bank residents to move freely between Ramallah, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Tens of thousands of Palestinians will suffer even greater hardship than before.

Sharon is also making sure that the cycle of violence continues. Since the February truce at Sharm el-Sheikh, Israeli forces have killed 77 Palestinians, 17 of them children. Palestinians killed 14 Israelis in the same period. On the same day the government announced it would seize more Palestinian land to expand the Beitar Illit settlement, an Israeli death squad killed five Palestinian men in Tulkarm while they were sitting outside a restaurant. Israel claimed they were members of Islamic Jihad, but three of them were unarmed teenagers. Less than a week later a Palestinian man blew himself up at a bus station in Beersheba, wounding nearly 50 people. Ignoring the connection between the two events, Sharon again accused Abbas of failing to end terrorism and again demanded that he disarm militant groups.

The evacuation from Gaza was an undoubted political success for the prime minister. The only serious casualties were four Palestinian workers who were gunned down by an Israeli reservist. But the way the evacuation was carried out illustrated the racism that underlies Israeli society and pervades media treatment of Israel. The Gaza settlers had knowingly moved onto land forcibly taken from the Palestinians. They had received generous subsidies from the government, and for 38 years enjoyed freedom of movement while their Palestinian neighbors remained locked behind roadblocks and checkpoints. When time for their removal came, unarmed soldiers in baseball caps helped pack their goods and move them to comfortable dwellings elsewhere.

The media nevertheless portrayed the evacuees as tragic victims, forced from their villages like characters in “Fiddler on the Roof.” No such sympathy, or even attention, was given to the more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza whose homes Israel has destroyed, and who were barely able to grab a few belongings before the bulldozers arrived.

	Iraqi men walk past a wall destroyed by a mortar shell in front of a Baghdad hospital on Sept. 13, a day on which five mortar rounds exploded around the Iraqi capital (AFP photo/Ali Al-Saadi).

Racism is also at the heart of the U.S. presence in Iraq. There is no better word for a mindset that assumes the right to take over another country by force, kill thousands of its citizens, and attempt to reshape its economy and government. American intervention was evident even in the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution. Washington pressured the negotiators to come up with a draft as quickly as possible, and the result was a hastily prepared document that has brought protests from many Iraqis, especially women’s groups and Sunnis. Although the charter bans laws that “contravene the principles of democracy” it gives clerics the right to adjudicate disputes over marriage, divorce, and inheritance. A constitution that Bush said was “good for all Iraqis” does not guarantee the legal rights of women.

Also missing from the present draft is a provision guaranteeing the Iraqi government authority over foreign troops stationed in Iraq and the right to reject permanent U.S. military bases. Within hours after the draft was completed, a top Air Force general made it clear that American air bases and pilots were in for a long stay. Gen. John P. Jumper told reporters at the Pentagon on Aug. 29 that the Iraqis would need U.S. air support until they can provide it themselves. “And that’s going to take a while,” he said. “We will continue with a rotational presence in that area more or less indefinitely.” Other American commanders say that even after some American combat troops are withdrawn, support troops will remain.

Sunnis object to a provision that bans former Ba’ath party members from holding public office, since under the former regime many Sunnis joined the party only to qualify for a job. Their strongest objection, however, is to a provision that divides Iraq into three semi-independent regions, with Kurds and Shi’i having autonomy in areas with the richest oil fields, and Sunnis left with the resource-poor Western provinces. Although the central government would control revenues from existing oil and gas deposits, income from newly developed fields would belong to the regional mini-states.

Because most of the oil in southern Iraq is still untapped, this last provision could prove a bonanza for the Shi’i. So it is not surprising that both deal breakers were pushed by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, who provided the Bush administration with much of the false information it used to justify going to war. Chalabi belongs to one of the wealthiest families in the south and is committed to privatizing Iraqi industry. Once the region gains control of its oil, his family is certain to become richer, and Chalabi himself even more powerful.

A referendum on the proposed draft is to be held on Oct. 15. If two-thirds of the voters in three provinces reject it, there will be an election in December for a new National Assembly, and that body will write a new constitution. But many Iraqis may not bother to vote.The bickering over the constitution took place inside Baghdad’s heavily protected Green Zone and had little to do with the life of most Iraqi citizens. Dexter Filkins of The New York Times reported on Aug. 14 that “Iraq has two parallel worlds: the world of the Green Zone and the constitution and the rule of law; and the anarchical, unpredictable world outside.” He described Baghdad as “a city transported from the Middle Ages: a scattering of high-walled fortresses, each protected by a group of armed men. The area between the forts is a no-man’s-land, menaced by bandits and brigands.”

Ordinary Iraqis are aware that a new constitution, whatever its provisions, won’t clean up the sewage, turn on the lights, or provide more jobs. Nor is it likely to stop the killing. Hundreds of Iraqis die each month, either from insurgent attacks or as a result of American air strikes and gunfire. During the same week that Hurricane Katrina was forcing New Orleans residents to evacuate their city, 200,000 residents of Tal Afar were forced to leave home to escape American bombing. The U.S. military offensive turned Tal Afar into what one Iraqi described as “a city of ghosts.”

The nearly one thousand Shi’i Muslims who died on their way to the Kadhimiya shrine in Baghdad on Aug. 31 were also victims of this war. The pilgrims rushed to escape what they thought was a a suicide bomber and were crushed to death on a bridge narrowed by cement barriers designed to allow travelers to be searched for explosives.

The draft constitution endorsed by the Bush administration is less likely to improve conditions or bring peace than lead to a fragmented country dominated by self-interested politicians and Islamic clerics. Yet in a speech on Aug. 30 Bush told service members in San Diego that the United States “will stay on the offensive” in Iraq because the fate of democracy is at stake. The cause our troops are fighting for exists only in Bush’s head. The suffering caused by his policies, however, is only too real.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.