| "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" |
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By Jay Bushinsky Shortly after Rice's arrival here from talks with Arab counterparts in Egypt, former Justice Minister Meir Shitreet of the locally-dominant Kadima party declared unequivocally, "Not a single Palestinian refugee will be allowed to return." Those may sound like rude if not tactless words from a diplomatic standpoint, but that is the contemporary Israeli mindset. Officially, the U.S. sides with Israel on the refugee issue and the secretary of state has made this clear in the appropriate diplomatic language. But that does not alter the political fact that Hamas follows Mash'al's dictates and Hamas, like it or not, is the dominant faction in the Palestinian Authority's coalition government. Rice, evidently wants to circumvent the Hamas reality by snubbing its elected prime minister, Ismail Haniya, as have the two other international luminaries currently on Middle Eastern treks, UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The secretary insists on dealing with PA President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah faction. The problem, however, is that Abbas is almost as unpopular in the Palestinian body politic as is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his bailiwick. The latter received only three per cent in a recent popularity poll, a finding that made him confess in a bizarre speech to his Kadima party, "I am an unpopular prime minister!" If so, how can he be expected to implement the unpopular concessions Rice would seek in her projected series of parallel negotiations with Abbas and him respectively? All this is being pegged to the so-called Saudi Arabian peace initiative which has won the unstinting support of the Arab League's moderate majority. Rice apparently has come to the conclusion that Israel-Palestinian peace can best be achieved by bringing the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Kuwaitis and their pan-Arab ilk into the so-called peace process. If that is the case, she has given up on the natural procedure, bi-lateral talks. None of this should be surprising in view of the glossary of peculiar euphemisms bandied about by the American would-be peacemakers and their international colleagues: the 'quartet,' meaning the U.S., UN, European Union and Russia, which concocted the outdated 'road map,' a formula for solving the regional dispute, the 'vision,' the term for President Bush's embrace of the two-state solution (Israel and Palestine co-existing side by side in peace) and now, 'an array of states,' Rice's yen for well-meaning Arab negotiating partners. One of Israel's most outspoken columnists, Gideon Levy of Haaretz, an ardent advocate of territorial withdrawal and a journalist who sincerely sympathizes with the Palestinians' sufferings, put Rice, Ban and Merkel in the right context when he wrote"All three have declared that they are coming here to further a solution. But this whole show, we must tell them, is no more than a ridiculous masked ball. In their pointless and fruitless visits they only perpetuate and entrench the conflict that most threatens world peace." |
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