August 7, 2007
Column: The road to peace runs through Jerusalem
Before the Iraq war, optimistic neo-conservatives came up with a new slogan about the Israel-Palestine conflict: “The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad.” American victory in Iraq would create the political conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Now that the US is well on the way to failure in Iraq a new theory is doing the rounds. This time, “the road to Jerusalem runs through Tehran.” It is the rising power of Iran – fostered by the war in Iraq – that may create the conditions for peace between Israel and Palestine.
While the Baghdad road theory was based on an optimistic vision of the democratic transformation of the Middle East, the Tehran road theory is based on fear. It argues – essentially – that the rise of Iran is scary enough to give all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute a new interest in finding a settlement. This has become especially urgent since the militant Islamists of Hamas – who are supported by Iran – have seized power in the Gaza Strip and split the putative Palestinian state in half.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is trying to take advantage of the moment. She has promised that a peace meeting will be convened this autumn. The usual suspects will be there: the Israelis, the Palestinians, the US, the Egyptians, the Jordanians. The Saudis might also come, which would be regarded as an important development.
The remainder of this column can be read here (FT.com subscription required).
Dear Mr. Rachman,
I don’t know if you have read the report that Regis Debray prepared on the instructions of president Chirac?
http://mondediplo.com/2007/08/05palestine
I think his conclusions about what Milosevic and his criminal cohorts referred to “facts on the ground” are very valid.
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It is clear from developments on the ground that:
• the purpose of the security wall is not, as is believed, to trace a border that, however illegal (since it encloses over 10% of the West Bank), will at least serve as the dotted line for a future international frontier;
• it is true (as Ehud Omert said on Israeli army radio on 20 March 2006) that Israel’s strategic border lies on the Jordan: the whole valley has been declared a forbidden area and the intervening area has been nibbled away (cross-river transit is only possible at certain points);
• the new east-west bypass roads built at the expense of the old north-south axis clearly chart a territory in the process of annexation, with space for three or four Arab bantustans (Jenin, Ramallah and Jericho). The exhaustion of natural resources in these overcrowded enclaves will eventually lead to massive emigration (much of the elite, especially Christian, has already left); and
• with the construction of the separation wall, the ongoing judaisation of East Jerusalem and reconfiguration of the Jerusalem municipality, the UN’s repeated but purely formal condemnations have no effect on Israel’s grip on the whole city
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They are brazenly defying international law and because of the Jewish lobby’s grip on the US polity, they think they will get away with it.
As such, I would conclude that no road for peace goes through Jerusalem or Tel Aviv but only the road to more land theft and further enslavement (nay destruction) of the Palestinian people. That way, my friend, lies war not peace.
Best wishes,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | August 8th, 2007 at 10:58 am | Report this commenthttp://en.baztab.com/content/?cid=3794
The above is an interesting interview with the British journalist Jonathan Cook who lives in Nazareth.
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The first problem is to understand that Israel is acting in bad faith in negotiations. All other problems flow from this simple fact. Israel has no interest in peace or in dividing the land. It needs war against the Palestinians and against neighboring states to justify its perception in the West as an eternal victim (first of European anti-Semitism, and now of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism) and consequently its receiving Western military largesse. It was with the help of the West, for example, that Israel was able to develop nuclear weapons without control or supervision.
Unquote
Best,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | August 9th, 2007 at 9:55 am | Report this commentI am John Scully, a Canadian journalist, author and blogger at www.amideadyet.org. While I agree on the intruiging possible new road to peace through Teheran, there is another possibility we have now to consider, the road to Damascus.
Posted by: John Scully | August 9th, 2007 at 3:10 pm | Report this commentRussian President Vladimir Putin has announced he is sending the Russian fleet back to Mediterranean and it will be based in a Syrian port. It appears Putin wants to regain the influence in the Middle East USSR enjoyed before it fell apart. So, there is yet another road to choose and although Syria has always meddled in the region it now has renewed Russian help, So, which ever road is the right one to peace, it looks longer every passing day.
Hi again,
One issue that permeates Mr, Rachman’s article is the US scaremongering against Iran which has assumed farcical proportions. All the strategic and tactical mistakes of the US, we are to believe, are the fault of the Iranians and not that of the Americans and acts of aggression (like basing missiles on the Russian border) are being unconvincingly explained away as some kind of defence against Iran.
If anybody disagrees, even if he happens to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, he is invited to shut up:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=220487
As David Gardner mentions in today’s FT:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a2347bd0-46a4-11dc-a3be-0000779fd2ac.html
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But US commanders seem to have no trouble detecting the hand of Tehran everywhere. This largely evidence-free blaming of serial setbacks on Iranian forces is a bad case of denial. First, the insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, built around a new generation of jihadis created by the US invasion. Second, to the extent foreign fighters are involved these have come mostly from US-allied and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shia Iran. Third, the lethal roadside bombs with shaped charges that US officials have coated with a spurious veneer of sophistication to prove Iranian provenance are mostly made by Iraqi army-trained engineers – from high explosive looted from those unsecured arms dumps.
Unquote
Enough said? Well, no because I want to point out the recent announcement by the US of huge arms sales to the Saudis and huge military aid to the Israelis and their announcement that all of that is done as a move against Iran.
Leaving aside the fact that Saudi Arabia is the true hotbed of extremism that is fighting the US (as pointed out by Mr. Gardner above) and leaving aside the fact that most of the US troubles in the Middle East are caused by her one-sided, blind endorsement of Israeli aggression and land-grabbing apartheid, I simply ask why Iran should not arm Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgents or anybody else who fights America if America so brazenly gloats that it is arming others in order to harm Iran?
P
Posted by: Pacifist | August 10th, 2007 at 4:47 pm | Report this commenthttp://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dilip_hiro/2007/08/tehranophobia.html
An informative article from last week’s Guardian on “Tehranophobia”.
P
Posted by: Pacifist | August 13th, 2007 at 10:40 am | Report this commentHere’s why. And I don’t want to discredit your argument because I think it’s a good one.
Iran is not and, in my opinion, should not seek to be a hegemonic state. The Iranian nation has itself been a victim of the same kind of external meddling, to say the least, in their own domestic politics. Why should they do the same thing to other vulnerable nations. Furthermore, Iran does not seek a genuine resolution to the Palestinian-crisis. That crisis is one of their most valuable rhetorical levers.
Palestinians want their freedom, to say the least. The Iranian leadership has more cynical motives. Leave the palestinians alone if you do not genuinely seek to help them!
If the aim is to counter U.S. influence and spread the Islamic revolution, then it is a futile and misguided policy - not only for the Iranian leadership, the people of the region, but most importantly the Iranian people.
The last thing the average shopkeeper, newstand owner etc. needs is the threat of war. Iran’s leadership can better spend their efforts and finances stregnthening their economy and society. This includes tackling the problem of drug addiction, unemployment, inflation, low refining capacity, infrastructure degredation, and so on.
States and militant groups alike are being armed to the teeth. This is a recipe for disaster and everyone keeps arguing about who’s right or preogitave is to do what. $20 billion to Saudi Arabia, $36 billion to Israel, not to mention Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey.
Anyone who has a grasp of what domestic issues these countries face and how those issues are inter-related to the politics outside of their borders should be worried. It seems to me that war in the next few years is not improbable and almost inevitable. This notion of the national intrest that everyone likes to refer to so often is a pretty destructive notion. And all these super-armed nations pursuing their national interst in one of the world’s most unstable and volatile regions is likely to accomplish what it has throughout history: war.
So for the sake of the Iranian and Palestinian peoples alike, I hope the Islamic Republic takes a chill pill.
Posted by: kian, US - Obama for President! | August 23rd, 2007 at 4:05 am | Report this commentSimilarly, the road to war ALWAYS leads through zionism. Only Israel benefits from these endless Middle East wars. Iraq is the beginning. As we commit war-crimes in Baghdad, the US gov’t commits treason at home by opening mail, eliminating habeas corpus, using the judiciary to steal private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, conducting warrantless wiretaps and engaging in illegal wars on behalf of AIPAC’s ‘money-men’. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier by Mossad) and the US will invade Iran.. Then we’ll invade Syria, then Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon (again) then ….
Posted by: Mike S | August 25th, 2007 at 11:18 am | Report this commentFinal link (before Google Books bends to gov’t demands and censors the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Something that nobody comments on is that Iran is about the most socially advanced society (I did not say state) in the Muslim world. They have one of the lowest net fetility rates, if not the lowest, in the Muslim world which you can find out using the CIA World FactBook website at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html. Quite unlike Saudi where women seem to be baby-making machines. Any attack on Iran will make everyone there rally round the flag, lifting all sanctions would, with a time lag, cause merry hell inside the place as people became increasingly furious with the Ayotollahs. The latter are creating a large class of real mosque burners among their citizens. So, if your real objective was democracy, love, light, learning and happiness you would lift sanctions. But perhaps the real US political objectives are not those. Could they possibly be exploitation? Control of all the natural resources in the Gulf. I reaise that the Manchester liberals of the FT do not belive such a thing as exploitation exists, all exchanges they think are free, but the more cynical among us might disagree. And if you were Iranian you would want nuclear weapons to inhibit any such attack.
Posted by: Ted the Red | September 5th, 2007 at 6:11 pm | Report this commentTed the Red