Obama’s Palestinian -Israeli peace talks.

Illusion Helping the Aggressor and Hoodwinking the Victims

By Latheef Farook

(December 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Barack Obama’s overture to start peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel seems to be yet another “mirage”. So far all such moves by successive US administrations have only helped Israel to consolidate its grip on occupied Palestinian lands while hoodwinking the Palestinians whose almost nine decades of sufferings continue unabated.

The question is how can the US ,guardian angel of Israel and an active partner in all Israeli crime and atrocities towards Palestinians, be an honest peace broker?

The US collusion in Israel’s 2008 December/2009 January genocide in Gaza and its rejection of United Nations sponsored Goldstone Reports on war crimes in Gaza are two recent examples of how the US administration places the interest of Israel above that of US itself.

Numerous independent columnists accused US of being responsible for this carnage and critized President Elect Barack Obama’s deafening silence to please the Zionists.

With regard to Goldstone report Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, had this to say:

“The Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US established to execute Nazis.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report. The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn’t count as it doesn’t give campaign contributions to members of Congress.

Obama’s credibility is shot. And so is Congress’s, assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American “superpower” did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report”.

It is common knowledge that East Jerusalem has been Israeli occupied Palestinian territory since June 1967.That was the ruling of the International Court of Justice since July 2004 and the Goldstone Report refer to East-Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory.

The rule of law exists to protect the victims of war and occupying states are forbidden to seize the land and property of those they occupy, and forbidden to settle their citizens on occupied soil.

But Israel and its US patron have little regard for legal niceties. For example, on the eve of last US presidential elections, Barrack Obama as presidential candidate declared in Israel that Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel .Thus the US help Israel to enjoy the fruits of aggression.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem and other places have been kicked out of their homes, some after half an hour’s notice, to build homes for Jewish settlers some of whom have not even seen the soil there. These Jewish settlements have been often built with US tax payers’ money and the fund raised by wealthy Jews in US and Europe .Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem ,among 2.7 million Palestinians.

President Obama vowed to stop Jewish settlements. However illegal Jewish settlements continue demonstrating President Obama’s helplessness in the face of Jewish arrogance despite being the president of the mightiest country in the world.

On Tuesday 17 November, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met President Obama at White House , Israel announced its decision to build 900 homes for Jewish settlers at the settlement of Gilo in the occupied West Bank Palestinian land annexed to Jerusalem municipality. It is hard to believe that President Obama was not aware of Israeli’s new settlement programme.

However Obama who claims that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as the cornerstone of its Middle East policy expressed dismay and said the” situation in the Middle East is very difficult, and I've said repeatedly and I'll say it again, Israel's security is of vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure”.

As expected U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the action. The European Union said the move hampered talks while French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner did not consider it an obstacle to peace talks despite international condemnation of the plan. President Barrack Obama's envoy, George Mitchell, asked Israel to block the proposed construction. This request was rejected.

There was hardly any response from the Arab regimes, most of whom have abandoned the Palestinians and Jerusalem.

On assuming office President Obama dispatched George Mitchell as the special envoy to explore possibilities of starting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Here too yielding to Israeli dictates the US dismissed Hamas, elected in a spotless election described by former US president Jimmy Carter as free and fair, and picked up Mahmoud Abbas, a US-Israeli lackey rejected by the Palestinians.

These talks remain as a non starter. Peace talks or not, Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinians lands with Jewish settlements continue unabated.

It was a strange coincidence that Israeli announcement on new settlements came on the day, 17 Tuesday November 2009, when the 27 nation European Union rejected Palestinian requests for support for an independent state. EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said:” setting up a viable Palestinian state needs to be done with time and calm manner in an appropriate movement and no one is looking for that today”.

When will that auspices time come? Perhaps after Israel grabs all the Palestinian lands leaving the Palestinians with no more land to claim. Britain did that until enough Jews were brought in to establish the State of Israel after driving out the sons and daughters of the soil to refugee camps where they suffer in appalling conditions to date.

The same old conspiracy continues now under US patronage - hoodwinking the Palestinians with peace moves which drag on for generations while helping Israel to build Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands. And then Javier Solana may say, “Well “the ground reality has changed,” as once stated by George Bush.

Betrayed by US, Europe, Arab regimes and their own leaderships Palestinians face the worst dilemma in their long dream to live a normal life in their own soil.

Ends

-Sri Lanka Guardian