Ayoon Wa Azan (In Vain you try, Obama)

One question I ask myself or others from time to time is this: How can the US President Barack Obama be a rational and reasonable politician, who wants peace between the Palestinians and Israel, with Vice President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State John Kerry equally well-intentioned, and yet, the senior members of the US administration are unable to achieve any progress in a peace process that only grants the Palestinians 22 percent of their own land? The answer lies in the control of the Israel lobby over US foreign policy, assisted by the treasonous Likudnik Americans, the venal members of Congress, and the media in America. These folk make their decisions based on what serves the interests of Israel, even if detrimental to US interests, and impose their decisions under cover from the smokes and mirrors of the pro-Israel media. The result: a creeping occupation, mass murder, and devastation. I continue where I left off on yesterday’s topic, which was the Breaking the Impasse initiative, started by prominent Palestinian businessman Munib al-Masri and some of his associates, together with Israeli businessmen. The initiative would see the Israeli participants put pressure on their government to rejoin the peace process, as the latter’s benefits are better than any ongoing confrontation, possible intifada, or war. My topic today is John Kerry’s political and economic initiative. Kerry is trying his best, and perhaps these words will have barely been published when the US Secretary of State returns to the region, in his fifth visit since he took office only a few months ago. The political segment of the initiative proposes a solution based on the borders of 1967, and hence resembles the Arab peace initiative and the Oslo Accords before it. What’s new in Kerry’s efforts is that he is trying to bring Jordan into the peace process, especially in the Jordan Valley, as Israel claims it cannot withdraw from the valley, to protect its interior from possible terror attacks and arms trafficking. So the US secretary believes that bringing in Jordan would reassure both the Israelis and the Palestinians, as a party that wants to maintain a calm border and that can help achieve this. Kerry presented his plan near the end of May to Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Yitzhak Molcho, the envoy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The most arrogant and despicable people on the planet are Israel’s supporters in the media, who launched a personal attack on Kerry, and claimed Abbas was weak, which is why he did not want to resume the peace process, as they purported. Kerry is an American war and peace hero, and those who attack him only condemn themselves. As for Mahmoud Abbas, if he were indeed weak, he would have consented to everything and anything a long time ago. But he is strong, which is why he rejects US and Israeli dictates. My view, noted in this column time after time, is that no peace is possible with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. We are speaking about a neo-Nazi racist government here, at the helm of the world’s last remaining apartheid regime. However, I do hope to see change, so I continue with the economic segment of Kerry’s initiative. Before delving into any details, I have to note that Kerry’s is different from the Palestinian-Israeli Breaking the Impasse initiative, and Munib al-Masri said at the end of an international press conference at the Dead Sea, “No to economic peace.” John Kerry proposed an economic project, whose bottom line is that a number of countries would invest around $4 billion in the West Bank, supervised by Quartet Envoy Tony Blair. As is known, Netanyahu in the past proposed economic peace as an alternative to the peace process, but Kerry’s plan covers both politics and the economy. Kerry believes that improving economic conditions in the occupied territories would encourage the Palestinians to engage in the peace process to reap greater benefits, and his project, if achieved, would increase the size of the Palestinian economy by 50 percent thanks to foreign investments. All this is nice on paper, but peace is not held between a party and itself, but with another party. Well, the Israeli party wants both the land and peace, relying on the gang of war and evil in Washington which supports it. But Israel will get neither. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.