Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: US/MIDEAST:  Let's Not Make a Deal

Un articolo, come in genere sono quelli di IPS, che non fa uso di 
concetti precotti, di frasi fatte, di idee "conformi", di faziosità 
istupidenti.
Si tratta di merce rara di questi tempi; tempi in cui la nostra mente di 
consumatori di notizie è costretta, per costruire il suo pensiero, ad 
usare i mattoni che gli vengono proposti dal mainstream.
--------------------------------------------------
US/MIDEAST:  Let's Not Make a Deal
By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was 
more explicit than usual last Sunday, asserting that Israel's settlement 
activity in the occupied West Bank was illegal and hurting efforts for a 
Mideast peace deal.
During her near monthly visits to Israel to push forward the Annapolis 
process, Rice has weathered continued setbacks, and there is now a 
growing realisation among all sides that a U.S.-brokered agreement will 
not be reached before President George W. Bush's term expires in January 
2009.
The question now is what to do next, and how to contain the damage.
While the crisis in Gaza and violence along its border with Israel 
continue to dominate headlines, it is the changing facts on the ground 
-- settlement outposts in the West Bank considered illegal under Israeli 
and international law -- that pose the greatest challenge to the 
comprehensive two-state deal currently being negotiated.
"[Keeping the two-state solution alive] means saying it's all about 
settlements, it's all about not further eroding the situation in the 
territories, not further allowing the creation of an infrastructure of 
occupation," said former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, during a 
panel on Capitol Hill Monday sponsored by the New America Foundation 
think-tank.
"To the extent to which [a shelf agreement] is still part of the 
narrative of this administration, that is what should actually be 
shelved," he said, adding that Bush's vision was "not doable nor 
desirable" in the present political climate.
If successful, the Annapolis plan would make Israel and a "reformed" 
Palestinian leadership agree to a "road map" for peace, a "shelf 
agreement" outlining two separate and contiguous Israeli and 
Palestinians states, living side-by-side.
Failure to reach a deal would, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 
warned, lead to the end of a two-state solution: "If the day comes when 
the two-state solution collapses... and we face a South African-style 
struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the 
territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is 
finished."
Bush's "road map" requires Israel to freeze settlement activity in 
return for an end to Palestinian attacks. But since Annapolis, 1,900 new 
settlements have been slated for construction, a record number for the 
last 10 years, according to an April report from the Israeli advocacy 
group Peace Now. Freedom of Palestinian movement has been curbed; the 
number of checkpoints has increased from 521 to 607. During the same 
period of time, the number of attacks on Israel has increased by 300 
percent.
"If you want to keep building settlements, you continue to build the 
wall," said Mustafa Bargouti, a former presidential candidate and 
minister in the short-lived Palestinian Unity Government, referring to 
Israel's "security fence" a 25-foot barrier that separates Israel from 
parts of the West Bank and is considered illegal under international law.
"But there will be no Palestinian state, that is the reality," he 
continued, "not a contiguous entity that could survive, but something 
that looks like clusters of ghettos."
"The only other map that looks like this is the map of Bantustan in 
South Africa during the apartheid system," he said. "They had 
governments in Bantustan. They even had a king."
Despite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' strong condemnations and 
the threat of eroding confidence on the ground, Washington and Olmert 
have done little to halt the construction of settlements.
Olmert, tainted by corruption scandals, hostage to a fragile political 
coalition, and focused on the daily barrage of rockets from Gaza and 
Israeli reprisal raids, has been unable -- or unwilling -- to take the 
initiative on the Israeli side.
The settlement movement has integrated itself into the Israeli 
bureaucracy to the extent that the long-term impact of expansion is 
often ignored, or forfeited, in Israel's domestic political arena, said 
Levy.
"What does it matter if we add a thousand units tomorrow, we're 
negotiating the final borders, and we're trying to keep our political 
coalition together, and you know how hard it is," he said, repeating 
what he described as a common Israeli government explanation. Placing 
too much emphasis on the day-to-day problems, he said, causes the type 
of paralysis that is being witnessed today.
"The consequence of this, the product has been neither a peace deal nor 
an ability to manage the situation on the ground, and constant erosion 
on the two-state solution," he said.
The U.S. ability to manage the process and its unfolding consequences 
has also deteriorated, as the administration continues wars on two 
different fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Lebanon is Washington's 
"sideshow" and Iraq is the "showstopper", then resolving the 
Israeli-Palestinian dispute was meant to be President Bush's "swan song".
Aaron David Miller, a former advisor to six different U.S. secretaries 
of state, said the Bush administration's final adventure in 
transformative diplomacy comes too little too late, and occurs in a 
"negative" atmosphere where the political realities cannot support an 
agreement to settle all claims.
"Neither side is prepared to pay the price for what an agreement would 
cost," said Miller, adding that this time, the cost of failure to U.S. 
interests is greater.
"The U.S is like some modern-day Gulliver, wandering around the region, 
tied up in knots of its own making," he said. "Clinton stumbled badly, 
and for eight years under Bush, we stumbled galactically," he continued. 
"If you cannot help to make peace in a credible way, what kind of great 
power are you really?"
For Levy, what he describes as the inevitable decline in U.S. hegemony 
is a reality. As it ebbs, so too does the hope of a two-state solution. 
For some continuity to exist in the handover of power from one 
administration to the next, some of the content from the Annapolis 
process should be "locked into place", and if a deal is to be struck, it 
should come sooner rather than later.
"As Israelis," he said, "we have fundamental interests in locking in 
permanent borders that are recognised by the entire region while 
American power is still such that it can help us achieve that."
(END/2008)
-- 
[namib] Posso legalmente inneggiare al comunismo, ma non al fascismo.
L'una appartenenza e' appunto *criminale*, l'altra no.
[tonibaruch] Purtroppo abbiamo questa legge idiota, e vero.
http://groups.google.it/group/it.politica.internazionale/tree/browse_frm/thread/3f0249225d16ae1d/2bd6035e5baa68b5

 concetti precotti,
se lo stai spedendo tu, è impossibile che sia così. Chiunque capace di
un ragionamento analitico deduttivo se ne rendo conto.