[NYTr] Peace in Iraq Inseparable to a Settlement in Palestine

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dave Muller (southnews)

The Age (Australia) - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/08/12/1186857338725.html

Peace in Iraq is inextricably linked to a Palestinian settlement

by Michael Shaik

IT'S NOT too late to refocus on defeating al-Qaeda. Six months since
the launch of the "surge strategy", the United States has yet to bring 
Iraq's sectarian bloodletting under control. The coalition death toll
is averaging three a day and a coalition of Democrats and disaffected 
Republicans are giving voice to a frustrated and angry majority of 
American voters by calling on President George Bush to bring the troops 
home.

Acknowledging a growing consensus among US legislators that a
withdrawal of coalition forces will take place next year, former
American ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk has recommended that the
coalition focus its energies on dealing with the "ripple effect" of its
defeat by working to contain Iran's growing influence throughout the
Middle East ("Securing the Arab world", Opinion, 25/7).

The logic of this proposal is certainly persuasive. If the coalition
has exhausted its repertoire of military and political stratagems to
tame the insurgency and create a functioning Iraqi state, then the case
for cutting its losses is irrefutable.

Yet perhaps it is not too late to learn from past blunders and deny 
al-Qaeda its first victory over the world's only superpower by 
revisiting the report presented to Congress by the Iraq Study Group
last December.

The report, prepared by a committee of elder statesmen, Middle East 
experts and retired intelligence analysts, warned that there was no 
military solution to the conflict and that a US defeat in Iraq could 
lead to a broader regional war, a drop in global oil production and a 
loss of public support for future military deployments in defence of 
America's global interests.

Crucially, it noted that all the key issues in the Middle East  Iraq, 
Iran, terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict  were inextricably linked 
and that America would not be able to achieve its goals in the region 
unless it dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

To stabilise Iraq and defeat al-Qaeda, the study group recommended that 
the US co-operate with Iran and Syria in stabilising Iraq, promote 
national reconciliation by engaging with all parties to the conflict 
except al-Qaeda and renew its commitment to a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace.

The elements of the peace, the study group stipulated, must be a US 
security guarantee for Israel, the return of the Golan Heights to
Syria, support for a Palestinian unity government and a two-state
resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict based on UN Security
Council resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied
Palestinian territories.

Regrettably, Bush rejected the report's recommendations. In January, 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a "new alignment" in the 
Middle East, which was being threatened by the "extremist forces" of 
Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran. In the same month, the President 
announced the launch of the "surge strategy", the key elements of which 
were an increase of troop levels in Iraq, the deployment of Patriot 
missiles to the Gulf oilfields, the arrest of Iranian diplomats in Iraq 
and the deployment of a third aircraft carrier to the region.

The strategy reveals a depressing pattern to America's conduct of the 
war on terrorism.

In 2003, the invasion of Iraq allowed al-Qaeda to recover its losses in 
Afghanistan by opening a new theatre of operations in Iraq. In 2007,
the US is edging towards a protracted conflict with a country whose 
assistance in stabilising both Iraq and Afghanistan is indispensable.

To be fair to Bush, his predicament is not wholly of his making. For 
four decades, successive American administrations have failed to halt 
Israel's colonisation of the occupied territories. With Washington's 
redoubtable Israel lobby openly calling for an attack on Iran, the 
besieged President probably feels it would be safer to follow its lead 
than confront Israel over its refusal to enter into final status talks 
on a settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The tragedy of the present course, however, is that it might be letting 
slip America's last opportunity to secure Iran's co-operation in the 
pacification of Iraq and a two-state settlement to the Arab-Israeli 
conflict based on the establishment of a viable and pro-Western 
Palestinian state.

Having spent all his political capital in dissolving the Palestinians' 
unity government, the pro-Western Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas 
finds himself humiliated by the West's silence regarding Israel's
latest land grabs in the West Bank. If he fails in his endeavour to
negotiate a peace treaty along the lines of those described in the
study group's report, the West will pay a high price for Bush's failure
to act on its recommendations.

Should Israel's colonisation of the West Bank continue, the US will
find itself defending what former US president Jimmy Carter has
described as a regime of apartheid in which Jews and Palestinians
living in the same area are subject to different laws and differential
access to resources. Should America succumb to Israeli pressure to
isolate Iran, it will lose the war in Iraq.

[Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine.]