Hamas's announcement that it opposes President Mahmoud Abbas's decision to go to the UN Security Council to seek recognition of the Palestinian state, was nothing short of shameful. Similarly, Mahmoud al-Zahar's claim that Abu Mazen is looking for an excuse to return to the negotiations serves Israel, and expresses the latter's wish for what it wants the stance of the Palestinian Authority to be like. I started with Hamas to try and be objective. The stances of Hamas's leaders in Gaza are an obstacle to peace as much as the Israeli government is. With its extremism and isolation within its fiefdom in Gaza, and with its declared policies, Hamas has become a ready excuse invoked by Israel and the United States against Palestinian national unity and to obstruct the negotiations. From Hamas I move on to the Obama administration, which is acting as though it were the Bush administration, representing Israel in the negotiations with the Palestinians and at the United Nations, instead of representing U.S. interests, or putting to action its repeated claims of supporting the rights of the Arab peoples rising up in every country. Last year, President Obama said at the UN General Assembly, -and I heard it personally-, that he expects the State of Palestine to be welcomed in the international organization. This year and today, he has recruited his entire administration to thwart the Palestinians' attempt to obtain half a membership. The U.S. Congress, the accomplice in all of Israel's crimes against Arabs and Muslims, from Palestine to Iraq and everywhere else, is now threatening to suspend the U.S. contribution in the budget of the UN, if Palestine was admitted as half a member, and to suspend U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority – which incidentally is not at all for the benefit of the latter, but rather of Israel, and its aim is to prevent a third intifada (the aid to Egypt is also for the benefit of Israel, and is aimed at maintaining the peace treaty which the entire people of Egypt has proclaimed its rejection thereof). But Israel remains the first and last villain in this whole matter. At the helm is a neo-Nazi racist government that murders women, children and the elderly, and starting around this month in the year 2000, Israel has killed thousands of them, including 1500 minors – i.e. less than 15 years old- and yet Israel makes the release of one captive soldier a major issue, when it holds in its prisons ten thousand Palestinians including women and small children. When the Israeli government is run by a war criminal like Benjamin Netanyahu and a brothel bouncer like the Moldovan Avigdor Lieberman, it is not shocking when we hear statements purporting that the Palestinian bid at the UN is a unilateral decision, and that what is needed instead is for them to return to the negotiations without conditions. Thus, building settlements on Palestinian lands – and all of Israel is a settlement on Palestinian land – is not a unilateral decision at all, while negotiations without conditions effectively mean that the issues of Jerusalem, the ongoing settlement activity and the return of the refugees may not be added to the negotiations' agenda. Negotiations with the Netanyahu government are futile, and reaching peace with it is rather impossible. The Obama administration bears its share of the blame. For one thing, it is sufficient proof of the fact this administration is an extension of the extremist Israeli stance, that it sent Denis Ross as its envoy to the Palestinians, the man who is an Israeli in all the positions he has espoused since 1993 to this day. How did the Obama administration try to encourage Abu Mazen to negotiate? It sent him Dennis Ross along with David Hill, and offered him a statement that speaks of Israel as a Jewish state, but which does not address a halt to settlement activity, Jerusalem or the refugees, and which even opposed unity between Fatah and Hamas. So did Israel write the statement that Ross carried? Abu Mazen won this round, regardless of the results of the UN adventure. There are only two possibilities: Either the Palestinians will get recognition or a half recognition, or the Obama administration will thwart their aspirations only for the Arab public's anger at the administration to increase and undermine every interest it has in our countries, starting with Egypt. Personally, I expect that in the event the Obama administration continues to play the role of Israel's full accomplice, despite its crimes, I expect that King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz will adopt a decisive political and economic position. I know him as they do not know him. In truth, I have before me a book entitled “The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World”, written by Daniel Yergen, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Yergen says that everything we do, i.e. what all people do in this world, depends on the struggle for energy resources. We have energy in the ground and the energy to use it. [email protected]
