[GushShalomPress] The speech: beautiful words bypassing ugly reality

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/

Press release

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The speech: beautiful words bypassing ugly reality
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Democratic reforms, a practicing democracy based on liberty and tolerance, an
effective legislature, an independent judiciary, separation of powers, a new
constitution  - so many rosy items did the President of the United States set 
out for the Palestinians, in his long-awaited speech on the Middle East. 

Somehow, throughout his speech George W. Bush managed to avoid any 
mention of the present situation in the same parcel of land where all these
wonderful things are to materialize. No mention of the fact that all West Bank
cities had been invaded by Israeli military forces; that hundreds of
thousands of inhabitants are imprisoned in their homes by a strict curfew, and
that civilians appearing on city streets risk having tanks shoot shells on them
(while the speech was delivered in Washington, Israeli soldiers completed
the takeover of Hebron, killing three Palestinian policemen in the process);
that even before that conquest, the towns and villages where Bush would have a
flourishing market economy set up are cut off from each other by checkpoints 
and closures and sieges, with inhaibitants replacing their cars with donkeys 
able to negotiate narrow mountain paths. 
How are Palestinians to implement any kind of reforms under such circumctances? 
How are they to reform a Palestinian Authority which is being systematically 
chocked out of existence? 
How could elections be held "before  the end of the year" without a pullout of 
Israeli forces, and some assurance of their non- interference? 
And what would President Bush do if Palestinian voters, exercising their 
democractic right to choose, re-elect Yasser Arafat as their leader? Would that 
democratic choice be set aside in yet another military invasion? And even if 
"new Palestinian leaders" would get elected, pass Bush's careful scrutiny, and 
try to "fight terrorism" as the president so vocally demands, would they be 
assured of the basic conditions for doing so? Would their efforts not be 
continually thwarted by Sharon, as are those of the existing  Palestinian 
leadership? In the Gaza Strip, the one parcel of land where the Palestinian 
Authority retains some measure of control and where it
tried in the past few days to take some action against Hamas, Israeli forces
yesterday committed the provocation of assassinating a major Hamas leader
(together with five family members who happened to travel in a taxi with that
leader, and who  got killed by the same missile which killed him). 
The root cause of terrorism and suicide bombing (or "homicide bombing" as the 
president insisted upon calling it) was hardly addressed at all: the situation 
of young Palestinians under an increasingly tight occupation, who see 
themselves oppressed and dispossessed, deprived of all  hope and expectation 
for the future, abandoned by the world, and who reach the point where they 
decide to blow themselves up in order to kill random Israelis. No end to 
terrorism can be expected without offering some tangible hope to such people, 
to dry up the phenomenon of suicide bombing at the source. 
President Bush's speech - making strident demands upon the weaker party to the 
conflict, and only vague polite requests upon the stronger side - contributes 
little to that cause. No wonder that Sharon expressed immense satisfaction with 
the speech - but the two peoples, locked in this terrible struggle, pay the 
price for the arrogance, short-sightedness and lack of resolve of the dweller 
in the White House.

Adam Keller - Gush Shalom spokesperson