No peace without Hamas
Mahmoud al-Zahar, The Electronic Intifada, 17 April 2008
US President Jimmy Carter’s sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is “business as usual” for the Palestinians.
Rory McCarthy reports for the Guardian that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today made it clear, in a long interview with the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, that settlement building will continue in east Jerusalem and the West Bank in contravention of the 2003 road map and the latest round of talks begun last November in Annapolis, Maryland.
Olmert insists the construction will continue despite U.S. demands for a freeze since settlement blocs will be retained under any future peace accord. Annapolis was yet another step towards ending peace negotiations, not a new beginning of talks, a process formalised by Bush and Sharon in 2004.
The US Congress should explain why tax dollars are being used to enlarge these illegal settlements but the only legislative movement is a resolution condemning Hamas, a call to confiscate Jimmy Carter’s passport, and a push to cut federal funding to the Carter Center.
“Carter calls Gaza blockade a crime and atrocity“.
His detractors consider it ethnic cleansing proceeding according to plans.