{"id":6086,"date":"2009-01-21T11:10:18","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T16:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=6086"},"modified":"2009-01-23T16:32:17","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T21:32:17","slug":"stephen-sniegoski-george-mitchells-unfairness-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=6086","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Sniegoski: George Mitchell’s (Un)Fairness in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Sniegoski
\n20 January 2009<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As one of his first actions<\/a>, Obama plans to name former senator George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) as his Middle East envoy, sending a message he intends to engage the Israelis and Palestinians in efforts to bring about a lasting peace. Mitchell is of a Lebanese Christian background and holds traditional establishment foreign policy positions. He headed a committee on Palestinian-Israeli issues commissioned by Bill Clinton in 2000, which was intended to save the faltering “peace process.” The committee released a report in 2001, which among other things called upon the Palestinians to crackdown on terrorism and the Israelis to freeze their settlements in the occupied territories (freeze, not remove) and to stop shooting unarmed demonstrators. This was portrayed in the major media as a very balanced report because it offered criticism of Israel as well as of the Palestinians. However, the Mitchell Report ignored the fact that Israel is an illegal occupying power according to international law. As Stephen Zunes writes<\/a> “However, the report refuses to call for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, which Israel is required to do under UN Security Council resolution 242 and 338, long considered by the United States and the international community as the basis for peace.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Zunes continues: “Another problem is that the report calls simply for a freeze on Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories. In reality, Israel is required to withdraw from those settlements altogether. According to Article 40 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its civilian population onto territory seized by military force. UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465, adopted unanimously with U.S. support, call on Israel to withdraw from these settlements. As long as the settlements remain as part of Israeli territory, any hope of establishing a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank or including Arab East Jerusalem as part of that state becomes impossible.”<\/p>\n

In essence, the Mitchell Report was only “balanced” if one considers the Israel occupation and settlements to be, at least to some degree, legitimate, and that in giving up any of its occupied territory, Israel would be making a concession rather than abiding by international law (which is how the Palestinians and most of the world see it).<\/p>\n

Also revealing that Mitchell might not be fair to the Palestinians is the fact that he is currently receiving some degree of praise from Steve Rosen<\/a>, who was one of the AIPAC officials involved in the Larry Franklin espionage case.. Rosen was charged with handing over classified information to Israel. Rosen served for 23 years as one of the top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) As Raimondo writes<\/a>: “Rosen was the sparkplug of AIPAC, known for implementing – with notable success – the powerful lobbying group’s efforts to influence the executive branch.”<\/p>\n

Rosen now works for Middle East Forum (MEF), a think tank headed by neocon scholar Daniel Pipes. Rosen is writing a blog hosted on the MEF website focusing on Obama Administration personnel and policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Regarding Mitchell, Rosen writes: “To many, he is a prominent symbol of ‘evenhandedness,’ but he is not regarded as hostile to Israel. As a Senator, he had many supporters in the pro-Israel community, and he generally favored legislation important to the U.S.-Israel relationship. He has many friends among Israel’s leaders, and in the American pro-Israel community.”<\/p>\n

Now when a member of the Israel Lobby par excellence such as Rosen praises Mitchell, even giving what might be considered partial praise, one has to wonder. Note that the Israel Lobby never praised James Baker in 2006 when he served as co-chairman of the “Iraq Study Group.” Baker was constantly attacked by the Israel Lobby as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic and the report was ignored by the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Now how does one explain Rosen’s relative praise. Some might argue that the Israel Lobby cannot afford to antagonize the popular new president. However, given Obama’s selection of pro-Zionists, and his natural prudence, I would think that the selection of Mitchell was already vetted by members of the Israel Lobby and received their approval. Maybe Israeli agent Steve Rosen knows something we don’t know, or at least something the mainstream media does not care to discuss.<\/p>\n

One thing that should be known is that Mitchell is highly respected in Washington political circles. For six consecutive years he was voted “the most respected member” of the Senate by a bipartisan group of senior congressional aides.<\/p>\n

People concerned about “respect” in Washington politics must take positions that do not antagonize groups with media power. This certainly means never to antagonize the Israel Lobby. And it would be necessary to antagonize the Lobby in order to allow for the existence of a viable Palestinian state, since Israel has never voluntarily offered the Palestinians a viable state in any of the numerous “peace” processes. .<\/p>\n

I would think that any US activity as a “peace” broker would only have Israel make cosmetic changes – abandonment of a few settlements – while keeping the major settlement blocks, retaining control of water (the West Bank aquifer) and the boundaries (Jordan River). Also, there would be a number of Jewish-only roads traversing Palestinian territory. All of this would be claimed necessary to maintain Israeli security – which Mitchell has pledged to defend.<\/p>\n

Such a Israeli “peace” offer could be portrayed by the US media as “balanced” so that the Palestinians’ rejection would be interpreted as showing how incorrigibly obstinate they are and justify any type of harsh treatment by Israel. Considering how many people are absolutely enthralled with Obama, public opinion in the US, and even in the world at-large (outside the Middle East) would be far more favorable toward the Obama administration’s Middle East policy than it had been toward Bush\/Cheney policy, even if the two policies were quite similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Sniegoski 20 January 2009 As one of his first actions, Obama plans to name former senator George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) as his Middle East envoy, sending a message he intends to engage the Israelis and Palestinians in efforts to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-1Aa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6086"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6165,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086\/revisions\/6165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}