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A Short News Story! | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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News about a new round of “strategic dialogue” between Israel and the United States launched in Washington on October 20, came very brief, and was the least circulated by news agencies. It only mentioned the names of the participants, heads of delegations, that the meeting is held once every six months, that the latest was held in Tel Aviv and that top on the agenda was Iran’s nuclear threat. It stressed, of course, the United States commitment to Israel’s ‘security’ which practically means a guarantee to insuring its military supremacy over neighbouring and far away Arab countries in addition to non-Arab countries like Iran and Turkey and Israel’s monopoly over the possession of mass destruction weapons, including nuclear weapons.

The brief statement issued after the meeting stated that “The United States and Israel are committed to working together to enhance regional security and stability. The present discussions helped identify ways to improve our already strong cooperation in this regard for the benefit of all in the region”. The question, however, is: how could the United States ’ strategic cooperation with Israel be for the benefit of ‘all’? In other words, how could the United States ’ arming Israel with nuclear weapons and the aircraft to carry them be for the benefit of ‘all’ including Arabs, Turks and Iranians? How could American funding – by giving loan guarantees – for the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land be for the ‘benefit’ of those whose land is confiscated, whose homes are destroyed, against whom war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing are committed? And who are these ‘all’ who will benefit from the US-Israel strategic cooperation, when it is about war, settlement building, intelligence terrorism against ‘all’ in the Middle East? It is a cooperation which aims at preserving Israel’s military supremacy and giving cover to its destruction of Palestinian security, livelihood, lives, rights and life style.

The way this piece of news is addressed shows the degree of media dexterity of both sides in passing such a dangerous news story in a manner that raises very little interest on the part of their victims regarding the broad scope of strategic cooperation and solidarity between the United States and Israel and their cooperation in waging aggression and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians through blockade and through depriving the Palestinian people of freedom, democracy and human rights. This means that the United States will never be an ‘honest broker’ for the achievement of just and comprehensive peace. This also explains why the peace process has failed during the past twenty years. Successive US administrations, which are hostage to the strategic dialogue with the occupying Israeli forces, pretend to be a ‘broker’, while in fact they help Israel, as a strategic partner, in destroying Palestinians’ lives, threaten neighboring countries, spread war and insecurity in the Middle East in order to “preserve Israel ’s military supremacy”.

Those who are surprised today at the Obama administration’s inability to achieve any progress in the Middle East peace process should be referred to an article titled “Good news about Obama appointments” published by the Jewish Issues Watchdog on 24 November 2008. It says: “Previous postings raised questions about potential nominees to Obama Administration positions regarding their views on Israel, Iran , the Palestinians, and other issues. Today, I focus on reasons to have confidence that the incoming team will do positive things in the Middle East”. Now, about two years from that date, we know that these “positive things” include raising the question of the Jewishness of the state, an unprecedented pace of settlement building, home destruction in East Jerusalem, passing a law in the Knesset forcing Palestinians to pay for the demolition of their homes, banning them from working in the tourist sector so that they do not point to anything Palestinian and forcing them to swear allegiance to a Jewish state, which means ethnic cleansing of any Palestinian existence.

The documents published by Wikileaks about the war on Iraq shows that the crimes committed against the Iraqi people are similar in nature and magnitude to those committed daily by Israel against the Palestinian people. When something about such crimes is leaked to the media, no one dares comment on them or call for the punishment of those who committed them because there is also a strategic cooperation between American and Israeli media. And they are ‘free’ not to publish anything about the crimes committed by their governments against the Arabs. The question is: who punishes the culprits when the United Nations itself lays under the heavy weight of American hegemony.

After all the disasters that have befallen Iraq and Palestine, American diplomacy is doing its best to support Israeli actions to impose inner conflict on Lebanon and divide Sudan. Despite the fact that the Sudanese are one people and have been living together for centuries on the same land and with the same culture and destiny, the first announcement of the ‘inevitability of separation’ was made by US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. After that a flurry of activity was initiated, including the sending of envoys, UN forces and visits by separation promoters to Washington.

From the war on Iraq, to war on the Palestinians, to aggression on Lebanon and providing Israel with cluster bombs which still kill people in southern Lebanon until now, US-Israel strategic dialogue has seen nothing in the Arab world except oil and strategic positions.

As they promoted Palestine, as a ‘land without people’ all our countries appear on their screens as land without people which they can invade any time they like, divide in the way that suits their interests and destroy human relations by killing and displacement. Then, they say that their “already strong cooperation in this regard [is] for the benefit of all in the region”. Who are these all? Those in the region who think that this cooperation is for the benefit of their peoples should think again, unless their peoples do not appear even on their radar screens. You know now why this news story was so short? Because all the disasters happening to our peoples are because of such short news stories.