World to Bush: Get Real!

His name was never uttered, but Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was clearly the target of President Bush’s major speech on the Middle East conflict last week. Bush’s call to oust the Palestinian Authority president, as a precondition for a “provisional” Palestinian state, aroused predictable fury in many Arab newspapers and equally predictable joy in at least some of the Israeli press. But the rest of the world had serious questions about how the Palestinians could be persuaded to go along with the plan--particularly in lieu of any U.S. demands being placed on the Israelis. Some editorialists suggested that Bush may have even strengthened the tottering Arafat regime by appearing to meddle in internal Palestinian affairs. What follows is a sample of commentary from papers around the world on the Bush address:

ISRAEL

The genius of Bush’s speech is that it finally spoke the truth about who is standing in the way of Palestinian liberty and independence. Those who continue to blame Israel for Palestinian suffering are not doing the Palestinians any favors, and they certainly are not realists. The lesson of Sept. 11, and the core of the still-evolving Bush Doctrine, is that basing peace or stability on belligerent dictatorships is like building on sand. Bush’s new emphasis on democracy is not starry-eyed naivete, but realism based on bitter experience.

--Unsigned editorial, Jerusalem Post

The only useful thing in President Bush’s useless speech is that now we know which way the dice in Washington have fallen when it comes to the Middle East. Those millions of Israelis who are losing hope for an agreement to end the conflict through political means now have authorization from the leader of the West that, for a long time to come, there won’t be even the beginning of movement.

--Gideon Samet, Haaretz

It must be clear to all that beyond all kinds of justified claims regarding the conduct of Israeli governments from Rabin’s to Barak’s vis-a-vis their relations with the Palestinians and the implementation of the Oslo accords, most of the burden must be on the shoulders of the Palestinians, part of whom either perpetrated or encouraged terror, and part of whom neither reined it in nor fought against it.

--Unsigned editorial, Maariv

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

Bush clearly views the Palestinians as being the direct cause of Israeli suffering, but as for the Palestinians--dispossessed of their country and freedom for 54 years--Israel has no culpability at all. It is as if the Palestinians, due to a bit of rotten luck, have caught a cold ....The future for Palestinians and Israelis is as grim as it has ever been. What Bush has offered is not a formula for provisional ... Palestinian statehood, but a vision of permanent war.

--Ali Abunimah, Ramallah Online

Few speeches could be considered to be as destructive as today’s address from the American president.... While a cynical push for Palestinian reform has been issued both from the United States and Israel, there has also been a growing movement from within the fledgling Palestinian civil society for democratic reform of Palestinian governance, under occupation. Whether intentional or not, this speech, declaring a veritable open season on Arafat, short-circuits those efforts. The Palestinian people are surely not going to pressure their leadership to step down when this is what is being demanded by Israel and the U.S. What people could tolerate their leaders being assigned by an external power, especially one with which it is locked in an increasingly heated conflict?

--Mitchell Plitnick, Palestine Chronicle

LEBANON

[Bush’s speech] was packed with demands of the Palestinians in exchange for a vague “provisional” status that could, if they did what they are told, lead to statehood and peace in three years. In contrast, Bush only warned Israel that it could not hold on to territories it overran in the 1967 war and expect the Arabs to offer it security and recognition.

--Mona Ziade, The Daily Star

IRAQ

Bush’s cheating speech aims at curbing the Palestinian armed resistance against the Zionists’ [Israeli] occupation and denying the Palestinians the right to live.

--Unsigned editorial, Babel

SAUDI ARABIA

The notion of an interim state is unheard of in international politics. There are interim governments and interim presidents, never an interim state. A provisional state will have none of the prerogatives of statehood, no final borders, no capital, and no say in when or indeed if Israel will pull out of Palestinian territories. The idea provides too little hope for the Palestinians while heightening risks.

--Unsigned editorial, Arab News

BRITAIN

Successful peace processes depend upon narrowing the number of people and situations that can, in effect, place a veto on progress.... This is the opposite. It offers just about anyone a veto who wants one.... If you allow acts of terror to disrupt the process of peace, then you allow the suicide bombers an effective veto.... If I were a careerist in Ramallah, I’d start organizing the Palestinian version of the early Sinn Fein right now.

--David Aaronovitch, The Independent

Bush’s speech has placed Palestinian and Arab moderates in an awkward position, has strengthened the hand of extremists, and has established the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, as enemies of the Arabs and Muslims. I would not be at all surprised if Osama bin Laden did not rub his hands together in glee as he listened to George Bush’s speech.

--Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of British-based

Arab newspaper Al Quds, in the Mirror

If it is any consolation to Arafat, America has been trying to unseat Fidel Castro for 42 years, and Saddam Hussein for a decade. Arafat might go. But you could also bet he will last longer in his job than Powell.

--Gavin Esler, The Mirror

By imposing such stringent, indeed impossible, conditions on the Palestinians, and none that really mean anything on Israel, Bush has virtually given Sharon a free hand to press on with objectives that have now become open and undisguised: Reoccupy the West Bank, bury the Oslo accords, and replace the Palestinian Authority with a puppet administration in nominal control of at most 42% of the West Bank. --David Hirst, The Guardian

AUSTRALIA

Mr. Bush became yesterday the first U.S. president to expressly support the creation of a Palestinian state and to fix any sort of timetable for its creation. Commendable as that objective is, Mr. Bush may have strangled his initiative [by] asking so much of the Palestinians and so little of the Israelis. Had the president, for instance, made it a precondition of U.S. support not only that Mr. Arafat depart but that he be joined in retirement by the extremist Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the U.S. peace plan might just have stood a chance.

--Unsigned editorial, Courier-Mail, Brisbane

IRELAND

There is no understanding here that the Israeli occupation itself generates insecurity and terrorism. Only reciprocal action by the Israelis to withdraw can encourage the political reform process called for by Mr. Bush.

--Unsigned editorial,The Irish Times

FRANCE

... [T]he complete speech of George W. Bush passes from hand to hand in Gaza. Tense faces. Astonishment. Consternation. The reactions of Palestinian intellectuals are uniform. It’s not the blast of vitriol against Yasser Arafat that bothers them. For weeks, it’s been hard to find anyone in Gaza willing to come to the defense of the leader. Quite the contrary. From janitor to minister, in discontented grumbling or political analysis, everyone now questions the vision of the leader.... But in a nation at war, dirty laundry is washed in private.... By practically calling for the overthrow of the duly elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Bush has obliged Arafat’s opposition to keep silent, lest they be treated as criminals.

--Didier Francois, Liberation