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In Cliche LandThe Oldest Soul, Viernes, Junio 6, 2003 - 12:15
Robert Fisk
IT WAS all about cliches. No longer a "peace process" - which, like a disobedient railway loco, constantly had to be put back on track - it's now a "road-map"... IT WAS all about cliches. No longer a "peace process" - which, like a disobedient railway loco, constantly had to be put back on track - it's now a "road-map". Settlements built for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are now divided into "established settlements", the illegal kind Ariel Sharon does not intend to dismantle, and "unauthorised outposts", the equally illegal "caravanserais" that Israeli extremists have set up and that can be torn down in front of the television cameras as a demonstration of goodwill. On the Palestinian side, there was Abu Mazen, America's choice of successor to the failed colonial governor Yasser Arafat, promising that he would use "every means available" to end the intifada. "Every means" is almost UN-speak; it means Hamas and Islamic Jihad may have to be put down with gunfire - which in the real world could mean a Palestinian civil war. There was talk of a "restructured" Palestinian "security service". "Restructured" means "purged", something that Mr Arafat would understand at first hand. Then we had that old friend, the "viable sic Palestinian state", a cliche that the Quartet of the US, the EU, the UN and Russia has generously passed on to the Israelis. Mr Sharon didn't take too well to the "sovereign independent" state that the Quartet dreamt up. But since it was an internationally supported plan, it was "the only game in town", a cliche previously reserved for David Owen's gloomy map of Bosnia, which had the Serbs and Muslims at each other's throats in hours. But even President George Bush couldn't quite make it out of cliche land. Israel, he said before the Aqaba summit, had to "deal" (sic again) with settlements - no mention, of course, that these colonies are built against all international law on Arab land. Mr Bush talked about "contiguous territories" in Palestine without defining which bits of land had to be "contiguous". Did he mean adjacent, perhaps? Or adjoining? And there was much talk of "terror" - the Palestinian kind, of course, not the Israeli version. Unless, presumably, we're talking about "unauthorised outposts" rather than settlements. For his part, Mr Bush joined the ranks of every Western leader since the British mandate in announcing "the Holy Land must be shared between Israel and Palestine". Like Oslo, it expects the Israelis and Palestinians to marry before falling in love. So an American president surrounded by right-wing neo-conservatives thinks he can create peace between an Israeli prime minister who supports illegal settlements and a Palestinian Prime Minister who can't stop the intifada. Poor old Palestinians, you couldn't help thinking yesterday afternoon. And poor old Israelis.
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