According to Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Israel has agreed under heavy pressure by the Bush Administration to Palestinian voting in East Jerusalem. This extraordinary step taken by Bush indicates little regard for Israeli sovereignity or its government.
The Bush Administration took advantage of the leadership vacuum in the Israeli government to take the unprecendented step of issuing a presidential guarantee to the Palestinians that all the Palestinian parties running for election on Jan 25 would be allowed to campaign openly in East Jerusalem, eligible voters in the city would be permitted to cast their votes through local post offices, and the voter slips of all Palestinian parties without exception would be available in the balloting booths.
This was presented to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a done deal,and was not cleared with the Israeli government beforehand.
It has several interesting implications.
For one thing, it indicates that the Bush Administration does not expect Olmert to be a player for very long. By forcing this successfully down his throat, it reinforces the impression many Israelis have of Olmert as a timeserver and a functionary without the necessary strength to lead. Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud now have the edge on the Jerusalem issue and a boost towards winning the March election.
Second, it also shows that the Bush Administration recognizes that Abbas is finished as well. Washington’s intercession enables the terrorist Hamas group to fly its green flags, hold rallies on Temple Mount and call for jihad against Israel openly, as well as having its voter slips at Israeli post offices as a legitimate option for Palestinian voters. Essentially, this is a backhanded recognition of Hamas and a recognition of the reality that Abbas and Fatah are essentially finished,or that at the least Hamas will be a significant player in Palestinian politics.
Abbas and his fellow Fatah apparatchnicks were calling for the postponement of the election all along, and were only using the Israeli insistence on upholding the ban on Palestinian political activity which was part of the Oslo Accords as a pretext. The elections will take place as planned, at the Bush Administration's insistence. In that sense, Abbas was a recipient of White House pressure as well.
Hello, Cynic.
ReplyDeleteI don't quite understand what you mean by `USA sovereignity is linked to Israel'. For my part, I think that Sharon wisely agreed to acomodate Bush on Gaza, realizing thatthe Palestinians would make chaos out of it..as indeed they have.
Bush is merly recognizing the facts on the ground, that Hamas is now the significant power in the Palestinian Authority. In practical terms, as far as anydesire to live in peace next to israel, there's no real difference between Hamas and Fatah. Rememeber that the head of the Hamss list in the parliamentary elections is a murderer serving a life sentence for killing Israeli civilians, Marwan Barghouti.
As for Iran, I think isolation will work, as I said, provided we first eliminate the Mulah's cash flow...and provided we don't let the actual UN anywhere near the process.