Even if Israel’s much touted withdrawal from occupied Gaza Strip is momentous any one expecting a quick return to Middle East peace making will be disappointed although officials on both sides have expressed the hope that the disengagement in Gaza will move both Palestinian and Israeli people closer to peace. The Israeli prime minister in spite of being a super hawk has set a precedent by giving up Jewish settlements on lands the Palestinians want for a state and many Israelis see as their birth right to be there. There have been plethora of peace posturings in the past but this is for the fist time that the Israeli authority voluntarily vacated the occupied Palestinian land and even forced the reluctant settlers to quit.
However, profound doubts and scepticism abound with regard to Sharon’s evacuation drama in Gaza. “In fact, Gaza is a bit of side show”, says Jonathan Lindley of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “It changes very little in the greater shape of the conflict”. Indeed the two sides continue to be way apart when attention turns to the West Bank — with very different ideas on how fast to move and what the final destination should be.
A growing number of Palestinians are beginning to believe that an Israeli disengagement in an impoverished Gaza will not mean the end of occupation even there. The Gaza Strip would still be an occupied territory under international law according to Renad Qubbaj of Ramallah-based Palestinian NGO network because the Israeli army will remain in effective control of all border crossings in and out of Gaza. The disengagement plan also states that “Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of Gaza Strip and continue to maintain exclusive authority in Gaza airspace and will continue to exercise security activity in the sea off its coast. The Palestinians in Gaza will have no control over the airports, seaports or natural resources thus virtually turning Gaza into vast prison for them.
A paper released by the same NGO network says “the disengagement plan is a trade off meant to legitimise the Israeli settlements in the West Bank including in and around Jerusalem. The Palestinians fear that the price for Gaza is a stronger Israeli hold on the West Bank and East Jerusalem which they also want for a state. At least for now Israel is likely to reinforce their fear as Sharon stresses that Israel will never give up major West Bank settlement blocs — of course, with the apparent blessings of its US patrons while there will obviously be no talks of Palestinian statehood until all militants are disarmed.
Meanwhile, work has sped up on Israel’s West Bank barrier looping deep into the territory to take in settlement blocs. Though Israel dubs it a temporary measure to stop suicide bombers the Palestinians call it land grab to deny them a viable state. The barrier creates the reality of a new border whether there are talks or not. Sharon aids hint that the isolated settlement east of the barrier might one day have to go but in the short-term Sharon will be able to shift the settlement rightward ahead of 2006 election. It will benefit him in his electoral bout with another hawk, Netanyahu. Therefore, more settlement expansion and huge Israeli retaliation to any Palestinian resistance are just too obvious.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice visiting the region in advance of the Israeli pull out from Gaza reassured the Palestinians that her country was committed to the realisation of two independent, democratic and viable states: Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace and security. Ms Rice also told the reporters that “we also recognise that the economic revival of the Palestinian territories is a key element for peace.” That means that as the Israelies withdraw from Gaza it cannot be sealed or isolated area with the Palestinian people closed in after the pull out. Rice continued that “we want openness and freedom of Palestinian people. We are committed also to connectivity between Gaza and West Bank.”
However, given the US’ unqualified support to all Israeli policies aimed at fulfilling its dream of a greater Israel it appears highly unlikely that Rice’s mealy mouthed words of assurance for the Palestinians can ever come to fruition. Sharon has no intention of ever pulling out of the West Bank. The Gaza evacuation is in fact his clever move to augment the West Bank’s Jewish population by rehabilitation of those Jews who have left Gaza — in West Bank which already has 4,000,000 Jewish settlers. This will in course of time enable Israel to incorporate their biblical land of ‘Judea and Samaria’ in Israel proper. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon seems to be enjoying Bush Administration’s blanket support in this regard. In fact, during one of Sharon’s visit to Washington President Bush told the media that Israel would keep ‘some’ land in West Bank thus torpedoing the ‘road map’ prepared by the Quaret — the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.
Actually, the larger dimension of the Sharon’s game plan behind Gaza withdrawal runs counter to the spirit of all UN resolutions and peace plan including the Oslo accords and the April, 2003 road map for peace which all presupposed ‘land for peace’. Now it is changed to ‘land for time.’ Israel is in no hurry. Part of the point of the Gaza plan was to ensure a Jewish majority in lands including the West Bank — now under Israel’s control. The security barrier made in defiance of International Court of Justice will render Palestinian attacks across it difficult. According to Ali Jarbawi, a Palestinian analyst, Israel might have bought some time with its gimmick over Gaza but this unilateral approach of her will hardly be acceptable to the Palestinians.
Mahmoud Abbas with his hands empty, is under much more pressure to deliver. He faces a huge, immediate challenge in controlling his security forces and reining in unruly gunmen even from his own Fatah government. Another incipient challenge to his leadership is steadily growing from the Hamas after the latter’s huge gain in local body election. While their political rise is phenomenal, the election due in Israel will be fought between the two hawks.
Whoever wins on either side they, particularly the Israelis, will be buried in domestic politics and resist any external pressure for peace talks. In that event the age-old conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians will continue ad infinitum. There could have been an element of historiography is Gaza pull-out but in no way it could promote the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Spying on US makes Manila look bad
Manuel L. Quezon

PERHAPS you’ve heard of a case involving an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation leaking American government reports concerning the Philippines, to Filipino officials. The FBI employee may have been doing this since he did a three-year stint in the office of the vice-president of the United States and then moved on to the FBI. His motive? Apparently, debts, as good a motivation for espionage as any. Why documents concerning the Philippines, and why leak them to Filipino politicians (including, according to the spy, three leading figures in the Philippine opposition)? Because the FBI employee, Leandro Aragoncillo, was, once upon a time until he became a US citizen by joining the US Marine Corps, a Filipino.
Now as far as I am concerned, espionage is espionage, and for every American of foreign original selling out his country to another, you can find perhaps dozens of home-grown Americans who have done the same thing. The fate of Aragoncillo is America’s business. That he was enticed to do what he did, by a Filipino citizen, a fellow named Michael Ray Aquino, who fled to the United States to escape prosecution for crimes as a policeman, is a Philippine concern, of course. But what sort of a concern should it be? I am of the old-fashioned opinion that since a Filipino citizen is in trouble, the primary obligation of the Philippine government is to help him.
The Philippine government thinks otherwise. The Press Secretary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo waxed wrathful concerning this case. Said he, “Self-serving politicians can ruin our diplomatic integrity by spying on our allies, but this only shows how far some of the President’s political detractors will go just to satisfy their raw ambition for power. We acknowledge that the Philippine-US relations are even stronger and more vibrant despite the shameful act of this political cabal. We can leave to the American government the matter of bringing the malefactors to justice. But we are concerned over the negative implications of this incident on Filipinos who are building a career not only in the United States but also in other countries. This is an embarrassment for our people who deserve an apology from those who messed up the good name of our country.”
It is in the nature of press secretaries to be selective: They will never admit to anything that is inconvenient concerning the message of the day. In the first place, what has been compromised is not the integrity of Philippine diplomacy, but rather, the security of either the White House or the FBI. What has been compromised is the peculiar delusion of the Arroyo administration that it enjoys a monopoly on the attentions of the American government. And what has been dealt a blow — just the latest, incidentally, in a long series of body blows Philippine-American relations have had to endure ever since President Arroyo ferociously embarked on becoming a cheerleader of the US-led War on Terror, only to abandon it abruptly over domestic, political concerns — aren’t relations between the two nations, but the idea that the United States has any lingering affections for President Arroyo. She’s not just the low lady on the totem pole, so to speak; she’s not even in the pole’s pecking order.
And as for leaving to the Americans the matter of bringing spies to justice, the Philippine press secretary has to be publicly blasé, because Uncle Sam’s refused to let the Philippines into the act. The Philippine Secretary of Justice, whom Americans might describe as a cantankerous old coot, has publicly wailed that, “That is the problem with the Americans. I wrote them a letter and they have not even answered...maybe it’s been a month now. They meddle with us and then they don’t cooperate with us.” It seems that what the Philippine government wanted, was a piece of the action. The Americans have refused to let them in on what’s going on. And so the Philippine government has to indulge in what can only be described as the most servile of colonial-minded rhetoric: “We have displeased the Great White Father! He might place Filipinos overseas in big heap trouble! Say sorry! Take the blame for big boo-boos in American security apparatus!” Which is basically what the Philippine Press Secretary’s press statements really says, translated into everyday speak.
I suppose American officials are as susceptible to flattery — and not a little tickled by a little old fashioned bootlicking — but US President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described American foreign policy quite succinctly with an earthy phrase: “He may be an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.,” he once supposedly said of a Latin American dictator. The principle lives on. What America appreciates, are steady, reliable, allies. They are not impressed, and certainly are not amused, and definitely, are not willing to oblige, allies that are as fickle as they are hysterical. The present Philippine government is paying the price for its own bumbling when it comes to trying to cozy up to an American. Its only good fortune is that at least a portion of the Philippine opposition has been caught trying to influence federal employees of the United States, so that neutralizes them, to a certain extent. But that’s not much, and my suspicion is, if Aragoncillo was indeed sending classified documents to some Filipino politicians, might others have been commissioning him to do the same? After all, if oppositionists wanted to know what possible dirt the Americans had on President Arroyo, her people would want to know, too. With this case, however, the global public might end up being in the know, too. And that can’t be a pleasant prospect for the Philippine government.

Dynamite of an award
Tom Plate

THERE is more than casual irony in this year’s awarding of Nobel Peace Prize. The peace prize was first given in 1901 by the foundation created by the Swedish industrialist Alfred Noble, the inventor of dynamite. Dynamite was then the world’s most explosive war material. This year’s peace prize winner is the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director Mohamed ElBaradei. Nuclear weapons are today the world’s most explosive material. More than anything else, perhaps, nuclear weapons are also political dynamite in today’s global order. This is why the foreign relations of Iran are so enormously complicated by the arguable ambiguity and fearsome potential of its nuclear ambition. Negotiations between Europe and Iran have broken down over a lack of mutual respect and credibility.
In a similar way, a lack of trust and respect between the governments of North Korea and the United States on the nuclear issue bedevil the stability of the entire region. North Korea and Iran are, of course, two of the three principal members of President George Bush’s infamous axis of evil. The third — Iraq — is currently under a very messy and bloody US military occupation. And so the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IAEA is a stroke of timely genius. As the Washington-based Carnegie Foundation for International Peace has put it, the world is at a ‘tipping point’ on the issue of the spread of nuclear weapons. By handing the world’s leading international nuclear weapons-and-power institution this prestigious and prominent prize, the Nobel judges draw deserved new attention to this weapons and technological threat.
Notice the implicit but inexorable question posed by the awarding of this prize: How will the world contain and reduce the possession of nuclear weapons, whether with regard to new nations, who imagine their status immeasurably enhanced with such an acquisition, or to terrorist organisations that could greatly enlarge the impact of their evil-doing by possessing this exponentially explosive technological weaponry? The answer to contain the expansion, it seems to me, depends on reducing the current world arsenal; we need to ask no more of those nations that seek to acquire the weapons than of those nations that already have them. It is the existing nuclear-powers — especially the United States, Britain and France, representing extraordinary economic affluence — that need to reduce their arsenals in dramatic ways, over time but still rather rapidly.
The US especially has enough nuclear weapons not only to destroy our planet but perhaps a few other planets in the solar system as well. The enormity of the size of this arsenal is rivaled only by the absurdity of its sheer existence. The US is the 800 pound banana-gorging gorilla that preaches a minimalist diet for everyone except itself. Additionally, relatively new nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan, need to set a stellar — if lower-order — example. Each has acquired their arsenals primarily as a deterrent to the other. By forging precedent-setting political disarmament agreements, this South Asian odd couple could set a normative example of enormous persuasive power.