Why Did Oman Publicize Netanyahu’s Trip?

By

 Saber Golanbari

 

The fact that Oman openly publicized a trip to the country by the Israeli prime minister could be an indication of the normalization of relations between the two sides.

While certain European countries like Sweden refuse, for some reasons, to accept invitations by Israeli leaders, Oman publicized a recent trip to the country by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before even Israeli media covered the story.

In the past, trips by lower-level Tel Aviv officials to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf were usually not announced. However, now that the highest ranking Israeli official has travelled to Muscat, and Oman itself has immediately spread the news across the globe, it seems the trip must have important objectives. At this juncture, Netanyahu’s trip has raised many questions, especially when it comes at a time when the Israel-Palestine peace process has been stalled, the US has relocated its Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem al-Quds and the Israeli side is opposed to the so-called Arab peace plan. And all of this has coincided with the crisis emanating from the assassination of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Some observers believe the trip is a joint effort to extricate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from the predicament he is facing.

Mossad director Yossi Cohen and Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat accompanied Netanyahu during his trip to Oman, and this adds to the importance of the visit and sheds more light on its nature.

The reality is that Netanyahu being welcomed in Muscat under the current circumstances sends a lot of messages, but it was not unexpected of Sultan Qaboos to do such a thing, after all. He has always advocated such relations, which were clearly established in 1994. In April that year, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin travelled to Muscat and attended a meeting of the committees for multilateral talks on the so-called Middle East peace. In November the same year, he returned to Muscat and discussed the promotion of ties.

After a month, then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin went to Muscat and met with Sultan Qaboos. Afterwards, Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi met several times with Israeli authorities several times in Jordan and al-Quds, namely Shimon Peres. In a press conference in December 1995, he said Oman has no preconditions for establishing relations with Israel.

And when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Oman’s Sultan sent Yusuf bin Alawi to Tel Aviv to express condolences. Even there, the foreign minister met with Shimon Peres.

Also in 1996, Shimon Peres, who had replaced Yitzhak Rabin, went to Muscat and reached agreement with Oman’s king over the establishment of ties through opening a trade representative agency. The two sides maintained their relations until Oman announced after the start of the second Intifada in 2000 that it had closed the Israeli agency.With such a move, Omani King Sultan Qaboos practically both put an end to the normalization of ties with the Israeli regime and tremendously boosted the position of Netanyahu and the rightist Likud party in the upcoming Knesset elections.

A born-dead accord

ISRAEL-PALESTINE OSLO ACCORD

JOHN CHERIAN

In the 25 years after the "historic" Oslo accord was signed under the aegis of the U.S., Israel systematically undermined its stated goal of a full-fledged Palestinian state. Now the Trump administration is making blatant attempts to dismantle the two-state solution.

SEPTEMBER 13 this year marked the 25th  anniversary of the signing of the “historic” Oslo Peace accord between Israel and Palestine. A supplementary accord, Oslo II, was signed in 1995 dividing the West Bank into three contiguous regions. The signing ceremony of the Oslo accord in 1993 took place in the White House in Washington. For the first time, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, shook hands under the benign gaze of United States President Bill Clinton. It was the first public handshake by an Israeli and a Palestinian leader. The accords were named after the Norwegian capital Oslo, where most of the secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) took place under U.S. supervision. Arafat had been trying to use the good offices of the Norwegian government to establish back channel talks with the Israelis since 1979 but was rebuffed by successive Israeli governments. It was only after the massive Palestinian “intifada” (uprising) against the Israeli occupation broke out in 1987 that there was some rethink in Israeli government circles on the issue.

Arafat’s tactical blunder

Arafat and the PLO had accepted United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, which offered Israel recognition as a state provided it withdrew to the boundaries that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israel war. The resolutions had also permitted Israel to temporarily hold on to some of the so-called “strategic outposts” it had occupied in the West Bank. By the time the secret negotiations in Oslo swung into high gear, Arafat had alienated many of his allies in the region, including some of the key Gulf monarchies. In the first Gulf War, Arafat and the Palestinians, in general, had sympathised with Iraq in its standoff against the U.S. The Gulf kingdoms, including Kuwait, were among the biggest financial backers of the Palestinian cause. The Soviet Union, one of the biggest backers of the Palestinian cause, had collapsed. Egypt and Jordan had done separate peace deals with Israel. Arafat then made the tactical blunder of letting Israel postpone discussions in Oslo on the emotive issues of Jerusalem, the right of return for millions of Palestinians, and the future of the West Bank settlements, to a later date. In international fora, the PLO demanded the immediate implementation of all these demands while Arafat's emissaries in Oslo put them on the back burner.

Under the Oslo accords, Israel recognised Palestine as a state in lieu of the PLO’s recognition of Israel. Until then, the PLO had refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Jewish state built on Palestinians’ homeland. Israel had banned the PLO as a terrorist organisation and refused to have any contact with it. After the agreement, world leaders rushed to judgment, hailing it as a landmark agreement that would finally allow the long-suffering Palestinian people to have a state of their own. Rabin and Arafat were feted as heroic statesmen, and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with another Israeli leader, Shimon Peres.

Unravelling of the accord

Palestinians had made many concessions while signing the U.S.-brokered accord. The West Bank was already pock-marked with illegal Israeli settlements and Gaza was even at that time a glorified open-air prison. “The land for peace” concept, under which the Oslo accords were ostensibly signed, turned to be a mirage within a few years. The accords led to the creation of the interim Palestinian Authority (P.A.), with headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The stated goal of the accords was the creation of a full-fledged Palestinian state after the signing of a comprehensive peace accord by 1999. But from day one, Israel went about systematically undermining the agreement. Yitzhak Rabin, no dove himself, was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic in 1995. Arafat died in 2004 under mysterious circumstances after Israelis restricted him to his quarters in Ramallah. The Israeli Army bombed and surrounded his headquarters.

Many believe that the unravelling of the Oslo accords started after a Jewish extremist massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in the West Bank in 1994. Benjamin Netanyahu, a young Likud Party leader, was one of the main ring leaders of the Zionist backlash against Rabin and his ruling Labour Party. Netanyahu was caught on tape boasting in 2001 that he was single-handedly responsible for torpedoing the Oslo accords. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank began expanding even before the ink on the accords became dry. Today, more than a hundred Israeli settlements are spread on the West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem. Palestinian population centres have been systematically cut off by the Israeli occupation. An “apartheid wall” built by Israel snakes through Palestinian villages. The best land and the scarce water resources have to a great extent been appropriated by the Israeli settlers to the detriment of Palestinians living on the land.

The P.A., instead of evolving into an administration running an independent state, has now been reduced to being an instrument for use by Israel and the U.S., in order to keep Palestinians perpetually in subjugation. Under the Oslo accords, the P.A. had committed to cooperating with Israel in fighting terrorism. The P.A. confines itself to the role of providing basic health and education services besides policing the West Bank. Israel remains responsible for its external security and Israeli forces have the right to enter the West Bank as they please. Sixty per cent of the West Bank is anyway under the direct control of the Israeli security services. The Palestinian security apparatus was set up with the help of the U.S. Since the P.A. took over, there have been fewer attacks on Israel from the West Bank. U.S. and Israeli security officials coordinate closely with the security services under the P.A.

'Slap of the century'

A recent opinion survey revealed that seven out of 10 Palestinians want the P.A. to end security cooperation with Israel. According to another new survey, more than half of the Palestinians living in the West Bank are unhappy with the P.A., and view it as a burden on the people. For that matter, the P.A. President, Mahmoud Abbas, in January declared the Oslo process “dead”, blaming the Israelis for its death. “The deal of the century is the slap of the century,” he said, lambasting the Trump administration's attempts to arm-twist the P.A. into accepting its latest peace proposals meant to replace the Oslo accords. Trump had boasted that the proposal he had to offer to end the long-running Israel-Palestinian conflicts was “the deal of the century”.

The Oslo accords, according to Haidar Eid, a Palestinian academic, “were born dead because they did not guarantee the minimum national and political rights of the three components of the Palestinian people, living in the diaspora, Israel and the West Bank and Gaza”. He added that as long as there “are refugees, detainees, blockades, settlements, legalised torture of prisoners, dispossession, assassination and occupation, comprehensive peace cannot be achieved”. 

Many Palestinians believe that the Oslo accords have led to the introduction of apartheid-like laws in the occupied territories and Israel. Palestinians are openly discriminated against in their own land. The proclamation earlier this year of Israel as a Jewish state is an illustration. Jews will now have more rights than their non-Jewish fellow citizens in the state of Israel. 

The Hamas, which refused to accept the Oslo accords, is left in tenuous control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas and a few other Palestinian organisations had warned that the two-state solution advocated by the accord would deprive the Palestinian people of the sacrosanct “right of return”. 

Hamas won the first free elections conducted in the occupied territories in 2006. Israelis, as well as the dominant sections of the PLO, never reconciled to the verdict of the Palestinian electorate. Israel and its patrons deemed the Hamas as a terrorist organisation and pushed it into Gaza. Since it took control of Gaza, Israel has launched three full-scale wars on the impoverished enclave. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed and the infrastructure of the enclave has been destroyed. Despite the misery heaped on them and the continued indifference of the international community, the people of Gaza are unrelenting. Eighty per cent of the people of Gaza are refugees who have been refused the right of return to their homeland under the accords.

Trump’s blatant attempts

The Donald Trump administration has coincidentally chosen the year that marks the 25th anniversary of the Oslo accords to abandon all pretences of being a neutral arbiter in the Israeli-Arab dispute. It has further tightened the screws on the beleaguered Palestinians, many of them living in refugee camps. None of the major Arab states is protesting against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the “two-state solution” completely. In fact, Washington seems to have the tacit support of key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration, while preparing to offer the Palestinians a deal they dare not refuse, has ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington and cut off all humanitarian funding for the P.A. This move, coupled with the nation-state law passed by the Israeli Knesset, could mean that the U.S. has now officially given up on the Oslo accord and the internationally sanctioned peace process. The nation-state law, passed in July, relegates Palestinians to the status of second-class citizens. Palestinians constitute 20 per cent of the population in Israel proper. The newly passed law states that the state of Israel “is unique to the Jewish people” and directs the government to promote Jewish settlements in the whole “Eretz Yisrael” (Greater Israel), extending from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing the whole of the West Bank and beyond.

According to reports, the so-called Trump peace plan is based on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “economic peace” plan, whereby Palestinians are expected to give up their fundamental political rights in exchange for the lifting of the many the draconian economic restrictions that are in place in the occupied territories. The plan was drafted under the supervision of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner and his family are avowed Zionists and are close to Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing settler movement. The Trump administration has endorsed all of Israel’s extreme positions on the Palestine issue. Washington has now decreed that the status of Jerusalem is non-negotiable, that the refugees will no longer have the right to return, and that the illegal Israeli settlements on occupied territory are there to stay. The Trump administration has also parroted the Israeli government’s stand that there is no question of Palestinians being given full statehood and has reiterated that Israel will continue to retain full security control over the occupied territories.

Senior Palestinian officials have said that the so-called “deal of the century” being offered by the Trump administration “is dead on arrival”. The P.A. has reiterated its decision on not talking to the Trump administration after the U.S. embassy was shifted to Jerusalem. It was the P.A.’s decision to refer Israeli attacks on innocent civilians in Gaza and the West Bank and its construction of illegal settlements to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that had infuriated the Trump administration. The U.S. National Security Adviser, John Bolton, went to the extent of threatening the ICC with sanctions for daring to hear war crimes-related cases involving either the U.S. or its close allies like Israel. The ICC is also planning to hear war crimes cases relating to alleged atrocities committed by the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Saeed Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, has said that his people will not be bullied into making another peace deal by the U.S. “We reiterate that the rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale, that we will not succumb to U.S. threats and bullying, and that we will continue our legitimate struggle for freedom, justice and independence, including by all legal and political means, possible,” Erekat said after the U.S. decision to suspend all aid to Palestinians and close down the P.A. office in Washington.

Courtesy- Frontline

Oslo, 25 years on: Peace in tatters!

Shalom, Salaam, peace: Twenty-five years ago, these words reverberated in the White House lawn and were flashed across the front pages of newspapers worldwide, as the adversaries became partners of peace to sign what was then hailed as the peace deal of the century.

On September 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton facilitated a handshake between Israel’s then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat after they placed their signatures on an agreement which was reached after painstaking secret talks facilitated by Norway.  Peace at last in the Middle East, thought the peace-loving people, heaving a sigh of relief. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall enter the Kingdom of God: The land that witnessed Jesus Christ proclaim these words would no longer see bloodshed, peace zealots thought and wondered whether the time had come to beat swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruninghooks and whether the era had dawned when a nation would not lift up sword against another nation.

Alas! A quarter century later, the Oslo deal exists largely on paper.  Even before the white paper on which the agreement was typed turned yellow, the agreement suffered blow after blow. Within years, the much hailed Oslo deal was dumped in the dustbin of history by hardliners opposed to peace; by the arms dealers who profit from wars, by the Zionists who dream of setting up an exclusively Jewish state in the whole of Palestine by expelling all the non-Jews; and by the American neoconservatives who are hand-in-glove with the Zionist lobby.

Jurists may insist that Pacta sunt servanda or agreements must be kept, but who cares when hardline and peace-allergic Israeli regimes are given protection by the world’s mightiest nation, the United States of America.  Encouraged by the continuous US support, the Zionist nation commits war crimes and walks free among the civilised nations.  Washington’s mollycoddling of Israel undermines the US Constitution which is nourished by the founders’ ideals of justice, peace and morality. The US action is tantamount to aiding and abetting Goliath to oppress a helpless people crying for freedom and condemned to statelessness.  

If Israel had adhered to the Oslo deal in spirit and letter, a Palestinian state would have been set up in five years.  In 1979, that is 14 years before the Oslo deal was signed, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David agreement, in terms of which, Israel was expected to take measures to end its occupation of Palestine.  If Israel had not observed the Camp David agreement in the breach, a Palestinian state would have long become a reality, US President Jimmy Carter who facilitated the Camp David talks, later observed in his book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’. 

In terms of the Oslo deal, which gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Rabin, Shimon Peres who was the then Israeli foreign Minister, and Arafat, the occupied West Bank was to be divided into Zones A,B and C.  Israel was to pull out completely from the Gaza Strip and the Zone A. The security of the Zone B was to be the joint responsibility of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to be set up, while Israel would be in charge of the security of the Zone C until a final agreement was reached.  In terms of the Oslo deal, the thorny issues such as the final status of Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugees’ right to return, the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands, and the borders of the two states were to be discussed within five years.  The arrangement gave Israel 80 percent of the control in the West Bank, while the Palestinian got a glorified local authority called the Palestinian Authority.  

The Oslo deal was conceived at a time when the Palestinians were at a point of despair. They were battered in whichever country they had found refuge –in Jordan, they were butchered and in Lebanon, they were massacred.  By 1987 Palestinian youths were sick and tired of being labelled as terrorists for launching a freedom struggle, just as many liberation movements had done during the fight against European colonialism. They began an uprising – called Intifada in Arabic – in December 1987. It lasted until the 1991 Madrid Conference, which, for the first time, brought a Palestinian delegation stuffed into a Jordanian delegation face to face with an Israeli delegation.  The Intifada -- during which 1,500 Palestinians, including some 300 children, died -- spurred the Oslo-mediated secret talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, while adding pressure on world powers to intensify diplomatic efforts to find a solution. 

During this crucial period, Arafat and the PLO denounced terrorism and recognised Israel’s right to exist, key conditions Israel and the US had placed for direct talks.   
Rabin was a willing partner for peace and wanted to give peace a chance. Arafat appeared pragm

atic and agreed to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, as had been recognised by the United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. 
But the peace haters scuttled the deal.  Four months after the deal, a Zionist extremist massacred worshippers at the Hebron mosque which houses the grave of Abraham, the father of both the Arabs and the Jews.  Despite this blow, the peace process led to the September 28, 1995 Taba agreement, also known as Oslo II Accord.  Months later, the peace process suffered its biggest blow. On November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish hardliner.

His death only increased the resolve of the peace lovers to push the peace process forward.  President Clinton made hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sit with Arafat and sign the Wye River Agreement in 1998. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush set up the Middle East Peace Quartet comprising the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN to salvage the peace process.  In the meantime, Arafat died in November 2004, allegedly after he was exposed to radioactive polonium poisoning. 

President Barack Obama made valiant efforts to beat the odds and revive the peace process.  But Israel’s intransigence and the shrewdness of placing more conditions and pushing the goal post further each time the Palestinians reach it prevented any resurrection of the peace process.  

In the present US President Donald Trump, Israeli hardliners have found a willing peace killer. Trump has undone decades of hard work that went into the peace process. In May this year, he recognised Jerusalem as the undisputed capital of Israel in violation of international law and last month he stopped US humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian refugees.  Till Trump is ousted, the peace process will remain comatose.

Iran against New Imperialism

by Izeth Hussain

The world needs to get a sophisticated understanding of the problem of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. It has figured so steadfastly in the media for weeks, months, and years, that it has become understandable that the Israeli President Shimon Peres should say "Iran today is really a world problem, maybe the number one problem of the world." (London Telegraph interview reproduced in the Island of October 21). According to him, the West as a whole, and all the Afro-Asians whose thinking is determined by the Western media, the problem is that Iran is determined to become a nuclear weapons power, and is working secretly and relentlessly towards that end. Its objective, allegedly, is to remove Israel from the map, subjecting its population to mass extermination.

Contrariwise to what Peres is saying I hold that he, not Iran, is the world’s number one problem. More precisely, I hold that what Peres and the likes of him represent is the world’s number one problem, and what they represent is the New Imperialism. There seems to be a dangerous lunacy underlying the drive towards the New Imperialism, and it is only in terms of that lunacy that the insensate charge that Iran wants to bomb out Israel can be understood. Anyone with even a meager quantum of commonsense should surely be able to understand that should Iran do so, it will itself be wiped off the face of the earth within minutes. Why suppose that Iran is mad enough to want that? Behind that supposition is the lunatic racist stereotype about the irresponsibility and irrationality of the Orientals. My point about underlying lunacy can also be illustrated by a detail in the Peres interview. He says that Israel has never declared that it wants to have nuclear bombs and ads "But on the other hand if you can achieve deterrence by suspicion it’s not a bad situation." Fair enough maybe, but in that case why should not Iran also achieve deterrence against being attacked by creating the suspicion that it has nuclear bombs? The answer has to have behind it some kind of racist lunacy: the Israeli bomb is the weapon of white Israelis, while the Iranian bomb is the weapon of colored Iranians who like other Orientals are by nature irresponsible and irrational.

Orientalism – the Western drive both conscious and subconscious to perceive the Orientals in negative terms – was useful in providing supposed legitimacy for the exercise of Western power over Afro-Asians. At the core of Western imperialism was the notion that the Western whites were engaged in much toil and trouble all for the good of the lesser breeds. The Orientalist lunacy could figure also in the New Imperialism, - about which I must now give a very brief account. Right through history powerful nations have usually wanted to establish some sort of order around them, an order over which they reigned supreme and others were accorded varying degrees of inferior status. After the Second World War a bipolar order was established with two super-powers – actually a misleading description because it did not account for the Non-Aligned who numbered over a hundred states. After 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union it was thought that a unipolar world had come into being with the US as the sole super-power. The Gulf War quickly knocked out that notion because it was shown that the US alone could not cope with it, and the prospect seemed to point to a totally orderless world. By now it is clear enough that a multipolar world is taking shape with the US, the EU, Russia, China, and India as power-centers. At present the Islamic world, Black Africa, and Latin America, have no power-centers, but they could emerge later. Huntington seems to have been right in thinking in the first half of the ‘nineties that the new world order would be based essentially on civilisational unities. There will therefore be room in the new world order for negative views of other civilizations, which can take the form of Orientalist lunacy.



The new world order can of course be seen in positive terms as it would be better than an anarchic world in which the strong can keep on pouncing on the weak with total impunity. But it can also be horribly destructive and amount to a New Imperialism, as shown by the case of Iraq. Its people were peacefully going about their quotidian tasks without harming or threatening any foreign country until the US and Britain pretended that they were practically certain there were weapons of mass destruction there, after which they pounced causing the deaths of around a million innocent Iraqis. It was among the most horrible crimes against humanity ever perpetrated. The Western leaders who perpetrated it have not been hanged. It seems hardly necessary to labor the point that the New World Order can turn out to be – perhaps to a very considerable extent – a New Imperialism. Instead I will now focus on a point of crucial importance for the purposes of this article: the nature of the weapons required to maintain a New Imperialism.

In the imperialisms of the past the strong conquered the weak and imposed their will on them, the determinant being the might of weapons. As a consequence of revolutionary changes taking place across the globe during the last century, an entirely novel and historically unprecedented situation came about. As shown by the cases of Vietnam and then Afghanistan, the might of weapons no longer sufficed to make the will of the strong prevail over the weak. The people count as never before in history, and the people resent the conqueror. The peaceful imperial order of the past – based on conquest, the subjugation of the people, and thereafter their peaceful exploitation – is no longer possible. But whether it is to be called the New World Order or the New Imperialism, the power centers have to impose their will on the weak to maintain peace and order. That cannot be done by conquest and subjugation as in the past. It can only be done – so it seems – through the threat or use of weapons of mass destruction.

The history of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is very significant in that connection. When the draft was presented by the US Embassy to the Colombo Foreign Office in 1968 I had the official responsibility of making an in-depth study of it. I quickly came to the conclusion that its objective was certainly to prevent proliferation, but nuclear disarmament was no part of its real objective. In other words, it was meant to keep the powerless powerless, and the very powerful still very powerful with a monopoly of nuclear weapons. Subsequent decades have shown that surmise to be correct, though with one modification. The nuclear weapons powers realized that it would be impossible to prevent proliferation altogether, so that the sensible strategy would be to allow some new nuclear weapons powers in addition to the old ones. All of them – the happy few! in Stendhal’s famous phrase – would come to constitute the core states of the new multipolar world. That precisely is what we are witnessing at the moment.

According to my reading, the 1995 review conference on the NPT showed very clearly that a New World Order can slide smoothly into a New Imperialism. I will here quote the views on that conference given in Samuel P. Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations. The key issue was whether the NPT should be renewed for an indefinite period or only for twenty five years. The US led the campaign for permanent extension. I quote, "A wide range of other countries, however, objected to such an extension unless it was accompanied by much more drastic reduction in nuclear arms by the five recognized nuclear powers. In addition, Egypt opposed extension unless Israel signed the treaty and accepted safeguard inspections. In the end, the United States won an overwhelming consensus on indefinite extension through a highly successful strategy of arm-twisting, bribes, and threats. Neither Egypt nor Mexico, for instance, both of whom had been against indefinite extension, could maintain its position in the face of their economic dependence on the United States. While the treaty was extended by consensus the representatives of seven Muslim nations (Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Egypt, and Malaysia) and one African nation (Nigeria) expressed dissenting views in the final debate."

The infamous NPT review conference may retrospectively come to be seen as having had a sinister significance, for there could be seen the principles of a New Imperialism being laid down with the acquiescence of its future victims. Only a few Muslim countries showed some fight, while the rest behaved like placid water-buffaloes. Eventually "arm-twisting, bribes, and threats" – all part of the traditional repertoire of imperialism – sufficed to bring everyone into line, and a glorious "overwhelming consensus"was achieved. Today, notably after Iraq, the New Imperialism has gone much further. It is in terms of the paradigm of the New Imperialism, and not in terms of the Orientalist stereotype of irresponsible and dangerously irrational native boys, that Iran’s nuclear travails have to be understood.

I will now make some observations on the Israeli and Western strategy to try to bring Iran to heel. It is essentially a strategy of demonization. In an interesting article (Island of September 29) Saybhan Samat pointed out that the demonization goes back to October 2005 when a speech made by Ahmadinejad came to be widely misquoted in its mistranslated English form. He was misquoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the map of the world. What he actually said was that Israel would disappear from the map of the world – which of course is very different from saying that Israel should be wiped out through aggressive action, or that its population should be subjected to genocidal extermination. All that he meant was that there was nothing sacrosanct and eternal about a state, which therefore can disappear after the manner of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia in recent decades. Likewise Israeli in its present Zionist form can also disappear. The clarification has been made umpteen times by the Iranians, but that does not satisfy Shimon Peres who in the interview from which I quoted above said that it’s a shame that the UN does nothing about it when a member-state "calls for the destruction of another member of the UN". The old racist rogue and the West as a whole are determined to project an image of the Iranian leader as a genocidal maniac who is going all out to get nuclear weapons.

The demonization can be seen very clearly also in Obama’s absurd charge that the Iranians had been covering up a secret nuclear facility, which led Hilary Clinton to declare that she was prepared to "obliterate" Iran. I will not go into much detail about this as it will take up too much space. Instead I will refer the interested reader to Scott Ritter’s article in the London Guardian of September 25 and an interview given by him, both of which are available at the Sailan Muslim website (www.sailanmuslim.com). I will cite only a few details from the article of Scott Ritter who was the UN’s weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is therefore the kind of technocrat who can speak authoritatively on Iran’s Qom nuclear facility. He pointed out that it was not detected by outsiders, but was declared to exist voluntarily by Iran itself. He goes into detail to show that in setting up that facility Iran has not violated any agreement into which it has entered. Therefore Obama’s charge that Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow is legally and technically wrong. According to Ritter the Qom facility is part of "an attempt on the part of Iran to provide for strategic depth and survivability of its nuclear program in the face of repeated threats on the part of US and Israel to bomb its nuclear infrastructure." As for the firing of long-range missiles. Ritter holds that it was meant to show that Iran has the inherent right and capacity for self-defense. It is merely saying "If you choose to attack us, we can and will defend ourselves."



What should be done? I believe that there should be an international questioning of the NPT, and a new Non-Aligned Movement taking account of the new multipolar realities, but I cannot go into all that in this article. I will conclude by making the obvious point that there should be international support expressed for Iran. It is a disgrace for the Islamic world that from its ranks only Turkey’s Erdogan is speaking out for Iran these days. It is also a disgrace for the rest of humanity, particularly for the third world which is sleep-walking into the New Imperialism.





Izeth Hussain

The Iranian Crisis from the Point of View of a Progressive Arab

WRITTEN BY ADIB S KAWAR

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic regime that since day one of its life had dedicated itself to confront colonialism and Zionism, and expelled the Zionist diplomatic mission to the Shah’s imperial court and handed its premises to the Palestinian Arab people, an act that international Zionism had never forgotten. The New republic replaced an autocratic imperial regime, which cooperated with the American intelligence organization, CIA, to overthrow the first democratically elected government of Prime Minister Muhammad Mosadiq and reinstalled the Shah on his imperial peacock’s thrown. As well known the Shah allied himself with international colonialism and Zionism, Zionism the long arm of colonialism in the Arab homeland and its neighborhood, and declared enmity to any power that steps in to support Arab resistance and struggle for its independence a liberation.   

                  

The Arab proverb says: “If my libeling came from the blemished it’s a testimony that I am complete”. This exactly applies to one of the leading Zionist terrorists who was one of the founders of the Zionist entity and still continues with his endless mission of plundering, terrorizing, destructing, threatening its neighborhood with woe and grief and whatever, he is none other than the president of the Zionist entity, Shimon Peres, who said while addressing the Jewish Agency (with wishful thinking), “It is difficult to say who shall disappear first in Iran, uranium or the miserable regime, and we are hopeful that it will be the regime”, Peres who is considered to be the father of the “Israeli” atomic bomb arsenal of 200 to 400 A bombs that are used to threaten anybody who would “threaten the security” of the rogue state of “Israel” continued to say, “Fighting the leaders of the Iranian regime is more urgent than fighting its bombs (atomic)”. Peres attacked the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic by saying, “how dare he claims that we asked the Iranian people to go out to the street and threaten their lives”.  Surely the old fox who keeps repeating the above quotes live, Ali Khamenei as us all are well aware that Peres and his Zionist gang are (The Zionist Entity) are all the time after United States administrations to grant them the green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations, which Iran keeps confirming that they are meant for civil purposes and not for military use, and if the U.S. is not willing to join the Zionist entity in its proposed attack on Iran is to be given the green light to do the job by itself, and possibly utilizing only mini A bombs, we assume that the hesitation of the American administration is due of its fear that its strategic Zionist ally could be wiped out by an Iranian retaliation.

Another member of the Zionist clique, minister of strategic affairs, Moshe Yaalon, repeated Peres’ wishful thinking saying: “Iran’s wave of protestations shall lead to a revolution under the presidential nominee former prime minister for ten years, Mir Hussein Mousavi, against the Islamic regime.  Mousavi and his wife brought new winds that are represented by openness, so I shall repeat that there will be a revolution in Iran.” Yaalon added: “In spite of this it shall not change anything regarding the nuclear matter, but what happened is encouraging for the west, which is related to a wide look towards what is happening in the region represented by the confrontation between ‘Jihadism’ and the west”. Which we are sure means resistance against the Zionist project in Palestine and its neighborhood that Iran supports and arms, so it is the prime enemy of colonialism in  its deferent forms that Zionism is today’s most outstanding example.

On the other hand the Zionist Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, with his wishful thinking too, mixes between the Iranian People and the long ago deposed Shah by the same people, he told the German paper, Bildt: “There is no conflict between ‘Israel’ and the Iranian people that would have changed its government had it been free in its election.  Good relations between Iran and ‘Israel’ is possible if a new leadership takes hold of the government”. Netanyahu is trying to remind us of the “peaceful relations”, which were prevailing between ‘Israel’ and the Shah’s regime in the old days, and added: “I believe that the mask had fallen from over the face of the regime in Iran, and what we see there is a great thirst for freedom among a part of the population”. Do we have to remind Netanyahu of then unending struggle of the indigenous population of the land that Zionism invaded and occupied and trying to fully replace them in it, why should he care for a people that he and his gang are threatening to bomb, and not for the great thirst for freedom among a part (all the Palestinian) of the population.

Here too we have former Zionist minister of war, Shoal Mofaz, who is of Iranian descent and well known for practicing repression, targeted assassinations, organizing land theft in addition to all sorts of assaults against the indigenous Arab people of Palestine, Mofaz told Chanel 2 of the “Israeli” TV: “There is no dispute regarding Iran’s ability to cross the technological line, it progresses daily on development of atomic energy, Iran is a great rocket power, and if it is able to own the atomic it shall form a great existential threat for ‘Israel’,” so it is natural for him to claim that.“The Iranian people is connected with the west, and aims at becoming like other peoples away from repression’s authority, and fear that controls its fate.” Which is what his victims had been fighting for since decades, for the Zionist entity, as Mofaz said, Iran is an existential threat and for putting it at hold from threatening its Arab neighborhood. 

The Zionist entity’s attack on Iran, though claiming that is forwarded against the ruling Iranian regime and no the Iranian people. The Zionist entity is simply the spearhead of western colonialism, which is still dreaming to retain its influence and control of the “third world” politically, militarily and economically, but matters are slipping out of its control starting with the twentieth century successful independence movement, and what happened in China twenty years ago namely the failed ‘Tiananmen’ square, revolution. Which though was a call for democracy and free speech, but with western interference it was meant to be a “right that was meant to be wrong”.

On the subject Arab writer, Dr. Fayez Abu Chamailah, wrote in his article entitled Iran shall go out stronger. “Twenty years ago foreign powers conspired against China, their aim was to prevent the Chinese people from reaching a position that they are in today. Incitement took place when journalist, workers and students started gathering in ‘Tiananmen’ square demanding democracy and right of expression, and succeeded with American and western support in starring millions of hungry Chinese, in the midst of a big roar in the western media for freedom of expression, and spreading the teachings of democracy, but China that is dreaming of a better future, knew the goal behind these gatherings in ‘Tiananmen’ square, and dealt with the agitators who are stirred by foreign powers in how to protect China’s interests, and succeeded in overcoming the difficult internal test, and escaped from the conspiracy, to become twenty years later the feared international economical power.” And, as well known the United States is calling on China to become its lifeguard to pull it out of its financial and economical crisis.

Fehmy Huwaidy, an outstanding Egyptian Arab political, writer wrote describing the Iranian elections in his article, ‘Iran if it becomes moderate’, “I am not comparing elections in Iran, for example, with in England, but in comparison to elections in all the Arab homeland, true it is incomplete in  its first episode, as the Council of the Protection of the Constitution gives itself the right to accept certain nominees and refuses others, but during its following episodes Iranian presidential elections are always marked with seriousness and relative fairness, candidates competed with outstanding  severity, and the authority always took an impartial position in relation to all of them. The Chinese official Television broadcasted documentaries showing the life story of each of them, it also broadcasted the debates that took place between them live, and thus the Iranian people were put in the picture in a balanced manner about each of them before the elections.”

As a progressive Arab I am not supposed to theoretically ally myself with a theological regime, but from the point of view of our interest as Arabs fighting colonialism and Zionism, and as the present Iranian regime is among the very few forces that support our cause especially the Palestinian cause, and its Arab resistance organizations, we owe the Iranian regime gratitude, and we are ready to defend it against its foreign and certain internal critics and enemies. Noting that not all of them are classified under the same category. Not all of them are seculars in contrast to the theological regime, and many of them held very high posts under it and for long years. we don’t claim that they are all in the service of or ally themselves with Colonialism and Zionism, though some so-called nationalists criticize Mahmoud Ahmadi Najad for being too lenient with Arabs, and in particular Sheikh Mahdi Kharoubi criticized Najad in one of their political debates for being the first Iranian president to visit the United Arab Emirates, which we suppose is due to the conflict regarding the three Arab Gulf occupied islands.

Also Fehmy Huwaidy added: “Among the very moderate there are some who go further in their extremism(!!!) by considering that there are no advanced or developed and nationalist states with a promising future in the region except Iran and Israel, thus it is very important to tighten relations between them so as to become a locomotive that pulls the region from its backwardness, and there is  more than one researcher  in Iranian strategic matters who expressed this idea in papers that were discussed in strategic circles.” This is a very dangerous trend of thought to follow by some Iranian so-called intellectuals. Such so-called intellectuals should be categorized among colonialists who are still dreaming of an imperialist Iran, and cannot realize that Zionism has no permanent friends. Though the Zionist entity would never have seen light had it not been for British’ great help, Zionist leaders committed terrorism against British forces occupying Palestine and preparing Zionist colonialists to be ready to uproot the indigenous Arab population. A more recent example is Zionist spying against all present and former administrations starting with the White House itself.

Engineer Mir Hussein Mousavi in a lecture he delivered in one of Tehran Universities raised the motto of “Iran first”, while other reformists criticized Najad’s government for the help it extends to Hezbollah’s resistance in Lebanon and Hamas movement in Palestine, as considering it as a waste of Iranian people’s money, as well as other signs meaning disconnecting Iran from resistance and the Palestinian cause, and support the settlement of the Palestinian question, their excuse is simple and could be marketed easily, namely Iran is not an Arab country, and thus should not overbid its Arab neighbors and be more Arab than Arabs!!!

 

Such trend of thought and action is enough for the west that is known for its unlimited support to the Zionist entity to express its joy and high appreciation of the reformist movement to destabilize Iran and its regime, which has nothing to do with the standard slogans of democracy, freedom of expression and free elections. We don’t have to return to old history and remind the west about the above mentioned example of free election that brought Prime Minister Muhammad Mosadiq to rule and the fall America’s puppet Shah Muhammad Reza Bahlavi, we just return to the very recent history, namely the free and democratic Palestinian election conducted about three years ago, which brought Hamas to power, but instead of being hailed and complemented, Gaza was put under severe siege by the Zionist entity and its western and some so-called Arab moderate regimes that are repeating the same attack on Iran. 

To close we quote our friend Raja Chmayel’s the following piece of sarcasm, that fits our article: 

1979 the US Embassy in Tehran was visited and now someone wants a re-match …. The War on Iran has started Regardless who has won those elections, the man who wanted to wipe off Israel from the Map , is going to be punished.The Regime that helped Hamas and Hezbollah will be punished………… The culture that calls USA and UK as being the devil and puts questions marks on the Holocaust will be punished……… They shall gather, all the bad-looser-of-the elections all the chic-high-society all the dissidents for whatever cause all the modernists and pseudo-liberals all the jet-set of Tehran all the Parrots and the Monkeys imitating the West everyone who does not like theocracy all the supporters of westernisation all the Nike and Gucci fashion-fans of Tehran Promise them Heaven on Earth, and 25 Starbucks within the first year and 145 Mac. Donald's as well…. And start a fancy-uprising from within thereafter the son of Shah shall return to his throne and Oprah Winfrey shall direct the new Iran TV stations owned by Fox and Judd Bush..     It is called The Western Democracy