Robert Fisk: Posturing and laughter as victims rot

Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation by saying the only option for Arabs isto make peace with Israel

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert's shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert's right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany.

Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead. No wonder that in the streets of Beirut, shops were doing a flourishing trade in Palestinian scarves and flags. Even some of Palestine's most serious enemies in Lebanon wore the Palestinian keffiyeh in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Over and over again, Al-Jazeera television strapped headlines on to their news reports of Palestinians carrying the decomposing corpses of their dead: "More than 1,300 dead in Gaza, 400 of them women and children – Israeli dead in the war 13, three of them civilians." That, too, said it all.

All day, the Arabs also had to endure watching their own leaders primping and posing in front of the cameras at the Arab summit in Kuwait, where the kings and presidents who claim to rule them also smiled and shook hands and tried to pretend that they were unified behind a Palestinian people who have been sorely betrayed. Even Mahmoud Abbas was there, the powerless, impotent leader of "Palestine" – where is that precisely, one had to ask? – trying to suck some importance from the coat-tails and robes of his betters.

Slipping and sliding on the corpses of Gaza, these assembled supreme beings should perhaps be pitied. What else could they do? Saudi King Abdullah announced £750,000 to rebuild Gaza; but how many times have the Arabs and the Europeans been throwing money at Gaza only to see it torn to shreds by incoming shell-fire?

It has to be said that the two cowled Hamas gunmen who announced that they had won a "victory" in the ruins of Gaza were only fractionally less hypocritical. Still they had not understood that they were not the Hizbollah of Lebanon. Gaza was no longer Beirut. Now, it seemed, Gaza was Stalingrad. But whose uniforms did Hamas think they were wearing: German or Soviet?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-posturing-and-laughter-as-victims-rot-1451410.html

And Abbas, do not look to me to defend that treacherous quisling.

The Arab nations need to cut off all diplomatic relations and start boycotting Israel en masse. Will they have the courage and/or integrity to stop playing lackey to the colonizing first world countries?

I think we can safely rule Egypt out until that nasty old Mubarak keels over. At 80 years old, that may happen soon.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, of course, dismissed the whole initiative in Qatar last week as dead, insisting that Israel be declared a "terrorist entity". But Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation yesterday by announcing that the "only option" for Arabs was to make peace with Israel. It was Arab "shortcomings" that led to the failure of the 2002 Arab initiative. Not Israel's rejection, mark you. No, it was all the fault of the Arabs. And this from the leader of "Palestine".

No wonder America's man in Egypt – a certain Hosni Mubarak – repeated the tired old slogan that "peace in the Middle East is an imperative that cannot be delayed". And then the Emir of Kuwait invited Bashar and Hosni and King Abdullah of Jordan and the other King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to have lunch together – the menu was not disclosed – to end their feuding.

Al-Jazeera showed the ever-more putrid bodies being tugged from beneath cross-beams and crushed concrete as these mighty potentates debated their little disputes. There was really no adequate comment for this charade.


I would disagree though that the "two cowled Hamas gunmen who announced that they had won a "victory" in the ruins of Gaza were only fractionally less hypocritical". They were overwhelmingly less hypocritical.

All Hamas had to do to "win" was to prevent Israel, with it's multi-billion dollar arsenal and savagery, from winning. Hamas won by not losing.

I pray the Palestinian people will win soon by having peace and independence from complicit world meddling.

Hiya IG :hi: Always great to see you.

and to call them quislings is far too generous. The US should get out of the Middle East altogether and stop all arms shipments to the region. All we do is keep the oligarchs in power.

as his successor.

I'd suggest that there's only one ethical thing to do: undo that century of colonialist meddling, to the extent possible, by restoring control of Palestine to the Palestinian Arabs.

Mandate that Palestine be a modern, secular, multi-ethnic nation; put an appropriate group of people (the Zionist leadership, some of the "settlers", and a large number of the UK and especially US ruling class) on trial for their lives a la Nürnberg; and guarantee the safety of those Jews who want to remain Palestinian citizens against reprisals...though most Arabs don't seem to be all that interested in reprisals.

Station an army division there to guarantee the peace while helping construct a true secular democracy.

It's the only way to be sure.

Do you have copies of the checks?

:shrug:

That's our whole point isn't it?

I agree with you. US out. NOW.

I hope the Egyptian people don't tolerate that.