‘No chance’

Brian Feeney writes about the Arab-Israeli conflict in today’s Irish News. He believes there is no chance that the Palestinians will get fair treatment from Israel or indeed the United States. For Feeney, Israel is “a projection of American power in the Middle East” and a country that is sustained by US money and which is vital to US foreign policy:

“That’s why President Bush visited Israel last week to celebrate its 60th birthday with speeches of typical ignorance that were, even after eight years of them, still astonishing. So there is no chance of ‘enlightened self-interest’ on the part of the US. No chance the Palestinians will get a fair crack of the whip. Only time will end the suffering. American policy will change and there are signs that it is happening, though not while this repellent administration remains.

“In the end, as former French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, said, Israel is “ parenthesis in history”. When US policy does change Israel will cease to be a Jewish state. You can’t have a religion owning a state. It will become a binational state of Israelis and Palestinians and maybe then will have something to learn from Norn Iron – if it sill exists.”

Walter Ellis in the Belfast Telegraph does not believe that Bush’s Israeli peace initiative will succeed. He writes that “the problem is that America likes to present itself as a honest broker, while being 95% - no, make that 99% - on the side of Israel. The Arabs know this. More to the point, they also know that for the first time in a long while, the US is weak and indecisive and is no longer the sole determining factor in what’s going on.

“Washington needs to waken up to this fact and get its act together before it’s too late. But don’t hold your breath. What is much more likely to happen is that the Bush-Rice peace bid will fade away to nothing, like autumn leaves, leaving the next occupant of the Oval Office to deal not only with Iraq and Afghanistan, but a revivialist Arab World and a truculent Israel.”

They are very bleak assessments for Palestinians’ future and peace but one with which most people would agree.