Why Blair's trip will not succeed
The US is too partisan to see that the Palestinians cannot give more

Quote:

If the Palestinians were to secure the redress that other colonised peoples have, there would either be no Israel - as there is no Algérie Française - or a bi-national state, like South Africa, in which it would lose its exclusively Jewish character.

But the Palestinians are not demanding that. They have committed themselves, via Oslo, to the loss of 78% of their original homeland. If there ever is a settlement, this concession will rank as the greatest single contribution to it. It was under Arafat's auspices that they made it. Yet the US called him an "obstacle" to peace who had to be replaced by a "moderate" leadership that would persuade its people to give yet more.

But a new Palestinian leadership won't do that, least of all if it is clean and democratic, because, reflecting the popular will, it simply couldn't. That Sharon is no less an obstacle to peace than Arafat ever was, and Israeli "moderation" as necessary as Palestinian, is a thought that might occur to Bush, but it isn't one which, as similar thoughts in his first term taught him, he will find politic to act upon. US Middle East policies have always been shaped more by domestic politics than realities on the ground, and never more distortingly than today.

To the Americans, the Israeli Jews are the victims, after all, according to the view of mainstream US: Jews = Victims, so the Jews must be the real victims in Palestine too, whatever their actions. This cult of the eternal victimhood of the Jews, which is now cherished by the religious right of the Christians and liberal bleeding hearts and also part of the Jews themselves, who are not neither dicriminated nor oppressed more than the average minorities in the west, and usually less because antisemitism simply is for historical reasons far less easy to swallow for most of the people in the western countries, even if they then held racist views of other peoples.

(One could wonder why Christians in the western countries couldn´t show as much love for the Jews when they really were the victims. Why people have to be first the victims of a genocide AND then find other people to oppress before they get the backing of the West? What has this changed?)

Add this to the fact that the usual American state of knowledge on Palestine´s current situation and history is distorted, to put it mildly, and the worship of Israel´s arrogance and it´s cruel policies which are seen by the neoconservatives as a model which the US should follow - typically fascist worship of the righteousness of power - and the growing religious fanaticism in the US, which sees the state of Israel as a sign of the end of the world as we know it, when Americans drive their SUVs straight through the Gates of Heaven.

And now the Americans believe that Mahmoud Abbas is the man who will give Israel all land west side of the wall, including East Jerusalem, forfeit the rights of the refugees and in the end kneel before His Highness Ariel Sharon and praise him for his kindness and mercy, or something like that. The Jews and Israel simply are too big taboos for the Americans. They might not know that much about them, but they worship them the more intensely. In the US mainstream media, critising Israel is about as frequent as criticism of the Soviet Union was in the countries of the Soviet bloc. Pretty rare and when it exists, it has to be made more acceptable by long tirades against the Palestinians and the Arab countries and positive praises of Israel on other accounts and sad claims that we help Israel if we don´t let it do whatever it wants to do to the Palestinians. Sad because this tells much what the writers think of their audience. Just doing the right thing isn´t the right thing to do, if it isn´t done for Israel.