On the Mideast

The ongoing debates among aspirants to the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties have been disappointingly rough, offensive and insulting in regard to personal, local and international issues, particularly US Mideast policy.

The campaign rallies of the Republican front runner, Donald Trump, who hopes to be the candidate for the November 8 presidential election, have been described as rowdy and pugnacious.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton overdid it in committing herself to Israel at last week’s convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Bernie Sanders, the only Jewish presidential candidate, declined to participate in the AIPAC conference in Washington, DC; he made an unexpected major dent in Clinton’s aspirations by impressively winning this week simultaneous elections in three states.

Moreover, his on-the-air pronouncements on the Middle East were unprecedented for a Jewish senator.

He began his televised remarks by underlining that “it is important to be honest and truthful” about differences that the US and Israel may have, but the two countries will continue to support each other in facing “a very daunting challenge and that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

“But to be successful, we have also got to be a friend not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people,” said Sanders, adding that when “we talk about Israel and Palestinian areas, it is important to understand that today there is a lot of suffering among Palestinians and that cannot be ignored. You can’t have good policy that results in peace if you ignore one side.”

The US senator, who as a youngster lived and worked in an Israeli kibbutz, added that “peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank, just as Israel did in Gaza — once considered an unthinkable move on Israel’s part”.

Sanders was critical of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “suggest(ing) that building more settlements in the West Bank is the appropriate response to the most recent violence”. 

“It is also not acceptable that the Netanyahu government decided to withhold hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians, which it is supposed to collect on their behalf. 

“But, by the same token, it is unacceptable for President Abbas to call for the abrogation of the Oslo Agreement when the goal should be ending the violence.”

Interestingly, a few days after Sanders’ firm statement, a full-page advertisement appeared in The New York Times under the headline “Israel’s security chiefs agree: separation into two states is in Israel’s vital security interest”.

The mugshots of 16 military officers appeared in the advertisement whose ending line says “the only way Israel can remain a Jewish, democratic state is if the Palestinians have a demilitarised state”, a point that is likely to be rejected by the Palestinians since it is not a mutual step that the two parties would accept. 

This advertisement was sponsored by S. Daniel Abraham of the Centre for Middle East Peace.

Another surprise voice appeared in Washington earlier this month, that of Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who was the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

His hard-hitting subject was: “What would I tell a visiting [US] Congressional delegation [to Israel].”

Levy spoke at the National Press Club in Washington.

The opening lines said that the “Israeli brainwash machinery is so efficient that it will be very, very hard to compete with this machinery.”

“American congressmen should know that the life of Palestinians in Israel, right now, is the cheapest ever. With everything we went through, never was it so cheap to kill Palestinians. 

“Never was it so little discussed. Never was it hardly covered by the Israeli media, the biggest collaborator with the occupation. Never was it so natural that any Palestinian must be held as a suspect, and any suspect must be executed. American legislators must know this.”

The citations were amazing, even shocking.

His closing line was loud: “There’s not one single American legislator who can imagine himself what it means to live as a Palestinian under the occupation. He cannot imagine one day of the humiliation, of the danger, of the lack of hope.”

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.