New Mideast Diplomacy or helping Israeli Criminals Escape?

By Dr. Abdul Ruff

Soon after the holocaust in Palestine by fascist Israel, the new US President Barack Obama, upon assuming power at the White House, has made important diplomatic appointments to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mideast by keeping those who have enough experience in conflict resolutions. Obama used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace and also telephoned four Middle Eastern leaders - President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt has been mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, and between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

I

In what was his first formal TV interview with -based Al-Arabiya network, since becoming president last week, US President Barack Obama said the US sometimes made mistakes and stressed that his administration would adopt a more open diplomatic approach in foreign affairs? Obama told the Muslim world that Americans were not its enemy and it is very important to make sure that we are using “all the tools of US power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran." That is Obama, like Bush, considers diplomacy as a last option and not the first and foremost option to resolve the Iranian nuclear march. However, Obama appeared determined to be emollient and - as he put it repeatedly - respectful, and stressed that the US would listen.

Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is on his way to the region, heralding a new burst of diplomacy. US envoy George Mitchell is to visit Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia during a week-long tour, as well as European stops including Paris and London. He will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss boosting a ceasefire in Gaza and renewing the peace process. As well as Egypt, Mitchell will travel to Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is still working for a settled peace in Mideast. Israeli and Palestinian faction representatives have visited Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials since a non-negotiated ceasefire came into effect on 18 January. Hamas wants an end to Israel's punishing blockade of Gaza. Israel, which will hold general elections on 10 February, wants a long-term ceasefire and curbs on Hamas re-arming. About 1,300 Palestinians, including 400 children, were killed in Israel's 22-day holocaust of defenseless Palestinians. Obama said he had asked his envoy to seek genuine progress during his visit to the Middle East. Mitchell would meet "senior officials to discuss the peace process and the situation in Gaza".. Obama said the new envoy would take an active approach. It remained unclear whether Mitchell would travel to the Gaza Strip as well.

Separately, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he was heading to the Middle East to join efforts to cement a permanent ceasefire. The diplomatic moves come a day after European Union humanitarian aid chief Louis Michel blamed the militant movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, for the humanitarian crisis there. He called the destruction left by Israel's offensive "abominable", but, as usual, said Hamas bore "overwhelming responsibility".

Hatred of European leaders for Muslims is a known fact and now even after the holocaust in Palestine the US-European states continue to support the fascist Israel, propped up and supported by the USA and other Western nations. .

Jewish brain seems to outsmart even the American in strategic planning and diversion entities. After the holocaust of Innocent Palestinians in Palestine, Israel is trying to divert the global attention form the outcry for punishment of Israel for its war crimes in Palestine, Tel Aviv has reintroduced the idea of attacking Iran in the wake of a deadly military offensive in Gaza, which claimed thousands, and officially, over 1300 lives, apart from several thousands with serius injuries. .

Pampered by the Western powers and Eastern arms dealers, Israel thrives as a regional weapons merchant. Israel and the anti-Islmaic west are raisng the bogey of “threat” after the genocides in Paleisntine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistna. Iran’s enrichment program is a threat for the stability of the Middle East and the whole world. There is still time for sanctions and for the free countries of the world to implement economic sanctions against Iran,” said Barak.

II

US-Israel combine is keen to inavade Iran. Israel has terribly upset over its inability to make USA attack Iran during the Bushdom. Having lost even feeble hopes of an “imminent US invasion” of Iran, Israel set out to terror invade Palesitne and now it seems it killed thounads of Paleilsntians only to provke Iran into war. In a November meeting with the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Barak asked Washington not to rule out the military option against Iran. Israel claims that the speedy rate at which Iran is conducting its nuclear program and the comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel’s final fate indicate that Tehran poses a threat to Israel.

Under pressure from Israel’s devoted ally the US, the UN Security Council has so far approved four resolutions against Iran, asking the country to suspend its enrichment activities, regardless of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regulations. Israel threatens Iran despite its failure to reach the goals it set out to achieve in the onset of its military campaign in Gaza- an impoverished coastal enclave that had suffered devastating economic set-backs because of an 18-month-long Israeli siege. When launching the offensive, Tel Aviv said that it wanted to stop rocket fire into Israel.. Later on, it added toppling the democratically-elected Palestinian government of Hamas to its list of objectives. Now the so-called reigme hange has been added.

By keeping nuclear arsenals hidden from the world community, Israel sya it has a right to attack any coutnry on the alanet comewhatmay. Tel-Aviv thinks show of arrognace pays off on interntional arena. Like the Bush Jr., Israeli leaders also talk about “options, incuding war” are on the table. In a meeting with Quartet envoy Tony Blair on 25 January, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak claimed that Iran’s nuclear program threaten the stability of the region. Barak said that Israel was not taking any option off the table with regards to a military attack against Iran, although it needs to cooperate with, Russia and China “ in light of the threat”. Barak aid this, however, does not take any options off the table”. Barak was referring to the West’s failure to come to an agreement with Moscow and Beijing about imposing tougher sanctions against Iran in the last UN Security Council resolution passed on Iran.

The NPT reserves the right for all its signatories to conduct enrichment as part of a civilian nuclear program. The UN watchdog has confirmed that the rate of Iran’s enrichment is consistent with a civilian nuclear program. Iran which conducts enrichment on the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog refuses to halt the process arguing that it will turn the country into an energy dependant state when its fossil reserves run out.. Despite being used in nuclear weaponization programs, uranium enrichment is not an indicator of possible armament intentions, as the process is also part of the nuclear fuel production cycle. Nuclear technology is new to the world.

Quite contrary to Israeli claims, Iran says Israel is the source of all unrest in the Middle East, being the region’s sole nuclear armed power and a major participant in most wars. Throughout its 60-year existence Tel Aviv has taken part in nine regional military confrontations. In its latest military adventurism, Israel killed more than 2000 people, injured around 5,500, and damaged over 12,000 homes. However, as the crisis unfolded, Hamas rocket fire continued, hitting deeper targets within Israel and even reaching an airbase 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv. Hamas is still in control of Gaza, after the two sides announced separate ceasefires.

Meanwhile, an Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans. Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons. “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force..” He pointed out that “collective deportation” was Israel’s only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.

The terror war unleashed by fascist Israel aiming at holocaust in Palelsitne was thus aimed at annihilating the Palestinians. Israel is engaged in a anti-Palestine campign as part of its political power agenda. The leadership uses Palestinin threat as a weapon to terrize Jews and make them hate Palesitnns. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent.” That is how the Zionist works. Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians. . He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed.”

Israel wouldn’t care much about becoming a rogue state. Creveld was not worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians. He even quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother. Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.” This is the real mindset of Jews and this blood thirst has to be properly understood.

III

Currently Israeli leaders are trying all tricks to escape punishment for the recurrent genocides in Palestine and elsewhere by raing non-issues like Iran. But this time they have to follow the legal rigors and get the needed punishment for their crimes. Needless to state very quickly that it is high itme Israel and its fascist allies brought to justice without delay.

By all means, Israel is a rogue state andit has proved it onvce again recenlty in Palestine. The recent holocaust unleashed by Israel justifies the Iran’s warning about Zionist hidden agenda against Arab Muslims. Clarifying his mistranslated comments about wiping Israel off the map, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly explained that he intended to point out that the regime will disappear the same way the Soviet Union and the South African apartheid regime did.

UN seems to be too weak to stop agents of fascism from invading alien nations on fabricated pretexts. UNSC keeps silent if the affected nations are of Muslim, but if Muslim nation attacks another nation including Israel, the UNSC and USA come to the rescue of them and punish the Muslim nations concerned. USA and Israel cannot dictate polices or rules to Islamic world not they have any special right to invade and annex Islamic nations and kill Muslims there. It is high time world rose up against Israeli aggression and holocaust in Palestine and sought to disarm and punish Israeli leaders as well.

New incumbent in White House should adopt a realistic and humane approach to resolve all conflicts in the world and not to shield Israel from possible punishment for its holocaust in Palestine, but accelerate the punishment process so that weak nations could protect themselves form aggressors and have faith in international institutions and IL. Obama who fought the presidency poll on the theme of "Change" and repeatedly claimed to reverse the hegemonic rules of the Bush regime is yet to begin the work it the earnest, but hints reveal his intent to follow humane policies in place of unipolarity, unilateralism and arrogance of the previous regime. However, it is too early to make perfect statements about US intentions in Mideast right now. Speculations alone would serve the purpose right now.

Bush Legacy for Obama’s Reference

By Dr. Abdul Ruff

A reckless or devastating legacy left behind by an elected ruler could harm the prospects of a new incumbent any where and USA could be a testing ground for this notion’s efficacy.  President Bush, son of a former president, certainly was egregiously lacking in judgment, knowledge, and experience, for the role he was voted into, is keen to leave his successor Obama a free reign as he assumes offices, rather, he intents to keep a troubled world for Obama to begin worrying about. But a US president never worries even when a natural disaster, let alone a terror attack< takes USA or the world under its grips. And the election of Bush Jr.only showed naivety and lack of competence on the part of Democratic leaders, There has been a lack of vision, and lack of judgment and leadership and ideas and thought and understanding throughout our voting population that has resulted in catastrophic destruction of so many lives in Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan and throughout much of Europe as well.

Earlier indications showed Obama would begin to address the issues earnestly by adapting a new way. Wars and blockades kill civilians and do not achieve any solutions. Obama should help the people of Gaza recover from Bush mistakes by forcing an end to the massacre taking place in Gaza and lifting the siege. He must make the American voices heard loudly about lasting peace in Mideast.

I

Bush does not call himself great, of course. Not an outstanding communicator or a diplomat, Bush George W. Bush won two terms as president. His critics like to paint him as the worst president ever. On his watch, terrorists brought down four planes and two world-famous buildings, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein  was deposed and murdered, chaos continued to reign in two nations, oil prices skyrocketed and the worst recession in decades devastated the world economy The outgoing US president hasn’t won any popularity polls lately and he is upset even otherwise. Legacies are determined by the inevitable march of history and the lasting results of presidential policies over the course of time. WMD, terror wars, genocides, tortures, economic collapse, and Mideast wars- all gave poor grades to Bush. But he was not running for re-election, of course.

Though he enjoyed the White House prestige, pleasures and privileges for 8 long years, Bush did not care for world peace because that is not the real US policy goals. He fueled tresnions in regins, because that in indeed the key foreign policy of USA. Though he had the opportunities to settle the Paleisnt issue to herald new phase of Mideast life, he refused to do that to suit neocon interests. Only towards the fake end of his presidenct did he suddenly woke up to see the nneed to settle the Palestine issue and convened a few conferences with Arab leaders and the the concerned parties in conflcit, Palestine and Israelis. And, again, he spoiled  even the meager gains of his much hyped Peace summit in USA last year.

Bush said he would establish new Mideast, but he indeed wanted to squander the resources there. Terror attacks a new trend to bring down elected governments. Terror experts feel interruption of the supply chain to Tehran, sabotage of the materials used for the reactor (including parts and supplies) and other covert actions are having no effect on the “mullahs” who issue fatwas and prayers for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel wanted to purchase bombs capable of destroying, totally, the nuclear facility in Iran and the ability to fly over Iraq to get to the site. What Israel wanted was for America to allow her to do what the entire world is too frightened or timid to do itself. Tel Aviv wanted to display its roguish behavior with Arabs. Many in USA also Bush should have allowed Israeli planes to fly over Iraq and the Administration should have provided Israel with the weapons she needed to do what the world will not.

II

Today many strong countries have nukes and latest nuke technology develop more and more high precision nuclear-abled missiles. But the western powers and their media harp on Iran’s nuclear program. The world knows that Iran is producing nuclear material – that is a fact and is not disputed by even Iran. What is disputed is how to deal with Iranian ambitions, unacceptable to anti-Islamic nations, including India. Iran is considered to be a threat by them, more than the terror leaders of the West who converted the Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan as the latest battlefields killing Muslims every where. There is the continued threat of an arms race in every region, including Mideast because of the instability that a nuclear Iran would create in a region where stability is the only thing that keeps one country from invading another. There are few things that can plunge the world into a world conflagration, but one of them is an exchange of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

The Bush regime maintained secrecy and generated a lot bluff to confuse the world with regard to US intentions of illegal invasion of Islamic world staring with Afghanistan. A report in Associated Press last summer, not widely publicized, talked about the removal of 500 metric tons of yellowcake, an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores, from Iraq to Canada. Yellowcake is not weapons-grade uranium, of course, but is a sensitive and potentially dangerous commodity. While no nuclear WMDs have been found, Saddam Hussein’s ambitions were obvious. It is said Israel requested and was denied permission to fly through Iraqi airspace in order to rid the world of a nuclear facility that will surely be used to produce a militant Islamic nuclear weapon. Earlier, on June 7, 1981 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to strike the French-built Osirak reactor, located 18 miles south of Baghdad.

Bush wanted to make the nukes and technology a basic prerogative of a selected few like UNSC-5 and a few Western countries and all other are essentially anti-Islamic. By espousing the terror threats widely Bush tries to shift nukes from India, Pakistan and elsewhere to these countries, while Israel should posses them endangering the Arab world. Bush is opposed any Islamic nation possessing nuclear weapons.

Bush as the chief custodian of US policies tries his tricks to support Israel against Arab interests and get the innocent and defenseless Palestinians killed by the fascist Jews. By using dollars he gained the support of Islamic world against all Muslim nations fighting for, independence, self-rule and freedom.

III

Bush encouraged state terrorism globally and used terrorism plank to invade Islamic world. He has provoked Israel to invade Gaza to make the true Palestinian salves. Israel continues to expand settlements and Palestinian armed groups persisted in activities defined by one side as terrorism and by the other as resistance. Bush did not press Israel or the Palestinian Authority to renew negotiations while Yasser Arafat, who had the nationalist credentials to make concessions for peace, was still alive. And after Arafat died, Bush did too little to bolster his moderate successor, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Bush's mishandling of relations with Iran has also had a destructive effect across a large arc that stretches from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. Iran supplied useful intelligence assistance when US forces toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, and helped the Bush administration establish the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai at the Bonn conference in early 2002. Bush's response was to include Iran in a rhetorical "axis of evil." Irn’s drive to be in good books of the USA thus failed. After US forces swept Iran's arch enemy Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, Iran offered Bush a grand bargain that would include concessions on its nuclear program, its support for Hezbollah, and security in the Gulf region. Bush disregarded the offer. Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors are paying a high price for that mistake. Against the strong objections of both Abbas and Israel, Bush insisted on holding Palestinian elections in January 2006. When Hamas won a legislative majority, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were stunned. Not only had they rejected the pleas of both their Palestinian and Israeli partners; they refused to take into account the frustration of Palestinians with the corruption and incompetence of the secular nationalist Fatah politicians who had come from Tunis in 1995 to rule over Gaza and the West Bank. Bush's reaction to the Hamas victory made everything worse. He backed an economic blockade of Gaza, discouraging reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and arming and training Fatah security forces to seize power in Gaza. That policy backfired in June 2007, when Hamas conducted its own ruthless coup against Fatah security forces and took complete control over Gaza. an anxiety common to nearly all the Arab regimes: a worry that Bush's fecklessness has allowed Iran, through its arming and funding of Hamas, to supplant the Arab states as prime defender of the Palestinian cause.

IV

Generally, a new incumbent in White House generally tries to be over smart and undo what has been done by his predecessor. Bush took office in 2001 assuming that whatever the Clinton administration had attempted in the Mideast was wrong and not to be pursued. Since Bill Clinton had invested a great deal of time, energy, and prestige in a failed attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement at Camp David, Bush in his first term took a passive stance toward that central conflict. During a speech at the United Nations in the fall of 2001, Bush did explicitly say he envisioned the creation of a Palestinian state, eventually. But he did nothing to shepherd Israelis and Palestinians into peace talks. His passivity allowed a peacemaking opportunity to fade away unexplored even during the most of his time at the zoOval House enjoyng the fights in Mieast and wartching the deaths of innocent Muslims all over the world.

President-elect Barack Obama has an enormous cleanup task ahead of him; he cannot put off for a single day the work of peacemaking and rehabilitation in the Mideast. And Obama must embark upon this most import ant globla task not in search of a Nobel Prioze, but for wrold peace , a main ot that is Palesitne, and another Kashmir, lthird, Chechnya and then the rest would follow towards a peaceful raod.

Obama says the US will take a new approach to dealings with Iran under his leadership. Obama said in a US TV interview screened on Sunday that "Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges". Obama, who won the US presidential election in November, takes office on 20 January and had earlier said there should be no pre-conditions in discussions with the Iranian leadership. He said he was concerned about Iran's support for Lebanese Shia party Hezbollah and Tehran's nuclear enrichment program and that engagement is the place to start. He added he believed his administration would "move swiftly" in its new approach with Tehran.

In the wide-ranging interview, Obama also said he planned a special team to deal with conflict in the Middle East. The Bush administration had accused Iran of developing nuclear technology in order to produce nuclear weapons, but Iran has insisted the processes will only be used to generate electricity. Obama also said a new team would begin work on a wider Middle East peace process when he began his presidency.

At one point, Obama was not ruling out prosecution for possible crimes committed by Bush administration official, but is now reluctant to do so. And he repeated his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, but suggested it might not happen within his first 100 days in office. Obama also criticized the outgoing administration's handling of the $700bn (£459bn) federal bailout plan to help the US banking system amid the global financial crisis. And he said his attorney general could investigate accusations Bush administration officials had abused their power.

However, for every thing he wants to do in the USA and elsewhere as President, Obama needs the concurrence of the Pentagon-CIA and the support of American-Jewish support, not just the popular5 support alone. That is the key tragedy of USA and the entire world.

V: Post-Script

The course of world events will in time determine Bush’s place in the history books. Wars are usually traceable to a failure of statecraft. In the case of the current Israeli assault on the Hamas regime in Gaza, that failure belongs not only to the leadership of Israel but, most tellingly, to the serial blunders of President Bush. The humanitarian catastrophe imposed on civilians in Gaza, the Iranian-supplied rockets fired into Israel by Hamas, and the Israeli missiles landing in densely populated neighborhoods of Gaza City are among the consequences of eight years of Bush administration policy in the Middle East. The disasters of war in Gaza come as the culmination to a long skein of bad decisions, and those errors will burden President-elect Barack Obama with a tangle of crises that he will have to begin addressing immediately.

Obama, marketed to the American electorate as the “candidate of change,” seems to be taking primer lessons now from the same neocons who trained both father Bush and his son Bush Jr on terrorism plank. The election of Democrat Barack Obama as president of the United States was driven in large measure by the disgust of broad sections of the American people with the criminal policies carried out in the name of the Bush administration’s “global war on terrorism” which in practice only means anti-Islamic terror wars with “like-minded” forces. Inevitably, to serve the economic, social and political interests of “his country”, an Obama administration is likely to incorporate much of the same criminal methods that were employed by its predecessor.

US politics of late is infested with pseudo patriotic rhymes. Obama is no different president, when he used hollow emotional statements: “I think that's a basic principle of any country—is that they've got to protect their citizens.” Osama thus would stick to Bush terror strategies. That is, one of the pledges that Obama made repeatedly on the campaign trail, something that was supposed to symbolize a break with the past, would remain just a poll gimmick to fool the educated Us voters and the US policy of torture and detention without charges of thousands of individuals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and CIA “black sites” scattered around the world, would continue.

Obama made it clear that he has no intention of holding accountable those responsible for the political and international crimes carried out over the past eight years. He would let the Republic presidents before him to escape scot-free all terror crimes against humanity. And Sept11 background truth would remain a mystery under Obama. After all both Republicans and Democrats share power and crimes in some ways. And, after all, the Pentagon-CIA global networks plan and execute plans for advancing the American interests every where with the help of similar infrastructures in every country.

Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, among other freedom nations, remain under virtual siege from the colonial and imperialist powers. Look up for instructions form Neocons and other terror advisers on US goals and his own future strategies, Obama is scared of making any statements now defending them in any way. After all, Obama has to survive in the USA, playing politics with Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world as his predecessors did before him.

Palestine is burning now, blood is flowing endlessly. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Kashmir are under foreign custody and genocides. Iran is under siege. Islamic world and the Arab nations play fiddle in desperation, while the anti-Islamic forces continue their rampages destroying Muslim nations, kill and and torture Muslims. Will Obama be able to reach out to them? May God save the Humanity, including the terrorized global Muslims, who are deceived also by their own leaders!