Turning Sunni and Shia against each other. Title Annotation: Commentary Author: Salt, Jeremy Article Type: Report Geographic Code: 7IRAQ Date: Mar 22, 2007 Words: 4553 Publication: Arena Journal ISSN: 1320-6567 The surreal appointment as special 'peace envoy' to the Middle East of a man who shares responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, was announced as the Israeli military launched its biggest single attack on Gaza since the electoral victory of Hamas in January 2006. Thirteen civilians were killed, but the news was overshadowed by greater events--the release of Paris Hilton from prison and, of course, the replacement of Tony Blair as Britain's Prime Minister by Gordon Brown. As special envoy for the Quartet (1)--which Alvaro de Soto (Kofi Annan's own special envoy to an invisible peace process) described in his confidential end-of-mission report as no more than a club of friends of the United States--who could be a better choice? The 'road map', launched by the United States in 2003, was 'PR' from the beginning. Conditions were laid down that Israel had no intention of meeting and the United States no intention of enforcing. Unilateral 'disengagement' from Gaza was Israel's means of putting the road map in 'formaldehyde', as a spokesman for Ariel Sharon put it, allowing his government to be portrayed as taking peace seriously while getting on with the job of expanding settlements and constructing its 'security wall' on the West Bank. In the words of Alvaro de Soto again (his report was leaked to the media in June 2007), Israel's non-compliance with the road map, which required it to freeze settlement activity and allow the opening of Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem, has been 'total'. It is not even so that Israel has disengaged from Gaza. The settlers have gone, but the strip is fenced off, surrounded by military posts, closely monitored from land, sea and air, and subject to air strikes and targetted assassinations. Israel also decides when Palestinians can leave Gaza and when they can return, when its goods can be exported and when its fishermen can go out to sea. The chokehold has been tightened since the election of the Hamas government in January 2006, creating one of the most desperate places on earth. Ahead of the Palestinian elections in 2006, the Quartet called on all parties to respect the democratic choice of the people. The people did make their democratic choice. They voted Fatah out and Hamas in, not just because of the corruption, cronyism and gangsterism bequeathed to Fatah by Arafat, but because they had completely lost faith in the 'peace process' and the 'international community'. The United States and the European Union showed their respect for democracy by ganging up on Gaza. All financial aid was stopped--with destructive humanitarian consequences intended to disable the Hamas administration. Mahmud Abbas watched in silence from the West Bank, allowing himself to be used for photo opportunities by Ehud Olmert and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy spokesman. When the Hamas government was still standing after a year, the Saudis were brought into the picture to set in motion a different plan. The Mecca Agreement (February 2007), which led to the establishment of a Palestinian government of national unity, is now seen by Hamas as the ploy that it was. It was a Trojan horse, which put Fatah inside the government and allowed Abbas to claim that the government was illegal when Fatah withdrew. Ahead of the Mecca negotiations, the United States, Israel and Egypt had already been building up a force of Fatah loyalists strong enough to defeat Hamas if the confrontation between the rivals reached the stage of street fighting. Abbas was provided with weapons and millions of dollars in 'aid' for the strengthening of the presidential guard. Fatah cadres were sent to Egypt for paramilitary training and sent back to Gaza. At the centre of anti- Hamas activities there was the Preventive Security Force, whose former head, Muhammad Dahlan--a man who is despised by many Palestinians even inside Fatah--remained Abbas' security chief. When fighting finally broke out in June amidst the collapse of the unity government, it was Dahlan's people who were routed. The Preventive Security Force compound was stormed and Abbas' Gaza office ransacked. Posters of Arafat were thrown to the floor or ripped up, such is the contempt he now arouses as the man who led the Palestinians into the worst disaster they have suffered since 1948: the Oslo 'peace process'. From Ramallah, Abbas accused Hamas of launching a coup, when it was his actions over a long period of time that reeked of treachery. Under the Palestinian constitution the President has the power to declare an emergency only with the approval of the Prime Minister and in consultation with the Speaker of the Parliament (Article 129). Emergency measures can be continued for more than thirty days only, with the approval of two-thirds of all of the members of the House of Representatives. The state of emergency was declared and continued without Abbas meeting any of these requirements. But having received recognition from the United States, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and the European Union's Javier Solana, Abbas went to Sharm al Sheikh to kiss cheeks with Egypt's President Mubarak, Abdullah of Jordan and Olmert. In the short term, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank looks good for Israel. The Palestinians have now been split right down the middle: openly, geographically and politically. But it might also be said that the decks have been cleared by bringing to an end a bogus peace process. It will be continued by Israel in the hope that Abbas will put his signature to a treaty while insisting that the core issues (Jerusalem, borders, refugees) be postponed. Olmert must think the Palestinians have forgotten that this is precisely what Israel did at the start of the Oslo process. In the meantime, the task ahead for Israel is to keep Hamas out of the negotiating process and prevent it from gaining ground on the West Bank. There is only so much it can do through Abbas. The Fatah militias have already refused to obey his orders to put down their weapons, and the more Israel tries to do the job for him, the worse he is going to look. US policy in the Middle East is now buckling under the weight of its own contradictions. These were symbolized by the recent announcement of the US military command in Iraq that it would be distributing weapons to Sunni insurgents as long as they promised to use them against Al Qaida and not American troops. As the Iraqi Prime Minister is a Shia the US command can hardly say that it would like the Sunnis to use their weapons against Shia groups, especially the Mahdi Army of Muqtadr al Sadr, but they would seem to be the real target of this tactical alliance with Sunni insurgents. Aligned with Iran, and armed by Iran, according to the US and British governments it is Shia who represent the most serious challenge to the occupation and not marginalized groups inspired by an ideology alien to most Iraqis. While quietly fomenting sectarian division (between Sunni and Shia, and between the Kurds and the rest), (2) the United States is using Iraq as a springboard for special operations inside Iran aimed at identifying possible targets for a military attack and destabilization of the regime through acts of sabotage. Iran has been further goaded by the 'arrest' of hundreds of Iranians inside Iraq and the accusation that it is providing insurgents with some of the sophisticated weapons being used to kill US and British troops. War preparations naturally include satellite surveillance. In June, Israel launched the Ofek 7 spy satellite, which defence officials said gives Israel 'unprecededented operational capabilities'. (3) It is described as being far more advanced than the Ofek 5 satellite, whose orbit is reported to take it over Syria, Iraq and Iran every ninety minutes, or the Eros B satellite, launched last year, whose telescopic camera can pick up objects on the ground as small as seventy centimetres long. In their struggle to contain the lengthening, widening and deepening 'Shia crescent' across the Middle East, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have realized they could have no more effective tools on the ground than the Al Qaida-type groups they keep telling the rest of the world they want to destroy. The rise of Hizbullah has turned Lebanon into a focal point of a plan to contain 'radical' Shi'ism and destroy the strategic alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. Its ability to stand up to Israel not once (1982-2000) but twice (2006) has turned Hasan Nasrallah into one of the most popular figures in the Middle East, among Sunnis as well as Shia. In May 2007, fighting erupted between the Lebanese army and a radical Islamic group called Fath al Islam, which had based itself inside the Nahr al Barid Palestinian refugee camp in the hills close to the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. The immediate cause of the conflict remains obscure. As the story unfolded it turned out that many of the Fath al Islam fighters were not Palestinians but rather Saudis or Yemenis. This was curious in itself. What were they doing in a Palestinian refugee camp? Syria was immediately accused in the western media of setting up Fath al Islam as a weapon to be used against the beleaguered and unconstitutional (since the withdrawal of all Shia elements) Siniora government.