DIVIDE & CONQUER POLICY BY BUSH AND OLMERT

The US has followed Israel’s lead in developing what can only be called a divide in conquer strategy towards the Palestinians. It is a strategy that could well turn out to be another disastrous move by two leaders – George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert – whose poll ratings in their respective nations are at an all time low.
In the wake of the infighting between Palestinians, followed by the Hamas seizure of Gaza, the two leaders agreed the best course of action was to back Fatah which lost a landslide victory to Hamas in democratic elections in January 2006. Bush and Olmert have now chosen to place their trust in the Fatah leader, Abu Abbas. As president of the Palestinian authority, he has formed a new government based in the West Bank, arguing he had the constitutional authority to abolish the unity government he led with Hamas since February.
Fatah’s under Abbas, and previously under Yasser Arafat, has a history of being a deeply corrupt organization. At the time of Arafat’s death it was revealed he had stashed away a personal fortune somewhere in the region of $100 million. Over the years the Palestinian people have complained that much of the aid that flowed into the Palestinian territories found its way into the pockets of Fatah members. Nevertheless, the US and Israel are now prepared to provide the Palestinian Authority, namely Abbas and his Fatah party, with a large dose of capital. The US has promised a starter package of $40 million and Israel, which has been illegally withholding approximately $500 million owed to Palestinians in tax transfers, may release half of that to Abbas. The only requirement for Abbas as the Israelis see it would be for his Fatah Party, under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority, to publicly recognize what Israel calls its right to exist. However, extracting that recognition of Israel could prove difficult, especially if the rest of the Arab world and many Palestinians begin to view Abbas and Fatah as pawns of the US and Israel, prepared to take money while 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza starve.
The new joint Bush-Olmert policy towards the Palestinians was best articulated by the Israel’s female foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who said Israel should take full advantage of the split between Hamas and Fatah and promote it “to the end” because it separated moderates from extremists.
The US was careful to point out that aid would also be provided for Palestinians living in Gaza under the control of Hamas. However, Israel appeared happy to continue to seal off Gaza to the outside world. Gaza is a tiny strip of land bordering Israel and the Mediterranean and Israel has closed all access to it. It has an unemployment rate of 69% and some observers have argued that it has become a virtual world for Israel’s military to experiment with new weapons, especially surveillance weapons of the type sold to countries concerned about homeland security. The sales of such weapons, of which Israel claims to be the foremost designer, have increased Israeli defense exports by billions of dollars. In fence building alone, Israel has become a leader and one Israeli company has a contract costing several billions to build a border fence between Mexico and the US.
The newly announced divide and conquer policy of Bush and Olmert will likely be opposed throughout the Arab world which has long argued that a solution should be found by Israel talking to Hamas and the unity government it had formed with Abbas and Fatah. European governments had privately signaled a desire to engage with Hamas but Israel and the US resisted, arguing that Hamas was a terrorist organization like Hezbollah in Lebanon. To that end, Israel squeezed the unity government of funds and made no attempt to seek a political solution, even though Hamas offered an extended ceasefire and asked for talks with Israel.
For a deeper insight in how Israel perceives advantage in a divide and conquer strategy and sees no particular benefit in a settlement of the overall Palestinian issue, one has only to read a recently leaked “confidential” document that was ignored by the US media. It was the “End of Mission Report” from Alvaro de Soto, the retiring UN envoy in the region. In it, he condemned the violence of Hamas and the corruption within Fatah in his report but he reserved his sharpest criticisms for Israel and the US.
He lambasted Israel for financially squeezing the Palestinians and noted that irrespective of its role as an occupying power under international law it had been guilty of the following:
“…the killings of hundreds of civilians in sustained heavy incursions and the destruction of infrastructure, some of it wanton, such as the surgical strikes on the only power plant, as well as bridges in Gaza.”
He condemned Israel’s refusal to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in customs dues owed to the Palestinians and sanctioned under international law.
“It is Palestinian money,” he pointed out.” This is money collected from Palestinian importers and exporters. It adds up to a third of Palestinian income and pays the salaries of PA employees.”
He added that, while Israel insisted on Palestinians adhering to international principles, the Israeli government flouted those principles by making it impossible for the PA to deliver basic services to the Palestinian people. In his opinion, Israel’s actions were never approved by the Quartet of nations - including America and Russia - that had developed a policy towards a two state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, two members of the Quarter, the EU and Russia, had been prevented from speaking out on this issue by the United States.
“One wonders if it is credible to judge the viability of a government to deliver when it is being deprived of its largest source of income?” de Soto asked.
Regarded by many throughout the UN as a moderate, Alvara de Soto used sections of his report to focus on Israel’s power to influence the UN and the US. He felt that in his time at the UN, Israel had been allowed “unparalleled access to the UN Secretariat at the highest levels,” and it was not because Israel had skilled permanent UN representatives. It was due to what he called a “seeming reflex,” whereby in any situation in which the UN had to take a position, the first reaction of UN staff was to ask first how Israel and Washington would react rather than what the right position was.
“I confess that I am not entirely exempt from that reflex and I regret it,” he wrote.
He concluded that the UN had to be more frank about Israel’s failings with regard to the Palestinian issue and had to be careful not to buy into the “multitude of diversions and excuses that the Israel political system can produce, sometimes in good faith, other times not..”
In his time as envoy, he became convinced that a broad swathe of Israeli opinion knew time was not on Israel’s side but the Israel tendency was to deal with immediate and not long term issues such as the need for a final settlement of the Palestinian issue.
“We are not a friend of Israel if we allow Israel to fall into the self-delusion that the Palestinians are the only ones to blame, or that it can continue to ignore its obligations under existing agreements without paying an international price in the short term and a bitter price regarding its security and identity in the long term.”
On the issue of Israel’s constant demand for recognition, de Soto had this to say:
Similarly unrealistic is the demand for the recognition of Israel, which sometimes slides into forms of words such as “recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” despite the fact that a consensus in Israel itself on its Jewish character is absent, and despite Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and colonization of large chunks of it. As Colin Powell said: “You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start’. Unfortunately, the international community, through a policy hastily laid down, has gone along with Israel’s rejectionism, making it very difficult to climb down even if Israel decided to do so.”
De Soto felt Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert had adopted a similar rejectionist stance towards Syria at the instigation of George Bush and it was totally unrealistic to expect Syria to give up negotiating cards before negotiating.
Just before he began his envoy role in the Middle East, de Soto bumped into former US Secretary of State, James Baker who told him to be strong because “those guys can smell weakness a mile away.” De Soto soon discovered it was sound advice and interpreted it as follows:
“What James Baker was warning me against, clearly, was the tendency that exists among US policy-makers, and even amongst the sturdiest of politicians, to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences. It has become vividly clear to me these past two years that the same ensuing tendency towards self-censorship – treating Israel with exquisite consideration, almost tenderness – exists at the UN partly for our own reasons – the legacy of the Zionism-racism resolution, and the resulting political and budgetary cost for the UN, and Israel’s demonstrated capacity to undermine US-UN relations.”

The full text of De Soto’s “End of Mission Report”
can be found at:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf