VOL. XLVI
No 24
16
The Political Scene (16 June 2003)
The launching of the road map to peace last week has occasioned a familiar spiral of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. In Iraq, US administrator Paul Bremer has begun consultations with a view to selecting an interim authority. Protesters in Tehran have targeted President Mohammad Khatami as well as his conservative opponents.
Predictable Mayhem
It was to be expected that Palestinian rejectionists would seek to sabotage the ‘road map’ to peace launched in 'Aqaba last week with attacks on Israelis and that the Israelis would help them out by retaliating against Palestinian targets in a spiral of violence as pointless as it was familiar. And so it turned out after five Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian assailants in Gaza and Hebron on 8 June and Israel tried (and failed) to assassinate Hamas leader 'Abd al-'Aziz Rantisi in Gaza two days later. Hamas’s reply was not long in coming. On 11 June a suicide bomber killed 16 people aboard a Jerusalem bus, shortly after which Israeli helicopter gunships killed 9 Palestinians, some of them members of Hamas, in two attacks in Gaza. By MEES press time on 13 June 37 people had died on both sides in the last 48 hours and no end to the violence was in sight.
The Americans took an unusually dim view of the attempt to assassinate Mr Rantisi, with White House spokesman Ari Fleischer saying on 10 June that “the president is concerned that the strike will undermine efforts by Palestinian authorities and others to bring an end to terrorist attacks and does not contribute to the security of Israel. In looking at the progress that must be made for the road map and then looking at this attack, the president is deeply troubled by it.” However, after the Jerusalem suicide bombing (and some lobbying by Israel’s friends in Washington) things reverted to normal and the Americans decided to put the blame on the Palestinians (although not on the Palestinian Authority, at least so far). Somewhat bafflingly, President Bush on 12 June appealed to “all the free world, nations which love peace, to not only condemn the killings but to use every ounce of their power to prevent them from happening in the future,” while Mr Fleischer said that “the issue is not Israel, is not the Palestinian Authority, the issue is the terrorists who are killing in an attempt to stop the process. The issue is Hamas, the terrorists are Hamas.” At least this stops short of blaming Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud 'Abbas for the mayhem, but it is not a good sign for the peace process that AIPAC – Israel’s lobby in Washington – described Mr Fleischer’s statement as “another example of the clarity the administration is bringing to the subject.”
Bremer Consults
Against the background of continuing low-intensity attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, US administrator (or viceroy) Paul Bremer launched the process of selecting the interim authority the Americans now have in mind with a meeting with representatives of various political groups – including the increasingly marginalized seven-member “leadership council” that was originally the Americans’ main interlocutor – on 6 June. A Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) spokesman claimed on the same day that “we don’t plan to appoint leaders. We envisage the names for this will emerge largely by consensus,” but there were few signs that such a consensus would be easily achieved. For one thing, there was talk that the leadership council might go ahead with the scrapped national conference to select an interim government anyway. (Kurdistan Democratic Party spokesman Hoshyar Zebari said on 6 June that “as Iraqis, we need our own program regardless of what the Americans intend to do. Our decision is to pursue our plans for a national conference.”) For another, the largest Shi'a group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told Mr Bremer that the group would not participate in any interim government that was not chosen by Iraqis alone – according to SCIRI spokesman Hamad al-Bayat, “we can’t take part in a body which isn’t seen to be either elected or selected exclusively by Iraqis…It has to be chosen by Iraqis through one of the mechanisms we suggested – either a national assembly or representatives of different parties and groups.” The one positive result of the 6 June meeting, according to a coalition spokesman the next day, was that Mr Bremer had agreed that the interim authority could appoint “interim ministers” rather than advisers to coalition-run ministries, as well as representatives for regional and international organizations. However, the spokesman also made it clear that this concession was largely cosmetic, since “obviously they would have to have coalition advisors sitting alongside them.”
Riots In Tehran
The riots in the center of Tehran in mid-week were remarkable chiefly for the fact that they were directed as much at President Mohammad Khatami as at the country’s conservative clerical establishment, which suggests that some of Mr Khatami’s supporters have given up hope that he will ever be able to carry out his reformist plans. They also occasioned blatant American interference in Iran’s internal affairs when State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declared on 12 June that “we view with concern the arrests of protesters taken into detention simply for voicing their political views, and we expect the regime to protect their human rights and release them.” Mr Boucher also said that “Iranians, like all people, have a right to determine their own destiny. The US fully supports their aspirations to live in freedom.” That is a noble sentiment, and one that would be all the more believable were the Americans to espouse it in the West Bank and Gaza as well.
Charles Snow