Commentary

Bush Denies the Right of the Palestinian People to Exist

When the Israeli cabinet began to openly threaten Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat earlier this month, it became apparent that the Bush administration was split on the question of how best to eliminate the struggles of the Palestinian people. On one side are those, led by Colin Powell, who have argued strongly against such a move and are presently trying to cobble together various acceptable deals for the Israelis so they can walk away from their threats with significant concessions. Other forces in the administration, including, it became clear last week, President Bush himself, have accepted Israel's claim that it has the right to kill or exile the democratically-elected leader of the Palestinian people.

Speaking to reporters during a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II on September 18, Bush threatened the Palestinians that as long as Arafat was their leader, they would not be allowed to live in peace. "Mr. Arafat has failed as a leader," Bush said. "The people of the Palestinian territories must understand that if they want peace, they must have leadership who is absolutely 100 per cent committed to fighting off terror."

Bush told reporters he was "solidly committed to the vision of two states living side by side in peace and security." He added, however, "that will only happen with new Palestinian leadership committed to fighting terror not compromised by terror."

While much more subtle than Golda Meir's infamous declaration decades earlier that there is no such thing as the Palestinians, Bush's point was essentially the same - to deny the right of the Palestinian people to have a state and to choose their own leadership is essentially to deny their right to exist. Instead, according to Bush, it is the Americans who have the right to determine the leadership the "people of the Palestinian territories" will have.

Not a single member of the Bush administration, however, has ever questioned the right of the people of Israel to elect a leadership opposed to peace. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a well-known war criminal held directly responsible by an Israeli parliamentary commission for the deaths of thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians in refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982.

Far from being committed to a two-state solution, as he claims, Bush seems to firmly hold the view that only the Israeli state has a right to exist.