On the coming political theater at Annapolis
Manila Ryce picked up a timely piece by Noam Chomsky on the forthcoming Annapolis Conference where an agreement between Palestine and Israel may be forwarded. (For added pleasure, he provides a video interview of Chomsky debunking the claim that Iran needs to be countered by force.)
One of the impressions I’ve gotten over the past 6 years is that a quiet policy of the extremist neocons in our government is to keep our attention elsewhere in the Middle East, allowing Israel carte blanche to do whatever its government wants to the Palestinians and Syrians, much more aggressively than it was able to do when the international spotlight was centered on Israel instead of Iraq. In doing so, the Palestinians are at a decided disadvantage coming into this conference, trying to salvage something from a border division process that resembles more of a checkerboard than an actual country.
Imagine if the higher priced neighborhoods in LA or New York City were connected by highways and everything in between and around, particularly the poorest neighborhoods, were left for Palestine to cobble together and call a state.
Will anything come from Annapolis? I predict it’s little more than a PR exercise designed to placate Bush’s Arab allies, than to produce any settlement. After all, OPEC will be deciding in December whether to stop using the dollar as its currency, which Bush has to try and forestall.
Thus the theater of the absurd unfolds. Unfortunately, if Bush doesn’t enhance the prospects for a settlement, thinking the Arab nations will accept whatever, he’s likely to find his allies tired of being played for fools. Which only adds peril to our already faltering economy. In short, we’ll continue - along with the Palestinians - pay the price for Bush’s crooked and incompetent gamesmanship.
