Posts Tagged ‘Suez Canal’
I wrote in a previous article that “Israel has no longer any strategic allies in the region, not even minor allies: The people in the region guarantee that no State regime in the region will dare schmooze and negotiate with any Israeli leader who refuses a Palestinian State, support the resumption of building in occupied land, and is not serious of transferring the Jews of colonies in occupied land back to Israel. Not a single State around Israel is scared of Israel’s military retaliation of any kind: the people have risen from the ashes of humiliation and imposed foreign policies.
The regime of Shah of Iran has long vanished since 1979, Turkey has been alienated and Israel still refuses to apologize for the crime against the peace boat incident, Mubarak of Egypt is down. Tunisia of Ben Ali is down; the people in Jordan are putting the squeeze on the Hashemite monarch; the people in Lebanon have fired ex-PM Saad Hariri; the Palestinian Authority is discredited with the latest WikiLeaks and Hamas of Gaza and the West Bank are is on the ascendance.”
Fact is, Israel shares two common denominators with Lebanon and the Palestinian people.
First, Lebanon political system comprehends that to sustain security and stability it must support a stable Syria and satisfy its strategic policies in Lebanon. The same mentality coincides in the relationship between Israel and Egypt: Israel considered in the last 30 years that its stability is strategically linked to a stable and secure Egypt. There is a single fundamental difference: While the Lebanese share strategic, social, trades, historic, and geopolitical features with the Syrians, what the Israelis share with the Egyptians? A “peace treaty” signed by Egyptian dictators?
Second, Israel and the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza are totally dependent on the European States economic and financial support; not just for long-term development but actually for daily survival. Period!
Thus, Israel believed that it could flaunt the US policies for a Palestinian State as long as Egypt is stable and secure; Egypt closing its borders with Gaza; Egypt harassing Hamas for various reasons; Egypt supporting and planning Israel preemptive wars against Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza…
Israel should no longer expect free oil and gas from Egypt. What is this deal signed in 2005 for Israel to getting Egyptian gas paying just one dollar when the market price is $85 per million unit of gas? No more free phosphate from Jordan. No more free water from Lebanon and Syria. No more lands by force or negotiations. No more moving nuclear submarines through the Suez Canal…
The policies of the US for establishing the so-called Greater Middle East is down the drain: the US invasion of Iraq has been routed; the US troops in Afghanistan are readying to retreat from a war that cannot be won; the credibility in the sanity of the US Administration’s policies in the Middle East region has disintegrated; the faulty programs of the International Monetary Funds have not been revised for transparency and discussion with the concerned parties that led to the latest upheaval in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen.
Israel has to come down its high horses: Israel is a tiny and artificial State, barely surviving on the economic and financial support of the European Union and the USA; Israel depends on subsidized goods and preferential status for open market in the European markets.
Israel is no longer in a position to play coy and humiliate the US and everybody else during the negotiation of a Palestinian State, not even Saeb Erakat, one of lame and cowardly Palestinian negotiators. The crude statement of Tzipi Livni (Israel ex-foreign affairs minister) “To create your Palestinian State, you have got to agree with Israel in advance on everything. Your only choice is to relinquish any choices in the future. Those are the founding bases for negotiation” is one of Israeli posturing relegated to history bins.
The Palestinian State in formation, already recognized by Russia, most of Latin American States, and Cyprus, refuses to be totally dependent on Israel economy, finance, and military support. The Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza will demand total withdrawal of Israeli troops to the 1967 border; it demands the dismantling of all the Jewish colonies in occupied land; it refuses swapping small portions of lands to legitimizing forced settlement; it wants borders with Jordan and Egypt, it wants and an international airport and a maritime port and full autonomy. A new election for the Palestinian people is necessary before the resumption of any “peace talk” with the extremist Israeli government and all the major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, will be represented in the negotiation team.
This masquerade of offering free parcels of land to Israel, a parcel from here and a parcel from there and pretty soon there is no land to giving away, is no longer accepted. The quarters of Har Homa, Gilo, the Armenian quarters, Ariel, and Maaleh Adumin belong to East Jerusalem, the Capital of the Palestinian State.
Israel has a new window of opportunity to live in peace . Israel shred to pieces the Oslo agreement of 1993 and is refusing to return occupied lands in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. This makeshift democratic mask, hiding blatant apartheid policies, can no longer be sustained by the Western States with the frequent public Israeli policies reinforcing the apartheid and racist activities.
Israel has to fulfill two requirements for short-term peace and security. First, Israel has to return all conquered lands in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Second, it has to facilitate the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, the sooner the better. Israel has to desist demanding unfeasible conditions such as Syria disengaging from Iran or pressuring Hezbollah to disarm.
The long-term strategic policy to living in peace and be accepted in the region is for Israel to start demonstrating that it has the interests of all the people in the region as her own for survival and human development: What rational State refuses to comprehend this basic requirement?
Down with the Wall of Shame separating people along the dividing line. Time for Israel to deal with the UN Charters for human rights, prisoners rights, legal prosecution processes, crimes against humanity, sex market, slave market, drugs market, arms market.
If you analyse the causes of wars since the 17th centuries you will discover the modern definition of war. War is the unethical, immoral, but legal mechanism to rounding up the surplus turbulent and employed lower middle class citizens and suspending paying off interest on sovereign debts to “enemy” creditors, due to political and economic internal crisis.”
The expedient short-term political decision of aggressing other nations is reasoned to getting two birds in one shot. First, The vast pool of unemployed lower middle class citizens, constituting 60% of the population, are sent abroad and thus, relieving the internal political pressures for any change in the political and economic structure; hopefully, many will die and reduce or eliminate the danger of political upheaval. Second, the enemy is targeted to be one of the major creditors, invariably judged to be weaker militarily, so that the government will default on the contracted sovereign debt, not only on the interest portion, but on the principal as well.
What are the consequences? On the short-term, we may consider two cases.
First case, the enemy creditor turned out not to be that weak militarily and the war lasted longer than expected (as is inevitably the case). Thus, a treaty is signed after the cease-fire, and the creditor becomes a mandatory power controlling the economy; which means the creditor gets the right of cutting out its share first of any income before the government obtains its share. In general, the creditor obtains the monopoly of the main exporting product such any raw material, cotton, rubber, oil… The creditor might demand war reparation as well, if he judges that the political system of the enemy is strong enough to withstand political backlash. In fact, all defeated governments have in mind projects and plans to preempting the high probability that the returning defeated army might revolt and demand political changes.
Second case, the enemy creditor lose the war, but since he is considered a developed “modern” nation, by the standards of the period, the victor will end up just defaulting on the sovereign debt. Both nations are back borrowing like crazy in order to maintaining the political status-quo. Now the creditors to the two warring nations are powerful nations and eventually will impose their control in the medium-term. The two nations have been superseded in economic power. Historical examples are recorded of the fates of Venise, Genoa, and Holland.
The consequences of the third case are on relatively the longer-term. The enemy creditor is weak militarily and also considered among the developing countries. The victor colonize the enemy creditor in order to generating quickly raw materials and opening another market for its products. The victor finds out that he needs to borrow money in order to build infrastructures in the colonized country for producing and transporting the raw materials. Slavery turns out counterproductive: First, there is resistance to foreign armies and colons; and second, harsh measures decimate the population and slow down production and market population; and third, the powerful creditors put pressures to having a share in the production. In the long-term, the powerful creditors supplant the victor as the colonial power.
There are many examples to back up these real scenarios. The US was the major creditor to colonial Spain and ended up taking hold of Cuba and the Philippines. England was the main creditor to monarchic Egypt and got hold of the Suez Canal from the French who made it possible. England allowed France to colonize Algeria hoping that France would be able to repaying its sovereign debts. France withdrew from South Vietnam and left it to the US because it could no longer sustain a losing national resistance battle: That was a mean French decision since the US will be broke after ten years of fighting the Viet Cong: Nixon had no choice in 1968 but to leave the dollar uncovered by gold, thus, forcing the US to back up its useless paper money through military threats that is going till now. Unfortunately, China and Japan are no weak enemy creditors to chastise them at every political and economic crisis.
By 1914, Germany was the first industrial nation in Europe, the most powerful militarily, and the most populous after Russia (65 million). Germany was the prime creditors of Russia, France, and even England. All European nations adopted isolationist policies in trades, meaning setting high tariffs for imported goods in order to protect internal productions. Germany needed the Congo (a Belgium colony) to export its surplus of goods and citizens, other wise, imminent political problems might be generated by joblessness and inflation if no resolution of its surpluses in goods and men were found. France and England refused Germany any relief valves and were uncomfortable with being debtors to Germany. The WWI could have been avoided if borders were opened for free exchange of goods among the European States. The US was also very worried that opening the borders in Europe would certainly permit Germany to becoming the next superpower. The war generated 18 million of casualty, and over 20 million during the flu epidemic, and set the stage for WWII.
The most current case is the Iraqi’s preemptive war that lasted already 9 years. In 2002, the US was broke, as usual, but also witnessing high unemployment rate. Afghanistan was supposed to be the enemy. Wrong. Iraq was targeted because of its rich oil production: “democracy stupid”. A quick razzias was planned but turned out sour and deadly. Not only oil production in Iraq slowed down drastically, but the US had to borrow over one trillion dollars to “prosecute” the war. All the allies withdrew and China replaced the US in the vast African market under the helpless watch and tacit agreement of the US administration. To make things worst, sovereign debt of the US increased exponentially, as well as unemployment rate. Back to the devilish cycle with a harsher financial crash.
Adonis Diaries 