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Middle East newspaper cuttings 2/11

Daniel Brett | 03.11.2001 02:01

From the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU)

Spectator:
Don't make Israel the first casualty by Efraim Karsh
 http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2001-11-03&id=1253
Incredible inaccuracies.
Extracts: "But this resolution does not demand Israel's complete evacuation of these territories but rather its withdrawal 'from territories occupied in the recent conflict'. The absence of the definite article 'the' from the text is anything but accidental. Issued a mere six months after Israel's astounding triumph over the concerted pan-Arab attempt to obliterate it, the resolution reflected the keen international awareness of the existential threat posed to the Jewish state by the pre-1967 borders, memorably described by the then Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, as 'Auschwitz borders'."
"the Palestinians were widely viewed at the time as refugees rather than a cohesive nation deserving its own state,"
"Barak's government was not only adopting a highly generous position over Resolution 242; it had also uncritically endorsed the Arab (mis)interpretation of this resolution as supposedly requiring Israel's complete withdrawal from the territories. Yet even this failed to satisfy the Palestinians. Rather than reciprocate Israel's sweeping comprehensive offer of land with a similarly generous offer of peace, the Palestinians responded with wholesale violence"
"Arafat's talk about the implementation of UN resolutions is not motivated by a desire for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, something that was virtually his to take last year. Rather it is a euphemism for a 'Greater Palestine' built on Israel's ruins."

Daily Telegraph

1) New York doesn't want your $10 million, I told Saudi Prince, by Rudolph Giuliani
 http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/dt?ac=006453110060164&rtmo=qKbLMKu9&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/01/11/2/do01.html

(And there are quite a lot of excellent charities etc and causes and people who would!)

The Guardian

1) Leader: How not to win a war

extract: US military tactics have meanwhile shaken the coalition so painstakingly glued together by Colin Powell. Muslim deaths, coupled with US inability to curb Ariel Sharon's parallel excesses, have been more than enough to shatter the illusion of Islamic solidarity. Amid this alienation and loss of sympathy, hopes that the crisis could prove a catalyst for Palestine or Kashmir have vapourised
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,585278,00.html

2) The return of the B-52s, by Richard Norton-Taylor extract: By root causes, the British government appears to mean poverty and hunger rather than action to establish a Palestinian state or tackle Arab grievances about Iraq and US troops in the Middle East. It is a supremely patronising and arrogant response. It is also misleading. Al-Qaida draws many of its most militant supporters, including suicide bombers, from families of the elite, not the deprived.
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,585347,00.html

3) The costs of suppression by force may now be too great, by Martin Woollacott
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,585250,00.html

The Times
1) Leader: The Blair Shuttle
 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,56-2001381260,00.html

2) A tough tour of duty in the Middle East , By Simon Jenkins
extract: Whatever should be done to aid peace in the Middle East should not be occasioned by bin Laden. I might normally cheer at America "leaning heavily on the Israelis". Now I am appalled. That Hamas and Hezbollah should be granted a triumph denied to Yassir Arafat, thanks to bin Laden, is obscene. That economic justice and a concern for human rights should be sacrificed to the cause of bombing the Taleban is to deny the essence of war.
 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001381254,00.html

3) Saddam holds the franchise on terrorism and it is time he was ousted, By David Hart
 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001381257,00.html

Remarkable claim in the title. As ridiculous as saying the US holds the franchise on war.

Extract: "But even if Bush and Blair do achieve their objectives, removing Saddam Hussein from power would be more likely to re-establish Western deterrence against Islamic terrorism than anything we do in Afghanistan."


The Independent
1) Leader: Carpet bombing is losing us the propaganda war and may prove to be futile
 http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=102707

2) David Aaronovitch: The Middle East tragedy is that a solution is so obvious
 http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/david_aaronovitch/story.jsp?story=102709

(I am afraid it is even simpler than Aaranovitch suggests)

Daniel Brett
- e-mail: dan@danielbrett.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.caabu.org