• by Johan Galtung
• Tuesday, February 01, 2011
• Inter Press Service

For a long time, the US-Israel alliance (inspired by Isaiah 2:1- 5, "out of Zion shall go forth the law... and he shall judge among the nations...") has created --by force or bribes or both- -"friendly governments", or "allies in the peace process" as US Vice President Joe Biden - Obama's foreign policy expert- says. This pattern is now unraveling before our eyes, writes Johan Galtung, professor of Peace Studies and author of "A Theory of Conflict".

The pattern has five layers: Palestinians inside Israel; Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; Israel's Arab neighbors (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt); the rest of the 22 Arab states; the rest of the 57 Muslim states. Knowing that 350 million Arabs and 1,560 million Muslims cannot be controlled directly, they seek indirect control via the countries' own governments. What they pretentiously call a "peace process" is a hopeless project, at most a short-lasting unstable equilibrium.

The unraveling has no precise beginning in time or space. It is rather a process, with the US policy of "peace by pieces" resisted from the start. Palestinians inside Israel have been ambiguous, partly bribed into accepting second class citizenship in a Jewish theocratic state. Palestinians outside have been divided, e.g between PLO and Hamas, West Bank and Gaza. After the revelations by Al Jazeera and The Guardian on 24 January of the moral corruption of PLO negotiators, Hamas is stronger than ever, with a base in Syria, which never boarded the US-Israel Titanic. Lebanon is increasingly ruled by Hizbollah; in Jordan, where the CIA outmaneuvered the peace-oriented Crown Prince Hassan in favor of King Abdullah, there is revolt. In Egypt much more so, Yemen and Somalia revolted long ago; things happen in Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan. And behind looms Turkey.

(*) Johan Galtung, a Professor of Peace Studies, is author of "A Theory of Conflict" ( www.transcend.org/tup).

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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