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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 566
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WCL 566 Sep 2007
Freedom and democracy
The half-century since Israel was created and dispossessed Palestinian Arabs has seen various permanent, irreversible, changes. But nothing has been done to solve the underlying problem: lack of adequate recompense and proper settlement for the refugees then created. Apart from new and recent problems arising from more tyrannies and injustices, this has remained at the heart of the intractable difficulties of the region. Present western policies are set not to solve but to perpetuate this and other failures.
The current method of bringing these twin benefits of Freedom and Democracy, as proclaimed by George Bush, to the Middle East, following the comprehensive disaster of Iraq, is to send $20 billions of armaments to the least democratic regimes in the regime. To offset this lurch towards tyranny, the burgeoning apartheid but democratic state of Israel is to be stocked still further with weapons of war. This bizarre initiative, trumpeted as a move to create security and stability in the region, will ensure even more hostility and tension among the neighbours of Iran and Iraq. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad".
This Bush mantra of freedom and democracy could have hopes of being brought into reality in a way not originally envisaged by the present U.S. administration. This is by a scheme devised to cope with the deteriorating relationship of the U.S. with Saudi Arabia which has alarmed the military, fearing that troops in Iraq will come under further and perhaps fatal strain. The support for the Sunni insurgent groups makes the American position in Iraq even more vulnerable than it already is.
A suggestion for dealing with the Saudi situation both imaginative and even revolutionary involves a full reversal of policy; instead of supporting the Saudi royal family, taking it under close tutelage and control. This would note that some 50% of the Saudi population consists of foreign workers. These people are essential to the state: without them it could not function: they could be used to run it.
The Saudi royals would be told that their oil wealth was to be allocated to other Arab states for economic development and democratic education. The princes would be pensioned off and encouraged to find useful employment. Above all, the money would be used to raise the standard of living of the Palestinians who have for three generations existed in refugee camps in Lebanon or in similar situations in Gaza and the West Bank.
The idea will resound well with the mass of people of the region: it could prove the best answer to propaganda of Al-Qaeda and terrorists currently causing chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not likely that any such shift in priorities and use of resources could appeal to the present Arab rulers and the possessors of oil wealth. But that is no insuperable objection, because prospects for peace and a settled region would be a benefit of far greater scope than anything that will come from the new bounty of American arms that is now about to flow.
John Roberts
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