UK -Politics & World Current Affairs

This is the original piece, which was printed in Arabic in Asharq al-Awsat Saturday January 2, 2010, but then they back-translated into English (http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=19420 )which made little sense, hence I had to put it on the blog ( which I normally wouldn’t do with pieces published in the media)

ONCE AGAIN  the derogatory term “Londonstan”, resonated among world security chiefs referring to Britain as soon as it was revealed that that Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to trigger explosives on a passenger flight approaching Detroit airport, had been radicalised by Islamists extremists during his three years study in Britain.

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6 July 2009

When former Prime Minister Tony Blair was giving oral evidence to a House of Common Select Committee last month,  a leading New labour figure was overheard whispering to a colleague ‘ my god, what have we done !’.
Appearing in his current role as the Middle East Peace Quartet (EMEPQ) envoy before the all party Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC) Mr Blair articulated his assessment of how to overcome obstacles impeding the peace process towards the two state solution in Palestine, while remaining in a calm control of the two and half hour session.
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15 January 2008
 Seen in Israel as its staunchest ally, President George ‘Dubya’ Bush waited seven years before his first official visit to the Jewish in his ‘ mission impossible’.

 Adel Darwish, on President Bush’s Middle East Tour.
 

Analysts, as well as parties involved, agree on one thing: It is less clear what the President would  bring his hosts apart from gridlock. Analysts point out that every party in the troubled region had different aims and expectation from the American leader’s grand Middle East Tour.

Pessimists, a majority, expected nothing more from Mr. Bush than just nudging the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which he re-started in Annapolis in November to move a few steps ahead ; and  to reassure himself that America’s allies can still be rallied against Iran.

After his joint project with a Mr. Tony Blair, failed to materialise his Wilsonian vision of bringing democracy to the Arabs in a domino effect starting in Iraq, Mr. Bush saw Palestine as the door left open to walk into history books. But he has little time to leave a mark comparable to his predecessors’. President Jimmy Carter’s failure to rescue American hostages from Iran, was offset by associating him self with the Egyptian Israeli 1979 historic peace treaty.

Ronald Reagan set the scene for winning the cold war without firing a shot; while George Bush Snr is admired for liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and remembered fondly by less grateful Arabs for starting the peace talks and for giving ‘ naughty’ Israel a financial smack on the wrist by freezing $10bn loan facilities.

Dubya Bush took office only days after his predecessor Bill Clinton let an Israeli Palestinian peace deal slip through his fingers, in an attempt to offset his pathetic response to al-Qaeda attack on American embassies in East Africa. Instead of  uprooting the terror organisation from Afghanistan, his critics say, he comically fired a dozen or so cruise missile costing a million dollar a piece tt some Afghan terror tents worth 10 bucks.

Mr. Bush jnr, on dad’s advice, had no intention in getting his feet stuck in the ever-shifting sands of the Middle East, focusing instead on economy. But Messers Bin Laden and Zawahiri had a different idea in September 2001 forcing him into a bigger quagmire, that only a Carter like peace deal can wash its mud .
 
Nicked-named by the Economist as ‘Mr. Palestine’ , Mr. Bush was the first American President to commit  himself to establishing a ‘ viable’ Palestinian state, within his ‘two democratic states’ vision.
He Put Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the spot by saying he expected the two sides to sign a peace treaty before the end of the year following his January 10  talks with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

At the Annapolis summit  Mr. Abbas, and Israel Prime Minister Ehud promised to talk fearlessly to one another about “final status” issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.  Mr. Bush, a man who in the words of an Arab diplomat ,  ‘get on and do what he has set his mind on doing, regardless of being right or wrong’; wanted to be remembered as a leader who planted the seeds of  peace in the holy land;  yet many seasoned Middle East observers say his plan was too ambitious to square the Palestinian Israeli circle in the time frame he set.

The president heard, from both sides their familiar complaints. While expressing gratitude for a big boost in foreign aid inspired by Annapolis and coordinate by Mr. Blair, Mr. Abbas told the President that Israel’s recent announcement of new tenders for housing in West Bank settlements, many seen as illegal in international law, jeopardises the fledgling talks. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described an expansion of Har-Homa, a settlement near Jerusalem as ‘ unhelpful’.  
Mr. Olmert too made the familiar complaint about The Palestinians inability to deliver on security, which pushes Israel to take harsh measures that, in turn, makes ordinary Palestinians lives difficult, festering more hatred for Israel.

Theoretically, and in the eyes of International law, President Abbas is the lawfully elected head of what looks like a Palestinian state representing the entire nation. In reality, he only controls the West Bank while Gaza is controlled by the Islamists Hamas, who, Arabs, Israelis and Americans alike agree, backed, financed and armed by Iran and  Syria to stop the very peace settlement President Bush’s tour was trying to secure.

Hamas’s refused neither to stick to agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority with Israel, nor to a deal signed with the rival Fateh for a coalition government under Saudi auspices last year, and staged a bloody coup that drove all of Mr. Abbas’s officials out of Gaza last summer.
Rockets, fired by militants from Gaza, on almost daily bases, at Israeli towns  are seen by many as Hamas inspired. President Bush’s arrival was greeted by salvos of rockets fired from Gaza and a few fired by some previously unknown Islamic Organisation from Southern Lebanon, believed to be an arm of Hezbollah.
 Mr.  Olmert’s  rating in the polls is the lowest in Israel’s 60 years history, and musters little support from the  public for any move on settlements as demanded by the Palestinians and the Americans. 
 

Adel Darwish - 27 Dec-2007

These are the first thoughts and observations after the assasination of the Pakistan opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto. There is the usual, wrong spin from the left making the wrong conclusion, while there is real fear of what might happend next.

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London October 9, 2007 

Diplomats and Foreign observers attending the ruling  Labour Party conference  this year ( October 2007) questioned whether there has been a significant shift in British foreign policy, especially in the relationship with America and Prime Minister Gordonm Brown committment to America’s war on terror. But despite what appears to be change of policy, inter-departmental memoranda instructing all officials to refrain from the use of the term’ war on terror’, there is very little change in the main trends of British foreign policy. There might be some shift in emphasis, but the substance of foreign policy especially in Middle East, relation with Europe and committment to EU, the committment in Afghanistan, have not change.

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First published in London-Saturday  November 18,2006

By Adel Darwish

Ignoring some challenging issues to focus instead on self gratification when their adversaries are in trouble is a phenomenon bedeviling left wing intellectuals, whether British and Europeans or Egyptians and Arabs. And since “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,'’ the leftists’  anti-Americanism has pushed them, perhaps by coincidence rather than by choice, into the same camp of backward, reactionary, and extreme fascist and other totalitarian movements.

To prove their point that America’s project to promote democracy in the Greater Middle East was a daft idea, many lefties wish Iraq’s government – the first democratically elected in half a century in that country- to fail. And since the main target of the so called Iraqi ‘resistance’ are ordinary Iraqis including women and children, it is blindly obvious that the price of the lefties  ‘proving their point’ is  Iraqis and Afghanis blood, while other oppressed nations’ would miss a historic opportunity to break free from despotism. Wouldn’t this put the leftist intellectuals in the same bloc as forces of corruption, darkness and totalitarianism? 

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London- 16 Novmber

In His annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s dinner at the Gild Hall in the City of London, where Prime Ministers traditionally outline their foreign policy strategy, Tony Blair gave a review of his and provided some options for President George Bush to sort out the mess in Iraq.

By Adel Darwish

 British Prime Minister Tony Blair was quick to call for some practical steps to discover the sliver lining in the clouds of the latest electoral storm to hit President George W. Bush’s ship which was sailing with a broken compass using ancient charts on which there were no marks to identify some new currents and streams of some dangerous perils. Blair’s diplomacy is subtle and wise. He does not embarrass his allies nor does he antagonise his adversaries. He used the traditional Prime Minister’s speech during the Lord Mayor’s dinner at the Guildhall in the city of London – an annual event marking the election of the new Lord Mayor  John Stuttard- to  explain British foreign policy. The Prime Minister outlined the priorities of his policy commencing with solutions to issues in the Middle East and Iraq, and the war against terrorism.

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London- 11 August :

A group, of mainly British Muslims, was plotting for the past eight months, to smuggle chemicals aboard planes and assemble liquid bombs during the flights and blow them above the Atlantic or above US cities, three at a time, causing maximum death. But fighting terror by security measure alone is not enough; we must fight the ideology of the terrorists, and free young Muslim minds from the hands of evil clergy who preach violence and terror. By  Adel Darwish.

The stress to Londoners and the tension engulfing the place, not to mention to mention financial and economic losses especially among British Muslims, were only comparable to those that followed the terrorist attacks on 7/7 last year, which claimed more than 50 lives, and injured more than a hundred of from several ethnic and religious backgrounds including Muslims. If it wasn’t for a mixture of luck – or divine providence –, alertness of MI5, Special Branch and other security agencies and the cooperation from many British Muslims, the disaster would have been of a much larger scale than 7/7 and the loss of life would have been much higher than that of last July, and even the losses at of Bali, Taba, Sharm al-Shaykh, and perhaps 9/11.

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