Good or Bad?: George Mitchell as US Middle East Envoy

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Thursday January 22, 2009 23:47

by redjade

Obama picks George Mitchell as Mideast envoy 'to make Gaza truce last'

United States President Barack Obama on Thursday named former Sen. George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy, saying one of his key tasks would be ensuring that the cease-fire in Gaza lasts.

In a news conference at the U.S. State Department, Obama said the outline for a "durable cease-fire" in Gaza was clear.

"Hamas must end its rocket fire, Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza. The United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime so that Hamas cannot rearm," the new president said in his first major speech on the region as since he took office on Tuesday.
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One of Israel's aims in its recent 3-week offensive against Hamas in Gaza was to halt the smuggling of weapons into the coastal territory.

Obama also reaffirmed his commitment to reaching a peace for the Middle East.

[....]

Best known for peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland, the former Senate majority leader, 75, also has experience in the Middle East. Mitchell was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to find ways to halt Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, lauded Mitchell's appointment.

"As the United States and Israel continue to work jointly on achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, and of countering the common threat of terrorism and state sponsors of terror from acquiring nuclear weapons, we warmly welcome and congratulate Senator George Mitchell on his appointment as special envoy for Middle East peace," Meridor said.

• more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057919.html

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Comments (3 of 3)

Mitchell will have to confront Israeli 'zero-sum thinking'

Tue Jan 27, 2009 08:02

Gershom Gorenberg writes:

''...It’s zero-sum thinking: even-handedness means a gain for Arabs, therefore a loss for Israel. It does not include the possibility that fairness will lead to peace, which will be better for Israelis and Palestinians (though perhaps damaging to Diaspora organizations whose fundraising depends on constant anxiety that Arabic-speaking cossacks will storm Israel, misimagined as shtetl.)

[....]

[It] means Mitchell faces a very difficult challenge. In order to promote Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he may need to promote internal Palestinian talks, aimed at creating a unified leadership with popular legitimacy.

Doing that will be just of one of the things that will inspire resistance from the government here and from the Diaspora hawks...

• more at http://southjerusalem.com/2009/01/foxman-rosner-and-oba...rise/

Chomsky on George Mitchell

Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:47

AMY GOODMAN: Obama’s new Middle East envoy, former senator George Mitchell. Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: In Ireland, Mitchell did quite a commendable job. But notice that in Ireland, there was an objective, and he helped realize that objective: peaceful reconciliation. Britain took into account for the first time the grievances of the population, and the terror stopped. OK? And the terror was quite real.

In Israel, again, you have to look at what he avoided. He says, “Yes, we want to have a Palestinian state.” Where? OK? He said not a word about—lots of pleasantries about everyone should live in peace, and so on, but where is the Palestinian state? Nothing said about the US-backed actions continuing every day, which are undermining any possibility for a viable Palestinian state: the takeover of the territory; the annexation wall, which is what it is; the takeover of the Jordan Valley; the salients that cut through the West Bank and effectively trisect it; the hundreds of mostly arbitrary checkpoints designed to make Palestinian life impossible—all going on, not a word about them.

So, OK, we can have—in fact, you know, the first Israeli government to talk about a Palestinian state, to even mention the words, was the ultra right-wing Netanyahu government that came in 1996. They were asked, “Could Palestinians have a state?” Peres, who had preceded them, said, “No, never.” And Netanyahu’s spokesman said, “Yeah, the fragments of territory that we leave to them, they can call it a state if they want. Or they can call it fried chicken.” Well, that’s basically the attitude.

And Mitchell had nothing to say about it. He carefully avoided what he knows for certain is the core problem: the illegal, totally illegal, the criminal US-backed actions, which are systematically taking over the West Bank, just as they did under Clinton, and are undermining the possibility for a viable state.

• more at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/23/noam_chomsky_obam..._gaza

Good, bad, or indifferent . . .

by Fred Johnston

Sat Jan 24, 2009 03:13

Sending Mitchell is simply throwing shapes. Until the US permit the EU to exercise serious sanctions on Israel and stop sending arms to the Israeli Army to enable the slaughter of Palestinians, nothing will change. If Mitchell were sent to head up a commission to investigate Israeli war crimes, that might be getting somewhere.

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Good or Bad?: George Mitchell as US Middle East Envoy

Comments (3 of 3)