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Welcome, Mr President, to the misery you've created

George W is continuing his swing through the Middle East and has even suggested he will return next May to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary. His intention is, to say the least, insensitive - for Palestinians view the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 as having caused the displacement of many of them either driven off their land or dispossessed of it. Yet again, the US shows its one-sided position and approach to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

Writing in The Guardian, Jonathan Steele, a veteran journalist in the region, puts the Bush visit into some sort of context:

"Bush's engagement in the world's most intractable dispute is late, piecemeal and phoney. Above all, it is one-sided. As Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian minister, remarked this week: "Palestinians agree that in the history of the United States, Bush is more biased toward Israel than any other American president." In any conflict, responsibility for making the largest concessions always rests on the stronger party, especially when most of the wrong is on its side. But, despite his rhetoric yesterday, Bush has not used Washington's enormous leverage over Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

He has not even applied pressure for an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements or the dismantling of the spider's web of roadblocks that make normal life for Palestinians impossible. A US plan for benchmarks by which to judge Israeli progress was quickly abandoned last spring at the first whiff of concern by Olmert's government. Occasional state department pronouncements disapproving of settlement expansion are not followed by measures to reflect US anger when - as happened in Jerusalem again on Wednesday - Olmert makes it clear he will continue the illegal construction of Israeli homes.

Any talk of dealing with "core issues" is meaningless without measures to reduce the daily hardships of Palestinians and end the kidnapping of hundreds of Palestinian leaders. About 40 Palestinian MPs who were seized after Hamas's election victory two years ago remain in Israeli prisons, uncharged and seemingly forgotten by Bush and other western governments. US and European policies towards Hamas remain hopelessly unjust and counterproductive."

The full piece can be read here.

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