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Remembrances of Past and Present

© lawhawk

This coming week marks the second anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist who believed that Rabin's policy was not leading to peace, but instead giving away Israel's security for a false sense of security. In the past two years, Rabin's political party, Labor, has been supplanted by the opposition Likud party, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu, as the primary force in the Israeli government although each party garners roughly equal support among Israeli citizens. The anniversary has been marked by over a week's worth of ceremonies and remembrances to mark the occasion.

Additionally, this week the US will continue to attempt to push its agenda on two fronts in the Middle East. First, the US will try to bring Palestinian and Israeli negotiators back to the negotiation table for the first time in months in a hope to restart the peace process and put the timetables back in motion to give the Palestinian Authority wider control over the West Bank and push towards a final determination of the status of Jerusalem that was promised in the Oslo Accords and under previous peace agreements and the UN Resolutions 242 and 338.

Speaking the UN, the Iraqi situation continues to be a thorn in the US side. US officials continue to hold the line that they are enforcing an embargo and allowed under UN auspices to search for and, if necessary destroy, weapons of mass destruction. For the better part of the last month, Iraq has refused to allow the US to send its contingent of inspectors along with the other UN groups to search for these weapons production and storage sites. Under the agreements signed by the parties resulting from the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the US and UN are pushing this agenda and hoping that Iraq buckles under worldwide pressure.

Meanwhile, the situation among the Iraqi citizenry is worsening since many chemicals have both civilian and military purposes such that their import and production is greatly limited by the embargo. Water borne infections are prevalent throughout much of the country and most look to the US as their cause, not the Iraqi leadership. It would be wise to adopt a strategy that allows the US to maintain its presence on the UN search teams while allowing the Iraqi people access to the goods and services that they need to improve their standard of living.

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