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The Mideast’s Ground Zero


Barack Obama’s goal has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas
rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision.

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January 07, 2009 12:39 pm

Gaza, West Bank, Israel ...Middle East are an area of mass atrocities, as well as high risk of
atrocities and even genocide in the future.
President of the United States can employ more means and bring together more states than
any other person in the World to stop mass atrocities and prevent future genocide in the
Middle East. He should take immediate action now and also call a World Summit on
preventing genocide. This should be the beginning for drafting Universal Declaration of
Human Duties.
World Court in 2007 decided that it is “the obligation of States parties (is rather) to employ all
means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible,” and
therefore “responsibility is (however) incurred if the State manifestly failed to take all
measures to prevent genocide which were within its power, and which might have contributed
to preventing the genocide.” They found Serbia guilty because it “did nothing to prevent the
Srebrenica massacres and that it thus violated its obligation to prevent genocide in such a
manner as to engage its international responsibility under Article I of the Genocide
Convention.”
Just a month ago in “Preventing Genocide” report by Madeleine Albright and William Cohen
urge „America’s 44th president to demonstrate at the outset that preventing genocide and
mass atrocities is a national priority,“ ... „The president should demonstrate that preventing
genocide and mass atrocities is a national priority.“ Ms. Albright concluded "The central
premise of our report is that genocide is unacceptable and that we can and should do more to
prevent it. The United States does not bear this burden alone, but we have both a duty and a
profound interest in helping to show the way."
Dear Mr Friedman, I am Dr. Slobodan Lang. In May of 1996 we were partners in preventing
future atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In your column „Foreign Affairs;Expiration
Date: 12/20/96“, you presented and supported my plea for more respect for the suffering and
the pain and the prejudice that went on here.
Now it is time for action in the whole World.

— Prof Slobodan Lang, MD, FRCH, Zagreb, Croatia


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/opinion/07friedman.html?pagewanted=print

January 7, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

The Mideast’s Ground Zero


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s
the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to
give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And
shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”

That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948:
1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there
be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is
going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to
choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim
face? Let’s look at each.

WHO OWNS THIS HOTEL? The struggle for hegemony over the modern Arab world is as
old as Nasser’s Egypt. But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for
primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has deftly used military aid to both
Hamas and Hezbollah to create a rocket-armed force on Israel’s northern and western borders.
This enables Tehran to stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will and to paint itself
as the true protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Arab regimes.

“The Gaza that Israel left in 2005 was bordering Egypt. The Gaza that Israel just came back to
is now bordering Iran,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at the
International Institute of Strategic Studies. “Iran has become the ultimate confrontation state. I
am not sure we can talk just about ‘Arab-Israeli peace’ or the ‘Arab peace initiative’ anymore.
We may be looking at an ‘Iranian initiative.’ ” In short, the whole notion of Arab-Israeli
peacemaking likely will have to change.

CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By
contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized
Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one,
with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem,
then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

Why? Because nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of
turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers. Because nothing would set back a peace deal
more than if Hamas’s call to replace Israel with an Islamic state became the Palestinian
negotiating position. And because Hamas’s attacks on towns in southern Israel is destroying a
two-state solution, even more than Israel’s disastrous and reckless West Bank settlements.

Israel has proved that it can and will uproot settlements, as it did in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket
attacks pose an irreversible threat. They say to Israel: “From Gaza, we can hit southern Israel.
If we get the West Bank, we can rocket, and thereby close, Israel’s international airport —
anytime, any day, from now to eternity.” How many Israelis will risk relinquishing the West
Bank, given this new threat?

SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s


overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil
war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza,
Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in
Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and,
second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass
murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.

Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the
former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent
Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just
published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues
wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.”

Obama’s great potential for America, noted Indyk, is also a great threat to Islamist radicals —
because his narrative holds tremendous appeal for Arabs. For eight years Hamas, Hezbollah
and Al Qaeda have been surfing on a wave of anti-U.S. anger generated by George W. Bush.
And that wave has greatly expanded their base.

No doubt, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are hoping that they can use the Gaza conflict to turn
Obama into Bush. They know Barack Hussein Obama must be (am)Bushed — to keep
America and its Arab allies on the defensive. Obama has to keep his eye on the prize. His goal
— America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas
rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision.
That’s what will serve U.S. interests, moderate the three great struggles and earn him respect.

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