Eloquent Incoherence

When Israel vacated its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip last year as part of its “unilateral disengagement plan”, Western media commentators described the move as “historic” and generated a media frenzy reporting on every last detail of the settler evacuations. Lost in the hoopla over Israel’s “generosity” was the fact that the evacuated settlers would be resettled not within Israel proper, but within new and expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank. Last December, shortly after the Gaza Strip evacuation was completed, Israel approved a massive expansion of the Maale Adumim illegal settlement, already the largest in the West Bank. Today, Israel approved its first new illegal settlement since 1992 in the northern Jordan Valley specifically to accommodate families evacuated from the Gaza Strip. Both stories were completely absent from the front pages of CNN.com, MSNBC.com (which apparently finds unwanted Christmas presents a more fitting subject for a front page story), and FOXNews.com, and were mere bylines on BBC.com.

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post today about a Saudi human rights lawyer who has made a career out of challenging the Kingdom’s powerful religious police, the mutawwa.

The United Nations has finally imposed sanctions on Iran over its refusal to abandon its nuclear program. The resolution falls far short of what the United States had hoped for (including restrictions limiting enforcement to non-military measures), but still makes it difficult for Iran to further its nuclear ambitions.

This is a significant development, particularly since Russia and China (whose reservations had previously kept the UN from taking any action) are backing the sanctions. It seems to me that Ahmedinejad’s ill-advised remarks about Israel coupled with Iran’s recent conference on the Holocaust made it more difficult for its erstwhile advocates on the Security Council to stall a resolution. In any event, it’s unclear whether the sanctions will end up having a detrimental effect on Iran’s ongoing emergence as a regional power. The “War on Terror” and the ill-conceived American invasion of Iraq eliminated the two main buffers to Iranian influence. If Hamas (which Iran funds) manages to stay in power in Palestine and Hezbollah (which Iran arms and funds) succeeds in its drive for more power in Lebanon, the “new Middle East” that would result might not be the one that Bush and co. had envisioned.

On a related note, I find it rather interesting that the United States and the UN find it so urgently necessary to act over the professedly peaceful nuclear ambitions of a regime that has never taken any aggressive military action against its neighbors (despite its often fiery rhetoric), yet are apparently unconcerned about the recently-acknowledged nuclear capability of a regime that has repeatedly bombed and/or invaded its neighbors and continues to hold three million people under a military occupation. This latest double standard will no doubt widen the gulf of mistrust between the West and the Muslim World.