Current Bulletin Issue - Volume 17, Bulletin 4, December 2004

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Turkey P.L.O Turkmenistan

Afghanistan Philippine Repablic

POINTS TO NOTE AND DEVELOPMENTS TO WATCH

1. The unseemly running after Mahmoud Abbas by European foreign ministers may be due more to the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe than to a genuine desire for peace in the Middle East. It was no accident that the Quartet "road map" to peace stipulated the pre-condition that the Palestinians stop their terrorism and confiscate illegal arms. Abbas has shown no sign of readiness to do so. What is more, he did not even condemn the carefully planned attack on an Arab unit in the Israeli Army stationed near Rafah that killed five men and wounded several more. The optimists may expect him to behave differently once he has been elected. The pessimists believe that then he will find other excuses for continuing Arafat's policies - and they are probably right.

2. Benyamin Netanyahu reminded the Labor Party that the Oslo Agreement is dead and the Clinton-Barak concept of peace (conceding the PLO almost everything it wants) has died with it, superceded by the Bush concept that recognizes Israel's right to retain some of its 1967 conquests. This is strictly in accord with the legally binding English text of UN Security Council resolution No.242, which the Arabs, the French and sometimes the UN itself have tried to transmogrify into a demand that Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. Whether or not Labor joins the Sharon Government, it would be interesting to find out whether it still shares the PLO's views about these borders. If it does, its prospects of reversing the decline in its public support do not appear bright.

3. The newly elected ruler of Afghanistan does not appear to have made any headway in dealing with the warlords who effectively control most of the country. Though the period during which he has been in power is too short to draw conclusions from this, there is nothing to indicate that the forces at his disposal are strong enough to do the job. One of the side effects is that drug dealing and poppy growing are as flourishing as ever (see Afghanistan section below).

4. Largely due to deliberate OPEC output contraction, oil prices are ridiculously high, adversely affecting the economies of developed and developing countries alike. One of the possible remedies is a Western shift to Russian oil. Another are economic reprisals against OPEC states.