More of the hyprocricy:
Israel Adds a Complication to Anti-Terror Diplomacy
washingtonpost.com
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 23, 2001; Page A20
By harshly denouncing the actions of one of its closest allies, the United States yesterday implicitly acknowledged that its traditional alliance with Israel could gravely complicate its new war on terrorism.
The immediate issue is the Israeli government's military offensive into Palestinian territory on the West Bank, which the State Department called "unacceptable." But a larger strategic issue for the United States is preserving Arab participation in the international coalition that the Bush administration is counting on to facilitate and legitimize its war against fundamentalist Muslim terrorists.
Israel's incursion into the West Bank raises the prospect of an ugly confrontation with the United States at a bad moment for both these old allies. The Israelis, angry and anxious after the assassination last week of Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi, are in no mood to be pressured by Washington. And U.S. officials, preoccupied by the need to hold together the new anti-terrorist alliance, are impatient with events whose timing could not be worse.
If Israeli-Palestinian violence escalates, "Arabs will say it's hard for us to be seen doing things with you [Americans] at a time like this," said Dennis Ross, who retired last year after serving for more than a decade as a U.S. mediator in the Middle East.
Anxious to head off that kind of Arab reaction, U.S. officials from President Bush down have urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to escalate the violence, and have called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to bring the assassins to justice -- so far without success.
"We have to recognize that this can complicate our campaign" against terrorism, said Martin Indyk, who served two terms as ambassador to Israel under President Bill Clinton. Israeli-Palestinian tensions can be "exacerbated by bad actors . . . who may share Osama bin Laden's objectives," Indyk added, referring to the leader of al Qaeda, the terrorist organization the Bush administration says was behind last month's attacks. "If they can provoke Sharon, that will help Osama bin Laden, and that will hurt us," Indyk said.
Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, said that although the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is "not directly related to bin Laden, the two do spill over, and they add to the atmosphere in the region, which is sharply negative to the United States." Scowcroft was referring to the hostility toward U.S. support for Israel that is palpable in every Arab country.
In the days after the attacks on New York and Washington, Israeli citizens and officials expressed hope that the sudden experience with terrorism on U.S. soil would bring Americans closer to Israel, which has endured terrorist threats and acts since its founding in 1948. Sharon and other Israeli politicians sought to establish the idea that bin Laden and Arafat were comparable, and that new U.S. anti-terrorist campaign should be directed against such Palestinian groups as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, along with al Qaeda.
When, instead, the United States made clear its intention to rely on Arab states as key members of a new anti-terrorist coalition, many Israelis felt trepidation. Their fear of being sold out increased when the Bush administration declared in early October that it favors eventual creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an announcement intended to reassure Arab opinion of U.S. evenhandedness. Though the Clinton administration and many Israeli officials previously had endorsed the goal of a Palestinian state, the style and timing of the U.S. announcement worried many Israelis.
If Sharon ignores yesterday's State Department statement and Arafat fails to crack down on terrorists, including those who killed Zeevi, the United States and its Arab allies will face a new diplomatic crisis, with no attractive options.
Samuel Lewis, who served as U.S. envoy to Israel from 1977 to 1985, said the United States once again would have to take an active role in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, something the Bush administration has avoided. "There has to be some kind of diplomatic carrot out there, not to be acted on at this very minute, but to try to improve our bona fides with the Arab countries," Lewis said.
Internally, administration officials have discussed the possibility of enunciating a U.S. "vision" for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said yesterday that "we have no plan" to do so.
"This administration desperately doesn't want to engage" directly in the negotiations, said a senior Republican close to the White House. "They don't have a solution. They thought Clinton was over-involved. And my guess is that the president remembers what happened when his father took on the settlements issue, and he just doesn't want to do it." This was a reference to the elder Bush's denial of U.S. credits to finance construction of new Israeli settlements on the West Bank, which provoked controversy in Israel and among its U.S. supporters.
Another potential complication is the history of Israeli resistance to U.S. pressure at times when Israel feels seriously threatened. Shlomo Avineri, an Israeli political scientist, said that Israelis considered making concessions to their Arab neighbors only when they were feeling relatively secure -- which is not the case today. "Even if the U.S. adopts this policy [of pressuring Israel], it will not work," Avineri said.
Middle East experts and former diplomats noted that bin Laden appears to have grasped the potential usefulness of the U.S.-Israeli connection. For years, he denounced the West primarily for occupying the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia. But in a taped statement released after the United States and Britain began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, bin Laden said: "I swear by God . . . neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine."
According to Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, a specialist on Arab public opinion, this formulation struck a responsive chord in the Arab world. "It's not a question of liking Arafat or even the Palestinians as a people, it's that this issue has become part of the collective identity of Arabs and Muslims," Telhami said.
Resentment of America is engendered by U.S. support for Israel "and deepened by the Israeli use of sophisticated U.S. weapons in its attacks on the Palestinians," said David D. Newsom, a former undersecretary of state with long experience in the Muslim world. Anti-American sentiments in the Middle East, often encouraged by Arab governments eager to deflect any criticism coming their way, create "fertile ground for anyone that wants to recruit terrorists or oppose the United States," Newsom added.
But those sentiments cannot be eliminated simply by formulating a different policy toward Israel, said Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador. "Our support for Israel has always been a fuel for anger in the Arab street, but there are a lot of other reasons for it as well," Indyk said. "We shouldn't be sucker-punched into believing that that's the problem and if we dealt with that problem, everything would be hunky-dory."
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