Israel’s War on Terror
Did U.S. policy on Israel change Monday?
By Eli J. Lake, State Department correspondent for United Press International
December 4, 2001 9:10 a.m.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared war on Yasser Arafat and the Bush administration didn't say a word.
"Israel does not start wars," Sharon told reporters in Jerusalem Monday. "This war of terror, as in the past, has been forced upon us. We know who has forced it upon us. We know who is guilty. We know who is responsible. Arafat is guilty of everything that is happening here."
Sharon made these remarks after his helicopters destroyed Arafat's helicopters in Gaza and just before his F-16s destroyed a police station in Jenin and Palestinian security buildings in Bethlehem.
Sharon's response to the weekend's violence should not come as a surprise. Close to 30 Israelis, most of them young men, died after three bombs rocked a shopping mall in Jerusalem and another blew up a bus in Haifa. Despite promises from Arafat, none of the terrorists he let out of jail in the first two months of the Intifada are behind bars. And Sharon has warned of harsh responses before.
What is surprising is the lack of evasive evenhandedness from Washington on Monday. Usually Israeli military action in the wake of Palestinian terror prompts a stern rebuke from the state department and a milder rhetorical slap on the wrist from the White House press secretary.
This echoes the careful dance between Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush on Middle East policy, with Bush being the good cop for the Israelis and bad cop for the Palestinians and Powell playing his opposite.
Not this time. On Monday Ari Fleischer did not, for example, call for Israeli restraint, warn Israel about provocative actions, or stress the desperate need for negotiations. He did however say that Sharon did not ask for and President Bush did not deliver a "green light." Instead he repeated the president's call for Arafat to live up to his commitments and the president's statement that Israel has a right to defend itself.
The closest thing to the cycle-of-violence rhetoric favored by the administration's peace processors was when State Department deputy spokesman Phil Reeker said, "We think the Israelis and both sides need to consider the repercussions of their actions so that peace can be achieved." Reeker was asked repeatedly if he would ask the Israelis to restrain their attacks and he didn't take the bait.
No finger-pointing or hand-wringing about the possibility of targeted strikes against Palestinian terrorists and only a fleeting mention of the need for both sides to talk to each other, almost as an afterthought. Instead everyone from the president to Phil Reeker has called on Arafat to comply with the Israeli demand to arrest and keep incarcerated the terrorists he let out of jail months ago. Reeker couldn't even bring himself to say that the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves in the same way the Israelis did.
The majority of American foreign policy towards Israel and the Palestinians post-Intifada consists of something called the press guidance — the words the spokesman for the secretary of state is told to say in response to questions from reporters. The only tangible thing the state department usually does in a conflict it would like to see peacefully resolved is bemoan the absence negotiations.
The guidance is watched carefully by most embassies in Washington and is fought over in long meetings most mornings between the various offices inside the state department and other corners of the government. Indeed, one State Department official told me that several Arab ambassadors called the state department after the briefing to ask why Reeker couldn't say the Palestinians had a right to defend themselves. They also complained that Arafat lacked the means and physical infrastructure to arrest the extremists.
When the guidance isn't working and it rarely does, envoys are sent to the region to bang heads and get the two sides to start negotiating. The latest American envoy in the region is a retired Marine general named Anthony Zinni. He has been booed on the streets of Jerusalem and watched in his one week on the ground the situation he was sent to defuse unravel into war. Zinni, is likely to be brought back to the United States by the end of the week if, in the words of one Foggy Bottom official, "the situation further deteriorates" which it probably will.
The guidance is usually a more polite and less detailed version of what U.S. diplomats are telling their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts. For example, when the Israelis talked to the Americans on Monday, "we didn't call for restraint," this official said. "It just sounds too hypocritical.
Did U.S. policy on Israel change Monday? It sure looks like it. Did the president give Sharon a green light? Well yes. If you don't believe me, just look at the guidance.
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