MIDDLE EAST POLICY SUFFERS FROM SUBSERVIENCE TO ISRAEL
Here's a good argument for you, Nadine ;-)
Georgie Ann Geyer
uexpress.com
Originally Published on December-18-2001
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni has been called home from the Middle East, where he was sent to try to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That's good, because he should not have been there, at least in that subservient capacity, to start with.
President Bush and his administration are doing superbly in Afghanistan -- they have given us carefully wrought and remarkably original policies. But in the Middle East, they are doing exactly the opposite.
In Afghanistan, the president has led from a position of unalloyed strength; he has been utterly clear about where American interests lie and exactly how far we will go to protect them. He has gratefully and graciously accepted the aid of other countries, but he has not let them dictate to him. He has not overreached but rather operated within fully realizable limits and goals. And he has shown an admirable intellectual and gut realization for what the long run will mean there.
In Israel/Palestine, to the contrary, the president has put American power and interests under not just Israel, but under an Israeli leadership with a famously shady political and military past. He has not declared, much less enforced, American interests in the area. He has accepted an historical interpretation of events in the region that is highly questionable. And he seems to tend increasingly toward an overreach that could involve everything from marching through Iraq, to invading Iran, to wiping out whole clans in Somalia.
In fact, if our involvement in the Middle East continues on this level -- without the United States delineating its own interests, intentions and answers to the dangerous questions there -- it could harm or even neutralize the historic work Bush has done in Afghanistan. Strangely enough, it could carry him to the same situation his father faced after the Gulf War in 1991, when he won "the war" but lost the peace because he didn't act strongly enough.
The core of the problem is that President Bush has put American power behind the no-compromise line of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. The legendary and respected Israeli Labor Party is bitterly critical of Sharon -- but the Bush White House ignores it. So American power and principle are seen by the world -- rightly, in fact -- as approving of Sharon's ongoing Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, his intention that eventually the Palestinians should be moved to Jordan, and his assassination squads against Palestinian militants.
In fact, when the president sent Gen. Zinni, one of our most admired retired officers, to the Middle East several weeks ago, ostensibly as a "negotiator," he was really putting the envoy under the Israeli prime minister's direction. Simple political psychology tells us that someone can hardly be a disinterested and fair negotiator when his government's position so flagrantly favors one side.
The White House (although not the State Department) also seems to have missed the real "play" in the dangerous conflict growing in Israel and in the occupied territories. The extremists of the Sharon camp, although masking their long-range intentions, really want to go up against the Islamic radicals of Hamas and Jihad -- then they can have the final battle that radicals always dream of: Sharon's radicals can consolidate control over more Palestinian territory, all in the name of counterterrorism, while the Palestinian radicals dream and plan that they can drive Israel into the sea and out of the Middle East entirely.
Meanwhile, hapless and hopeless Yasser Arafat loses by the day, and the vast majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians who still -- despite all -- favor a peace settlement have no place to turn. Particularly when "all-powerful" America takes such rigid stands behind -- indeed, subsumed in -- the Sharon position.
Ariel Sharon has pushed, particularly since 9/11 and using 9/11, three messages designed to meld the United States firmly to his intentions: l) After the Americans' experience with terrorism, the Israeli and American peoples are one and our causes are one; 2) now the United States has no friends in the Arab world; and 3) in the name of anti-terrorism, the U.S. must now attack Iraq and possibly Iran (some pro-Israeli Americans also suggest taking out the clans in Somalia that killed Americans nine years ago).
Such attacks would allow Sharon to demand more protection from America, both in spirit and in aid. Meanwhile, Israeli military intelligence is warning that an attack on Baghdad would likely cause Iraqi chemical attacks on Israel, but that seems to be a danger Sharon is willing to contemplate in the service of his greater causes.
But it is not Ariel Sharon's fault that the Bush administration has been so subservient to Israel's hard-line policy of the moment; that burden is every day more likely to fall historically on George W. Bush's shoulders.
America's policy in Israel/Palestine, which may in the long run be even more determinant than the conflict in Afghanistan, needn't be difficult to define: It should be, at least in principle, much like our policy toward Afghanistan.
The United States can and ought to make clear its support of Israel, but not of all Israeli policies; it should state what our policies are toward the region, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell's support of the formation of a Palestinian state, yet at the same time delineate concrete proposals with a timetable for implementation.
It should also do what it did not do during the Oslo agreement in the late '90s, which is to monitor, tough-mindedly, the compliance or noncompliance of both sides to agreements. In short, the U.S. should get out from under Sharon's shadow in Israel and from the fear of the withdrawal of campaign funds for American politicians, and act like a responsible superpower. If it does not, the price is going to be high indeed, and for Israel more than anyone. |
