Tekboy, what do you make of this? I would have thought that Sept 11th changed US policy in quite a dramatic fashion, just not in the direction they'd like. Is it so hard to understand that a monstrous attack from the Arab world, which the Arab world viewed with thinly-veiled joy, would not move US policy in their direction? Who thought it would cause the US to waste more unproductive time on the Palestinian issue? In short, why claim 'puzzlement' now?
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Arabs Puzzled Why Sept. 11 Didn't Change U.S. Policy
Role in Mideast Conflict Has Caused 'Confusion'
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 2, 2002; Page A21
CAIRO -- If Sept. 11 was a turning point in the way the United States deals with terrorism, many in the Arab world hoped it would also change the way America tackles the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those hopes rose even further when, several weeks later, President Bush spoke of his vision for a Palestinian state.
And so, Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani said in a television interview last week, it is difficult to admit the truth as it is now seen through Arab eyes: Neither lobbying by American allies in the region nor the impact of the terrorist attacks has altered the path of U.S. policy, which seems ever more tilted toward Israel.
There is, he said, only one option.
"We have to beg," Hamad said. "The word 'beg' disturbs me, but begging is the right word, for the Arabs don't possess the power, and their situation doesn't allow them to exercise any pressure in favor of the Palestinians."
Few have put it so candidly. But Hamad's remarks reflected a broad anxiety that has developed among Arab leaders, analysts and citizens as they have seen U.S. policy evolve since Sept. 11. For them, it has moved not toward bridge-building with the Arab world, but into neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which many in this region view as central to U.S.-Arab relations.
That the United States could live through Sept. 11 and not move more forcefully to resolve a dispute that has inflamed suicide bombers and increased the popularity of radical groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, mystifies even the staunchest Arab allies.
"What people in the West don't seem to realize is that this has an impact, that the U.S. has relinquished its role as honest broker, facilitator," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said in an interview.
The Americans "have vanished," Maher said. "People don't know what the U.S. is up to. There is a lot of confusion, and this is no time for confusion. It is very serious."
As the cycle of suicide bombings and Israeli military action continued in recent weeks, the Bush administration followed Israel's lead in placing more of the blame on the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
In a climate poisoned by Israeli assassinations and Palestinian suicide bombs, by the destruction of Palestinian homes and the discovery of a shipment of arms bound for Palestinian hands, U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni has suspended his efforts to broker a cease-fire. In Congress, there has also been talk of breaking relations with Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Arab commentators and officials say it is as if Arafat's marginalization has become a metaphor for the region as a whole. Just as the Palestinian leader has seemingly lost any leverage he may have had with the Israelis, so, it seems, have the Arab states been unable to sway the United States. That is an outcome seen here as contrary to U.S. interests and to efforts to curb the extremism underlying the Sept. 11 attacks.
The leaders of states close to the United States, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have repeatedly appealed for more U.S. intervention. But they have little to show for it except a growing worry that the United States has discarded any hope of working with Arafat, who remains the only Palestinian Arab perceived as capable of delivering a durable peace agreement.
"Arab officials have reached a state where they can't give people justification or tell them 'we are working on something,' " said Hisham Youssef, a spokesman for the Arab League. "This is probably the worst time that we have seen. . . . It has confronted people with their weakness."
"It is a totally new ballgame," said a Jordanian political scientist, Radwan Abdullah. "Everybody is baffled, including the leadership in the Arab world. Nobody understands the U.S. policy. They don't know how to deal with it. If they tried to convince the public that by following a pro-American stance they can exert some influence, it is now out in the open that their influence is near zero."
Criticism of U.S. bias toward Israel has been a staple of regional politics for decades. However, U.S. influence and relations in the region have grown steadily deeper in spite of it. Following its U.S.-brokered peace accord with Israel in 1979, Egypt became a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid and arms, and has accepted hundreds of American advisers and contractors to help overhaul its economy, administration and military.
Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait allowed the United States to strengthen long-standing ties throughout the Persian Gulf. Every Gulf state now hosts a U.S. military facility, from the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain to a forward-based tank brigade in Qatar.
However, that took place against the backdrop of steady, if slow, progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement and a general belief that, even if the United States was not on the Palestinians' side, it would at least be a reasonably neutral referee. The United States oversaw such substantive breakthroughs as the post-Gulf War Madrid Conference and was usually at the ready in a crisis with talks or meetings that provided at least the appearance of movement.
If even the pretense of engagement disappears, and the peace process is fully abandoned, Arab officials and analysts say, U.S. relations in the region will enter an uncharted and difficult era.
Self-interest and inertia may prevent any quick rupture. Saudi Arabia in particular realized in the 1970s that an oil embargo, for example, hurts producers as much as it hurts Western consumers. And it would be difficult for countries such as Egypt and the Gulf states to wean themselves quickly from the U.S. military technology and defense systems installed over the past 10 years.
But frustration was building long before Sept. 11, as a year of renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians put neighboring Arab governments under public pressure to find a way to influence the situation. The Saudi crown prince, Abdullah, wrote President Bush in August that differences over such issues as Palestine might strain a long-standing friendship. The Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan, suggested, meanwhile, that future military contracts may prohibit bids from companies that help arm Israel.
If anything, such feelings are now being compounded by the sense that, since Sept. 11, the United States seems to many Arabs to have become even more immune to the counsel of its allies here and more unilateral in its decision-making. A new U.S. public relations team may be working on strategies for improving the United States' image, but the substance of U.S. policy has produced little more than heartache, columnist Fawaz Turki wrote in the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News.
"At this moment in history, we have become so dependent a people that we expect our political destiny in Palestine to be determined for us by capricious rulers in foreign capitals," Turki wrote. "Have we been left by the wayside and become irrelevant in the global dialogue of cultures?"
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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