..... more from that article......... FOR THE Saudis and Egyptians, Beirut must be considered a success. No one in Washington is now talking about September 11.
No one is talking about the instrumental Saudi and Egyptian roles in poisoning the minds of two generations in the Arab world. No one is talking about the key aid Saudi Arabia has given to Palestinian fundamentalist groups, preeminently Hamas, which sent the kamikaze holy warrior into the Israeli seaside hotel in Netanya during Passover. No one in the administration--the president excepted, of course--has stood up to issue a scathing philosophical denunciation of this death-wish phenomenon, to state in irreversible words that anyone who labels a suicide bomber a "martyr" in a "war of resistance" is beyond the pale of civilization.
With the exception of the president, the Bush administration seems to want to hold itself captive to the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation--by default or by choice, to define that conflict in terms inoffensive to the Saudis and the Egyptians and, beyond them, the "Arab street," supposedly represented by the Arab League. The Bush administration's panic to have Arab and Muslim cover for future action against Iraq has left it rhetorically defenseless.
The administration is now in an unpleasant spot. Saudi Arabia and Egypt--its two heavyweight Arab "allies"--have no intention whatsoever of forcing Yasser Arafat, or any of his minions who may succeed him, to accept a settlement along the lines that Arafat rejected at Camp David. A clear-cut, maximalist position has been laid out in Beirut, a stand that allows the Arab nations to claim the cause of peace yet endorse suicide bombers. The entire Arab world saw how Vice President Cheney's journey through the Middle East predictably became a public roadshow for belittling America's support of Israel and the president's decision to do something about Saddam Hussein.
The Bush administration's decision to veto a meeting between Arafat and Cheney because the chairman had failed to demonstrate his commitment to curtail Palestinian terrorism, and simultaneously to encourage the Israelis to allow Arafat to go to Beirut to advance the cause of "peace," reveals extraordinary confusion, both strategic and moral, within the State Department and the National Security Council. The Arabs are not blind. Washington was asking to be publicly kicked, and the Arab League, particularly the Saudis, obliged. The Saudi delegation went out of its way to make nice-nice to the Iraqis present, adding in its own eyes a little extra public humiliation for the United States.
Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, is a society tied in knots, both fearful and proud of its Arab and Muslim credentials. It is congenitally incapable of being a bold country, domestically or internationally, a prerequisite for being on the cutting edge of the Arab world and seeking peace with Israel. |
