Bush's speech drives Europe and U.S. apart
Paris | By Patrick Seale | 30-06-2002
There is a flagrant contradiction at the heart of the speech. Bush says he wants to see the emergence of a Palestinian state.
In recent months he has repeatedly advocated a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that is to say an Israeli and a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security.
Yet now he lends his support to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the life-long enemy of this policy, while condemning Arafat, the one Palestinian leader who, more than any other, has for years campaigned for a negotiated peace with Israel.
Instead of calling for a new Palestinian leadership, Bush would have been well advised to call for 'regime change' in Israel.
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President George W Bush's long-awaited speech on the Middle East has dealt a serious blow to peace. It bears all the marks of having been drafted by a disputatious committee in which the hawks and 'Likudniks' of the U.S. Department of Defence gained the upper hand over Colin Powell's more rational and even-handed State Department.
By calling for the removal of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Bush has encouraged extremists in both the Israeli and Arab camps. He has stoked the fires of the conflict. More terror and counter-terror must now be expected.
There is a flagrant contradiction at the heart of the speech. Bush says he wants to see the emergence of a Palestinian state.
In recent months he has repeatedly advocated a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that is to say an Israeli and a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security.
Yet now he lends his support to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the life-long enemy of this policy, while condemning Arafat, the one Palestinian leader who, more than any other, has for years campaigned for a negotiated peace with Israel.
Instead of calling for a new Palestinian leadership, Bush would have been well advised to call for 'regime change' in Israel.
He should have encouraged the Israeli Labour Party to leave the unity government - as Shlomo Ben Ami, Yossi Beilin and other prominent members of the Israeli peace camp are urging - so as to present the public with an alternative to Sharon's violent and bankrupt policies.
Failed to grasp the basics
Bush appears to have failed to grasp the basics of the present phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a failure he shares with his National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice (who, echoing Sharon, last week charged that the Palestinian National Autho-rity 'cavorts with terror').
What are the basics?
• For all his many faults and hesitations, Arafat is a moderate not a 'terrorist'. The men who send the suicide bombers on their missions are his political enemies. They have no time for his moderate policies because they believe Israel will yield only to force.
• As the champion of 'Greater Israel' and the settlers, Sharon wants to destroy Arafat and his Palestinian Authority not because they are 'terrorists', but because they are not.
Deliberate act
By decimating the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and crushing every embryonic manifestation of a Palestinian state, Sharon has deliberately and cynically made it physically impossible for Arafat to control the extremists.
In fact, like Menachem Begin and Binyamin Netanyahu before him, he sees an advantage in radicalizing the Palestinian movement. He far prefers Palestinian radicals to moderates.
• This is because Sharon will do everything to avoid having to negotiate with the Palestinians because any negotiated settlement would mean giving up territory. Sharon wants more time to seize and settle Palestinian land.
His aim is to remove Arafat from the scene, replacing him either with a quisling who will accept Israel's terms, or with Hamas, with whom no negotiations would be possible. 'How can you talk to someone who wants to kill you?' is the duplicitous refrain of the Israeli Right.
Bush has now played into Sharon's hands. His speech contains no word of condemnation of Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian cities, no call for an immediate withdrawal, no meaningful timetable for Palestinian statehood, no mechanism for implementation, no indication of how the Palestinians are supposed to conduct their elections and reform their institutions under Israel's military occupation, no plain-speaking on crucial final status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees, nothing in short which might provide a way out of the present murderous impasse.
In addition, the American President made no reference to the Clinton parametres which Arafat has now accepted, or to the Saudi peace plan endorsed at the Beirut summit last March, or to the views of the Europeans, the Russians or the United Nations.
The proposed international conference seems to have disappeared from his agenda, together with so much else. In short, his speech was a deplorable display of American unilateralism and muddled thinking.
The world is losing confidence in American leadership. At the recent summit in Canada of the world's eight richest and most powerful nations, Bush faced pressure from European leaders to explain himself.
With Bush's apparent surrender to Sharon and the Worldcom and other financial scandals, which are rocking American markets and are driving the dollar sharply lower, confidence in the United States - both political and financial - is at a low ebb.
The attacks of September 11 shocked the Western world, exposing its vulnerability to terrorism. But, in spite of the G8's display of unity, profound differences have emerged between Europe and America on a whole range of issues. The transatlantic rift is getting wider and deeper.
Europeans are offended by American 'unilateral' actions on steel tariffs and farm subsidies, which show little concern for the interests of others. They are perturbed that the U.S. did not consult them over the 'war on terror' nor seek their agreement on strategic priorities.
There is no clear understanding in Europe of what the Americans want and what sort of 'war' they are fighting.
Political considerations
Washington seems to believe that the global terrorist threat posed by Al Qaida can be dealt with by military means alone.
Europeans argue that military means are only one tool among others and should, in an effective counter-terrorist strategy, be subordinate to political considerations.
Believing that the roots of terror are essentially political, Europeans tend to think that the terrorist threat would be greatly reduced if the United States were to act boldly to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, forcing an end to Israeli occupation and the dismantling of settlements.
But Washington, no doubt influenced by Israeli thinking, seems to believe that a bigger problem is the 'illegitimacy' of Arab regimes and the 'failed societies' over which they preside.
On this view, Arab democratic reforms, such as Bush has urged the Palestinian Authority to adopt, must precede an Israeli withdrawal or a final Arab-Israeli settlement. This is a recipe for inaction and eventual failure.
The recent visit to Arafat by France's new Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, only hours after Bush called on the Palestinians to elect a new leader, vividly illustrates the difference of approach.
On Iraq, differences are perhaps even sharper. The Americans have two targets in mind - Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which they would like to destroy, and the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom they would like to kill.
The Europeans, too, are worried about WMD proliferation and would like to see the UN inspectors back in Iraq. But (with the possible exception of the British) they do not see that there is adequate justification or sufficient legal grounds for bringing about 'regime change' in Baghdad by military action.
Legal framework
The Europeans would like to strengthen the legal framework of the campaign against terrorism, while the U.S. seems reluctant, even frightened, to strengthen it, as may be seen by its refusal to support the International Court of Justice, or the International Criminal Court, or the Geneva Protocols for the protection of prisoners.
In contemplating an attack on Iraq, the U.S. seems indifferent to European doubts, to the veto of Iraq's neighbours, or to the doubtful legitimacy of such an operation.
While Americans seem openly contemptuous of the feelings of the 'Arab street', Europeans are very much aware of the raging epidemic of anti-American sentiment sweeping the region, and are worried that Arab and Muslim hostility could be directed against them too.
After September 11, the Europeans expected the world to be policed collectively by a U.S.-Euro partnership. But, in waging its 'war on terror', the United States decided to go it alone.
Europe has been forced to recognise that it no longer lies at the centre of America's global strategy. For European sensibilities, it has not been a pleasant awakening.
The unity of the Atlantic Alliance is one more victim of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist campaign.
Patrick Seale is an eminent commentator and the author of several books on the Middle East affairs. |
