The U.S. and Israel Threaten Syria and Its President

By Rachelle Marshall

The Bush team, which should be acting as a reality check, has fallen so deep into the pocket of Ariel Sharon you can’t even find it any more.—Thomas L. Friedman, Oct. 2 column, The New York Times.

As if their arguments for going to war in Iraq were not implausible enough, the Bush administration’s response to Israel’s Oct. 5 bombing of an alleged terrorist training camp near Damascus reached new and dizzying heights of absurdity. The air attack, which wounded several people, was condemned by most of Europe and the Arab world as an act of illegal aggression that threatened to escalate Middle East violence. To George W. Bush, however, the unprovoked bombing of Syria was an act of self-defense. Expressing his strongest support yet for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Bush likened Israel’s action to America’s war on terrorism and said, “Israel must not feel constrained. The decisions [Sharon] makes to defend her people are valid decisions.”

Like an antiphonal chorus Israeli and U.S. officials took turns condemning Syria. A State Department spokesman reiterated the claim that the Syrians were harboring terrorists, and demanded that they “make a clean break from those responsible for planning and directing terrorist attacks from Syrian soil.” Sharon’s chief adviser, Dore Gold, chimed in, saying, “There is an axis of terror that begins in Iran, and it reaches the Gaza Strip, and its main crossroads is in Syria.”

Nearly a week after the bombing, American officials said they had received “human intelligence” reports indicating that the Syrian site might in the future be used to launch attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. The likely source of the reports was the rump intelligence unit in Sharon’s office that regularly reports to a similar agency in the Pentagon (see September 2003 Washington Report, p. 57).

According to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the decision to retaliate for Palestinian suicide bombings by attacking Syria was made in August, after a Hamas bus bombing killed 23 people. Israel’s F-16s went into action the day after a second suicide bombing in Haifa on Oct. 4.

Neither Israel nor Washington offered any convincing evidence linking Syria to the terrorist actions. The camp that Israel claimed was used by militant groups had been abandoned since the 1970s according to nearby residents, who said they used the wooded grove for picnics and as a children’s play area. Islamic Jihad, which is usually quick to claim credit for suicide bombings, said it had no “military presence” in Syria. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it owned the base, but that it had been deserted for years.

Attempts to blame Syria for the actions of desperate Palestinians proved even less plausible when facts became known about one of the suicide bombers. The Haifa bombing was carried out by 27-year old Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, a law student from Jenin who needed no urging from the Syrians. Last June she had seen Israeli troops shoot and kill her brother and cousin while they were inside their family home. She undoubtedly also had witnessed the Israeli army’s devastation of Jenin in April 2002.

Eliminating representatives of militant organizations from Syria won’t end terrorist operations in Israel, according to most analysts. What actually motivates U.S. and Israeli policy against Syria is the long-range ambition of the pro-Israel ideologues who came to power with Bush, and whose agenda calls for replacing existing Middle East regimes with U.S.-style democracies, extending America’s geopolitical control over the region, eliminating support for Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance forces, and ensuring Israel’s security. Iraq was the first to fall; Bush has made it clear that Syria and Iran are the next targets.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Undersecretary of State John Bolton repeatedly accuse Syria of such crimes as hiding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, harboring terrorists, and developing chemical and biological weapons. Their statements often bear an uncanny resemblance to the rhetoric used against Saddam Hussain before last March’s invasion of Iraq. This time, however, instead of launching a military attack the Bush administration intends to weaken Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad by putting a chokehold on Syria’s economy while leaving Israel free to carry out punishing air strikes. The goal is to force Assad either to become a docile ally of the United States and Israel or face the collapse of his government.

In early October Bush came out in support of a bill to impose stiff sanctions on Syria, including a ban on U.S. exports, a ban on U.S. business investment, and a freeze on Syrian assets in America. In endorsing the sanctions Bush overruled CIA and State Department officials who had argued that punishing Syria would seriously hinder Middle East peace negotiations and end Syria’s valuable cooperation in tracking down al-Qaeda members. Such logic was no match for the anti-Syria hysteria pervading Congress and the White House. Forgetting that U. S. forces were occupying Iraq as an invading army, and as thousands of Iraqis were protesting the latest killing of Iraqi civilians by the Americans, the House International Relations Committee with presumably straight faces accused Syria of “fostering turmoil in Iraq.”

After the full House voted 384 to 4 on Oct. 15 to approve the sanctions, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) warned that “This bill is just the beginning. Congress will be watching Syria’s every move.”

Such threats pose an almost impossible dilemma for Assad. The young president has been in office less than three years and is still trying to consolidate support within Syria. If he bows to U.S. and Israeli demands by clamping down on Hezbollah, which Syrians regard as a legitimate resistance force, he will be condemned as a weakling. If he stands firm, he will invite attacks by an Israeli air force free to operate without any restraint from Washington. Complicating Assad’s dilemma is the fact that another Israeli attack would bring pressure on him to retaliate, even though Syria is no match for Israel when it comes to military power.

Sharon undoubtedly is convinced that destabilizing Syria will be helpful to Israel. Assad is anxious to get back Syria’s Golan Heights that Israel has illegally occupied since 1967, and this summer he offered to resume peace talks with Israel that were broken off in 2000. Israel’s bombing attack took place while European and U.N. diplomats were working on arrangements to bring the two sides together. The attack indefinitely has delayed the peace talks and also put a stop to a proposed exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hezbollah.

It was not the first time an Israeli government has obstructed peace efforts. In 1955, just after Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser told U.S. diplomats he was willing to negotiate peace with Israel, the Israelis attacked an Egyptian army post in Gaza, killing 39 Egyptian soldiers and civilians. Public outrage in Egypt made negotiations impossible. In 1982, while the PLO in Lebanon was observing a year-long cease-fire and Yasser Arafat was seeking international support for a peace conference, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon launched an invasion of Lebanon aimed at destroying the PLO once and for all. Israel’s intent then as now was to avoid having to return territory it had seized by force.

Bush’s war on terrorism has been a boon to Sharon in his determination to retain control over Palestinian land. Conspicuously absent from White House statements is any recognition that the basic cause of the violence in the region is Israel’s illegal occupation. Nor is there any mention of Israel’s continued defiance of the U.N. or its violations of international law. Instead, as New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote on Oct. 16, “Every other word out of this administration’s mouth now is ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism.’”

Self-Imposed Blindness

Such self-imposed blindness allowed Washington to concentrate on punishing Syria in the same week that Israel ravaged a refugee camp, authorized the building of additional settlements, and extended a wall that cuts deep into the West Bank.

Claiming it was looking for smuggled anti-aircraft weapons, the Israeli army entered Rafah with dozens of tanks and armored vehicles on Oct. 10 and remained for several days of carnage. By the end of 10 days some 1,500 Palestinians were homeless and 16 dead. After the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade responded Oct. 19 by killing three Israeli soldiers—clearly a military attack—Israeli F-16s and helicopter gunships bombarded Gaza in a series of raids that killed 11 more Palestinians and injured at least 90, including several children. Amnesty International condemned Israel’s actions as “a war crime.” Following the raids Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei again appealed to Sharon for a mutual cease-fire, but was turned down.

Elsewhere in Gaza and the West Bank Israeli troops are maintaining what the army calls “full encirclement” of Palestinian cities towns, forbidding any movement in or out. The cabinet recently approved spending $1 billion for an additional 270 miles of wall that will loop 15 miles inside the West Bank, isolate thousands of Palestinians from their neighbors, and deprive thousands more of their land and water. On Oct. 2 Israel announced plans to build 600 new homes in the West Bank, at a cost of additional millions of dollars. None of these actions was condemned by the Bush administration, which continues to provide the funds that help pay for them. To the contrary, on Oct. 14 the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that accused Israel of illegally annexing Palestinian territory by building the wall inside the West Bank.

A few days before the United States cast its veto, a 52-year-old Palestinian whose olive orchard was threatened by the barrier asked a New York Times reporter, “When they take your land, kill your sons, deny you food for your family, demolish your houses and deny you any freedom of movement, what do they expect you to do?”

Another Palestinian who watched as a bulldozer destroyed his uncle’s plant nursery said, “I can’t work, I can’t marry, I can’t build a house. Many of us do not care if we live or die.”

Such statements of despair fail to impress Israeli and American officials, who continue to blame every act of Palestinian violence on Yasser Arafat, a sick old man who has been imprisoned for two years in the ruins of his Ramallah compound. After a bomb placed under their car killed three American security guards in Gaza on Oct. 14, Bush again blamed Arafat, saying he had created the circumstances that inspired the action. In fact the bombing ran directly counter to the Palestinians’ desire to have more Americans on the scene, not fewer. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle two days after the bombing, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, one of Arafat’s closest advisers, again urged that the United States send monitors and peacekeeping troops to the area.

Who actually was responsible for killing the three Americans may never be known. Palestinian militants vehemently denied responsibility, saying that Israel was the enemy, not the United States. Palestinian security officers under pressure to act quickly arrested seven members of a faction known as the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), a loose group of young men from the Jabalya refugee camp. But they too denied any involvement. “If we were responsible we would not be shy to admit it,” one member said. “But our struggle is against Israel and the occupation.”

What no one has explained is how any Palestinian in Gaza, where travel is severely restricted, could manage to dig a hole and place a bomb in a road that is constantly patrolled by Israeli tanks and that has Israeli watchtowers on each side. Mahmoud uhareb, a professor of political science at Al-Quds University, believes a Palestinian would not commit such an action because, he said, “This would not serve the cause. The one who benefits from such an action is Israel.”

The most likely possibility is that a small group of extremists—either Israeli or Palestinian—set the bomb in order to undermine Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.

If so, their action will be no more successful than the combined efforts of Sharon and Bush, who for two years have shunned Arafat on grounds he is both “irrelevant” and the instigator of all Palestinian violence. Arafat has caused dissension among Palestinian leaders by refusing to give up any of his authority and obstructing efforts by Qurei to unify Palestinian security forces. Nevertheless, he remains a living symbol of Palestinian aspirations, and as such must be considered a significant partner in the peace process.

Rami Elhanan, an Israeli whose 14-year-old daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1997, stressed this fact in a talk at Stanford University in mid-October. Elhanan, a member of Bereaved Israeli and Palestinian Families for Peace, criticized Israel and the United States for attempting to demonize Arafat. “If you demonize the democratically elected leader of the other people, making him irrelevant,” he said, “then there is no one to talk to, and if there is no one to talk to, then there is nothing to talk about.”

Talking about peace is precisely what Sharon wants to avoid. So far he has achieved this by ratcheting up Israeli attacks whenever the Palestinian Authority persuades militant groups to agree to a cease-fire.

Unfortunately, it is Palestinian violence rather than their peace efforts that are considered news. Last September Arafat’s security adviser Jibril Rajoub told Israel Radio that the Palestinian Authority wanted an indefinite cease-fire and pledged that Palestinians would halt all acts of violence in return for an Israeli agreement to end its military operations and lift the blockades on Palestinian cities and towns. Hamas leaders announced at the same time that they would accept a truce in return for guarantees that Israel would stop “its aggression and the targeted killing of activists.” The cabinet said Israel would reject any cease-fire until militants were disarmed and dismantled.

More recently a group of prominent Palestinians and Israelis came up with a new peace proposal which will be formally announced in Geneva in November. Participants included former Labor members of the Knesset Amram Mitzna, Yossi Beilin, Yossi Sarid and Avraham Burg; and Palestinian officials Yasser Abed Rabbo and Nabil Qassis. Under the draft proposal, Palestinian refugees would give up their right of return to Israel in exchange for compensation, and Israel would withdraw to its 1967 borders but retain control over a few large West Bank settlements. The Palestinians would receive an equal amount of land in southern Israel and would also gain sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif mosque in East Jerusalem. Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti is said to have approved the plan, and Prime Minister Qurei said his government would accept it.

Not surprisingly, Israel rejected the proposal outright. Israeli Health Minister Dan Naveh said it “reeked of a bad odor,” and the Israeli government denounced it as “irresponsible, freelance diplomacy.” Nevertheless, the plan is a reminder that peace is still possible, and that many Palestinians and Israelis are eager to achieve it. Before they can do so, however, the Bush administration will have to recognize that the issue at the heart of the conflict is not “terrorism,” but Israel’s unjust and illegal occupation of another people’s land.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.