Arab World Galvanized by Bush’s “New Balfour Declaration”

By Peter C. Valenti


A Palestinian shouts anti-U.S. slogans as he stands next to a poster of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an April 16 demonstration in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain el-Helweh. Some 1,500 refugees took part in the protest to demand their right to return to their homes in Israel (AFP photo/Joseph Barrak).

IF PRESIDENT George W. Bush intended to eliminate even the pretense of the U.S. as an “honest broker” in the Arab-Israeli conflict, then he has succeeded masterfully. Similarly, he fostered a unity of Arab and Islamic—as well as European—opinion against American foreign policy even greater than the reaction to the Iraq war. It was not hyperbolic for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to state during an April 19 interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, “Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region.”

The catalyst for Mubarak’s statement, and indeed Arab anger, was the joint press conference held April 14 by Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which the U.S. president made historic concessions to Israel. In both Bush’s speech and subsequent letter, he invalidated the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes from which they were chased or fled during the establishment of Israel in 1948. Furthermore, the U.S. president gave his blessing for continued Israeli retention of some West Bank lands. “In light of new realities on the ground,” Bush stated, “including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” Using this euphemism for Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands occupied in 1967, Bush has abandoned the position of every U.S. administration since Richard Nixon—and international law—with breathtaking alacrity.

Ostensibly, Sharon came to Washington to present his “Disengagement Plan”—which, prior to April 14, was understood as his attempt at a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlements and troops from Gaza, to be redeployed in the West Bank. As always, however, the “Butcher of Beirut” was much more ambitious. Subsequent statements he made upon returning to Israel, plus his maneuvering inside his own Likud Party, demonstrate that by “sacrificing” Gaza in return for solid U.S. support on other crucial issues, Sharon is shoring up his domestic political and electoral strength and the very real possibility of a territorially aggrandized Israel.

Arab Reaction

The avalanche of Arab outrage, as expressed by their leaders, street demonstrations and media outlets, has been so overwhelming that it is possible to say the entire Arab world is galvanized. Three days after the Bush-Sharon embrace, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi—less than a month after it had assassinated Rantisi’s predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Innumerable commentators in the Arabic media have dubbed Bush’s statements the “New Balfour Declaration” or “Bush Declaration”—referring to the infamous declaration issued by British Foreign Minister Alfred Balfour issued in 1917 that recognized the Zionist movement’s desire for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and subsequently used to justify the creation of Israel.

Television coverage of the Bush-Sharon meeting by Arabic media such as Al-Jazeera repeatedly used the word “dangerous” to emphasize the threat the Bush Declaration represented to Palestinian sovereignty. Obviously, the Palestinian press is replete with condemnatory articles and letters, but this is equally true throughout the Arab world. On April 19, for example, the entire op-ed section of the United Arab Emirates’ al-Bayan was dedicated to articles on the Bush Declaration. Innumerable articles focused on the inherent contradictions between the Bush Declaration and international law, especially U.N. resolutions 242, 338 and 194, which the U.S. either authored or supported. The greatest irony is that Bush’s position contradicts the stance of his father’s administration. From July 1991 to August 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees from Israel pending a freeze on Israeli settlements, before eventually buckling under the election-year onslaught of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact, the current Bush administration may have learned a lesson from this episode.

Subliminal Message

The lead editorial of the Palestinian al-Quds on April 20 succinctly distilled the subtext of Bush’s statements, arguing that Israelis themselves knew for years that settlements are both illegal and an obstacle to peace. Even many settlers realized they would have to abandon the settlement in the event of a peace treaty. However, the paper noted, “along comes the American president’s declarations, which infused [the settlers] with a new spirit…spurs them on and elicits confidence and ambition to inaugurate [more] settlements and increase their numbers.”

According to the lead editorial in Egypt’s al-Ahram of April 17, the fact that Israeli settlements had always been considered illegal by the international community, but now were legitimized by Bush, has set “a dangerous precedent that encourages others to violate international legality.”

Nor did it come as a surprise to Arabs that the new leader of Hamas was assassinated just days after the White House meeting—or that, during an April 23 television interview in Israel, an invigorated Sharon announced he no longer feels bound by his three-year-old commitment to Bush not to assassinate Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

As Na‘im al-Ashhab explained in the April 18 al-Quds: Arabs should “rid ourselves of any delusions about American plans and initiatives, as Bush’s latest position leaves no room for doubt that his administration lost any qualification to be an intermediary in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Regional Players

The Bush Declaration also greatly damaged U.S. ties with moderate and pro-U.S. Arab leaders in the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah II was in the U.S. at the time of the declaration and was slated to meet later with Bush. After meeting with corporate leaders in California, however, Abdullah released a diplomatically worded statement on April 19 calling off his visit to Washington, then went home.

Despite Egyptian President Mubarak’s strong statements to Le Monde and other subsequent speeches, he is still trying to recover from what is perceived as a grave humiliation. Mubarak had just met with Bush to discuss the Israeli pullout from Gaza and was still in the U.S. when Bush issued his declaration. Some writers speculate that Bush was being duplicitous in the back-to-back timing of his meetings with Mubarak and Sharon, since it seemed to give the impression that Bush had conferred with Mubarak and gotten some implicit agreement for his upcoming declaration with Sharon. As Egyptian writer Muhammad Abd al-Hakim Diyab pointed out in the April 17 al-Quds al-Arabi, during their meeting Bush browbeat Mubarak on Egyptian reform, the constitution and elections, while Mubarak received no substantive promises in return, leaving empty-handed. Then Sharon showed up, and Bush was magnanimous. Asked Diyab, “How can Mubarak face himself, firstly, and then his people, secondly, after being put into that position?”

Some writers did find Arab leaders’ responses too limited or slow. On April 17, castigated the lead al-Quds editorial, “Isn’t it a shame that Europe sped to issue a united position rejecting Bush and Sharon’s unilateral moves…whereas Arab leaders are still studying the possibility to convene a meeting of their foreign ministers on May 3 to study the possibility of holding an Arab summit?”

Added Sultan al-Hattab in Jordan’s al-Ra’i the same day, “I think that what is occurring is the beginning of the price that Palestinians and Arabs have to pay for the absence of [failing to convene] the [Arab] summit.…Instead of a summit to discuss the issues of Palestine and Iraq, Arab governments ran and buried their heads in the sand while Bush and Sharon alone discuss the Palestine Question.”

Silver Lining?

Writing in the pan-Arab al-Hayat on April 16, Raghida Dirgham suggested there may be a few positive elements in the Bush Declaration. While disparaging most of it, she observed that Bush still affirmed a two-state solution and that the wall Israel is currently building is recognized only as a security boundary, not a political one. Dirgham reminded her readers that they would be mistaken to believe that, were John Kerry to win the presidency, he could nullify the Bush Declaration, explaining that Kerry would be bound by previous administrations’ commitments.

Focusing only on the Gaza pullout, Hasan al-Batal argued in the Palestinian al-Ayyam April 17 that “the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza gives Palestinians, for the first time…some possibility to build a Palestinian strategy.…Oslo, as much as it could be, was the first move on the political chessboard. The road map is a greater move…Even though the Gaza withdrawal is a small move, it is on the geographical chessboard.”

He concluded, “If Palestinians succeed in this challenge, the world and a segment of Israelis will say: It is true, the occupation was the reason for Palestinian ‘terrorism.’ While if they don’t succeed, Sharon and the average Israeli citizen will say: truly, the occupation isn’t the reason for terrorism, rather the Palestinian mentality and culture of terrorism.”

The vast majority of Arab writers, however, do not share al-Batal’s sentiment, pointing out that even if Gaza could be seen as a potential “national experiment,” Sharon’s plan dooms it to failure through continued Israeli control over crossing points, air, water, airports, harbors and security, and the claimed right to attack Gaza with impunity.

In the April 20 al-Ayyam, Hani al-Masri outlined possible scenarios of either a Palestinian acceptance or rejection of the Sharon Plan. The only positive factor in accepting the plan would be to benefit from the Gaza pullout, he argued—but there is no reason to assume that the Palestinian Authority will gain any prestige or power. In the meantime, Israel would keep other settlements, gain the demographic benefits of ridding itself of 40 percent of its Palestinian inhabitants, and spell the ruin of Palestinian territorial and national unity. No doubt acceptance would also mean massive civil strife. While seemingly advocating rejection, al-Masri conceded that this will cost the Palestinians greatly: it will free Sharon’s hand politically, allow him to turn the newly disengaged Gaza into a prison, and make the current transitional status of Palestinian lands into a permanent status.

U.S. Elections

As Ahmad al-Ruba‘i noted in the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat on April 17, “American policy in the Middle East is not a part of American foreign policy, rather it is at its core domestic policy, and this is the problem.” In a lengthy article in the same issue of the newspaper, Zayn al-Abidan al-Rukkabi explored every logical justification for the Bush Declaration—but always came up empty. The only plausible explanation, he argued, is to view it through the lens of an election year. It is well known in the Arab world that the Republican Party is trying to attract a larger segment of the Jewish electorate this November. Thus, concluded Ahmad Dhiban in the April 17 al-Ra’i, Sharon knew he had picked the “golden moment” to present his plan to Bush. Even if Bush opposed Sharon’s plan—which is probably unlikely anyway—he couldn’t reject it due to the impending U.S. elections, Dhiban wrote.

In the April 19 al-Bayan, Jalal Arif noted that the long-term plan of America’s right-wing Zionists and their evangelical Christian allies finally came to fruition: using themes like “Clash of Civilizations” and the “War on Terrorism,” he argued, they steered the Bush administration into conceptualizing “the two nations of America and Israel [as] the two faces of one policy which is hostile to Arabs and utilizes insane force to subdue them.”

For those who think Arab theories about Bush’s electoral considerations are conspiratorial, perhaps a careful reading of Sharon’s April 14 White House statements would elucidate the reason for Arab suspicions. In concluding his remarks, a giddy Sharon effused, “I wish to end with a personal note. I myself have been fighting terror for many years and understand the threats and costs from terrorism. In all these years, I have never met a leader as committed as you are, Mr. President, to the struggle for freedom and the need to confront terrorism wherever it exists.”

A better electoral endorsement would be difficult to find.

Peter C. Valenti works as a translator and contributing editor for the World Press Review.