Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004, pages 6-8

Special Report

	Palestinian women in the West Bank village of Beit Likiya, north of Jerusalem, watch March 15 as Israeli border police aim their rifles at villagers trying to prevent Israeli bulldozers from working on a section of the apartheid wall Israel is constructing on Palestinian land. According to the March 31 Haaretz, Israel has asked Washington for its official endorsement of the wall’s route (AP photo/Oded Balilty).

ACCORDING TO conventional wisdom, U.S. Middle East policy is largely determined by Israel’s American supporters. This may once have been true, but since the Bush administration took office the arrows have pointed the other way. Right-wing Jewish and Christian organizations continue to provide the cheering section and campaign funds needed to keep Congress in line, but unqualified support for Israel is now a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

Israel, with its powerful military establishment and sophisticated technology, is regarded by the White House and Pentagon as an important ally in the administration’s plans to bring about economic, political, and cultural changes in the Arab world that will change the face of the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is more temperamentally in tune with the Bush administration than any other ally except Tony Blair. Like George W. Bush, Sharon sees the world sharply divided between friends and enemies. Like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, he regards overwhelming firepower as the most effective instrument of diplomacy.

The two leaders’ goals dovetail as well. Sharon aims to crush Palestinian resistance and maintain Israel’s continued dominance over the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Bush’s “Greater Middle East Initiative” aims at turning Arab governments into pro-Western, free-market states that will establish normal relations with Israel and encourage the Palestinians to make peace on Israel’s terms.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks the Bush administration signaled its unconditional support for Israel when it adopted Israel’s enemies as its own and labeled as terrorists Hezbollah, Hamas and any other groups resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Washington’s commitment takes tangible form in the steady flow to Israel of American-made bulldozers, helicopter gunships and armored vehicles that the Israeli army uses against the Palestinians. In late February Israel received the first of a fleet of 102 F-16s, advanced warplanes capable of reaching Iran.

In the absence of any criticism from Washington, Israel now acts with impunity against the Palestinians, waging not war but a one-sided manhunt in which troops and helicopters attack towns and refugee camps, firing missiles that kill unarmed bystanders as well as targeted militants. A March 7 raid on Nuseirat in Gaza killed 14 Palestinians and wounded 83. Three of the dead and 40 of the wounded were children. Similar Israeli attacks in Gaza and West Bank in February killed at least 37 Palestinians, including two children on their way to school and several unarmed Palestinians who were protesting the new wall. During the first week in March, Israel carried out six assassinations. Such attacks eventually brought retaliation in the form of a suicide bombing in Ashdod on March 14 that killed 10 Israelis.

Instead of accusing Sharon of obstructing peace efforts, the administration continued to lash out at Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. “I put the blame [for the continuing conflict] squarely on Chairman Arafat,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 13. Bush reiterated that theme on Feb. 18, when he spoke on the U.S.-sponsored Middle East Television Network and condemned Arafat for failing to stop terrorism. Largely ignored was a report released the same day by the International Red Cross that accused Israel of going “far beyond what is permissible for an occupying power under international humanitarian law.”

Immediately after the suicide bombing in Ashdod, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Querei called on the Israelis to “put a halt to the violence they generated in the first place, so that we can do the same.” Instead, Sharon accused Querei of lacking the courage to stop terrorism and canceled a scheduled meeting between the two men. “Soon it will become clear to the world that Israel has no real Palestinian negotiating partner,” Sharon said. “There will be no political negotiations with the Palestinians.”

His statements were familiar. Sharon has long made clear that no legitimate representative of the Palestinians would be acceptable, and has done everything possible to undermine Palestinian leaders, along with the economy, educational system, and civic structure.

ýn the spring of 2002 the Israeli army invaded the West Bank and ransacked public offices. Soldiers destroyed computers, educational records and even libraries. Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, former head of Palestinian medical services and a founding member of the Palestinian National Initiative, described on a recent trip to California the Israeli army’s burning of the only existing bibliography of Palestinian health resources. In late February Ghassan W. Shakah resigned as mayor of Nablus, saying that because Israel won’t allow Palestinian policemen to carry arms criminal gangs were taking over the city. In mid-February Israeli soldiers raided the Arab Bank and Cairo-Amman Bank in Ramallah and, after disabling the banks’ cameras, seized bank records and took more than $9 million belonging to individuals and charities. Israel claimed the money was being used to pay terrorists, but Palestinians said the raids were intended to undermine confidence in the banking system.

In the absence of any criticism from Washington, Israel now acts with impunity against the Palestinians.

The resulting collection of tiny Palestinian enclaves is the “state” Sharon is offering the Palestinians. He also has proposed to evacuate up to 17 of the 20 settlements in Gaza and a few isolated settlements on the West Bank, a plan Bush is expected to endorse. Both men would have something to gain from a U.S. approval. Sharon would be able to tell Israelis he is acting in partnership with Bush, and Bush could claim during his election campaign that he has made progress toward peace. To allay fears that an Israeli pullout from Gaza might be followed by violence and embarrass Bush, Israel has agreed to postpone any action until after the November election. Meanwhile Israel has escalated its air attacks on Gaza, killing or wounding civilians in each raid.

Sharon’s plan to withdraw from parts of Gaza and the West Bank will do nothing to bring peace closer, nor will demands for Palestinian reforms. Dr. Barghouthi and other members of the Palestinian National Initiative, all of whom are committed to nonviolence, democratic reform, and peaceful coexistence with Israel, insist that the basis of any peace agreement must be Israel’s total withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and an end to all Israeli settlements. Although they regard Arafat as corrupt and ineffective, they see the insistence on Palestinian reform as an excuse to postpone peace negotiations.

The White House plan to revamp Arab governments came in for similar criticism. Bush’s “Greater Middle East Initiative,” a call for sweeping economic, cultural and political change, was scheduled to be unveiled at a meeting of the eight major industrial nations in June. But the plan had to be set aside when Arab and European leaders complained that it ignored the more immediate need to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In reporting on Bush’s initiative in The New York Times on March 4, Neil MacFarquhar wrote that “Arab states argue that Israel’s supporters in Washington are seeking to create a chain of malleable Arab governments that will allow Israel to keep the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Several months earlier, Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. referred in the Oct. 23, 2003 New York Review of Books to “the neocon fantasy that establishing Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq could modernize and democratize the entire Muslim world, which would then be less hostile to Israel.”

That “neocon fantasy” is still operational policy within the Bush administration. Several top administration officials co-authored a position paper for former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996 advising him, among other things, that removing Saddam Hussain should be “an important Israeli strategic objective.” Although Bush intends to declare a formal end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq on June 30, in time for the election campaign, the Pentagon clearly plans to maintain a strategic presence in the area. The provisional governing council is expected to sign a status of forces agreement allowing the United States to maintain military bases in Iraq that can be used to conduct military operations against third countries.

The Pentagon also is making sure that a future Iraqi government will be responsive to U.S. and Israeli interests by supporting Ahmad Chalabi, who, as head of the exile group the Iraqi National Congress, lobbied tirelessly for U.S. intervention in Iraq. Chalabi is known to have used false or misleading information to justify his case. In 1995, in fact, the CIA cut its ties with him because of his unreliability and questionable use of U.S. funds. Chalabi earlier had fled Jordan, after being accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the bank he had founded. Nevertheless, The New York Times reported on March 11 that the Pentagon is continuing to pay Chalabi’s organization $340,000 a month—funds Chalabi undoubtedly will use to assure himself a role in the permanent Iraqi government.

In April 2003 the New York Observer quoted Chalabi as promising that a peace treaty with Israel would be at “the top of the agenda” of a new Iraqi government, and said that he was involved in talks with Washington and Jerusalem about construction of an oil pipeline from Mosul to Jerusalem. An article in the Oct. 18, 2002 Northern California Jewish Bulletin cited Chalabi’s close relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). In speeches before both organizations, Chalabi said that removing Saddam Hussain would “change the dynamics of the whole region” to the benefit of the United States and Israel. More recently, Chalabi has spoken out against allowing the United Nations a major role in Iraq, saying it would be “an unwelcome and inefficient influence.” Other prominent Shi’i leaders dissociated themselves from his statements, saying they did not agree.

Hopes of a postwar Iraq subservient to U.S. and Israeli interests may be dimmed by harsh realities, however. Iraq’s interim government has so far maintained that a formal agreement on maintaining U.S. troops in Iraq must wait until a permanent government is in place, which means the Americans may have to negotiate such an agreement with leaders they did not choose. European countries are pressing Washington to allow the United Nations to play the central role in Iraq until a new government takes over. Another obstacle to continued U.S. influence in Iraq is the Iraqis’ resentment of a U.S. occupation that has left many of them more miserable than before.

Civilians as well as soldiers are being killed by resistance forces in ever greater numbers. Baghdad’s Institute of Forensic Medicine recorded 3,092 Iraqi deaths by bullets, bombs, and other weapons in 2003—an 18-fold increase over the year before. Necessities such as clean water, fuel oil and medicine are still lacking. Thanks to U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer’s decision to disband the Iraqi army and lay off thousands of state workers, unemployment remains high.

An even more painful problem for Iraqi families is the continued imprisonment of more than 10,000 men and boys, many of whom were arrested in indiscriminate sweeps. In one search last December, soldiers arrested 83 men in the village of Abu, including almost all of the village’s teachers. As of early March none had been released. A village elder asked a reporter, “Eleven teachers. Now you tell me how we’re supposed to feel about the Americans.”

Neither the ousting of Saddam Hussain nor the continued punishment of the Palestinians has brought security to Israelis or made the world a safer place. In the three years since Bush and Sharon have held office, thousands of Arabs and hundreds of Israelis and Americans have died, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has come to a halt, and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere has increased. Bush’s support for Sharon and his policies has provoked hostility to America in Europe as well as the Middle East.

There is a chance, however, that politics may force an end to the damaging partnership.

Stubborn unemployment and growing awareness that the administration misled the country into war with Iraq have made Bush vulnerable to a challenge from Democrat John Kerry. Sharon is involved in a bribery scandal and is accused of agreeing to a lopsided prisoner exchange with Hamas in order to secure the release of a reputed Israeli drug dealer and gambler. Israel’s recession is so severe that 3,000 rabbis and religious workers went on strike in mid-March, saying they had not been paid in six months. According to a poll published by the daily Yediot Ahronot in early March, 57 percent of Israelis think Sharon is untrustworthy, and a majority think he should resign.

While the election defeat of Bush and Sharon would not assure a quick settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would underscore the fact that their policies had failed and leave open the possibility of change. Peace will have to wait until Israeli and American leaders recognize that the only solution is an end to Israel’s occupation, and have the courage to see that it happens.

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.