A Formula for Perpetual War

By Rachelle Marshall


Israeli occupation soldiers threaten an unarmed demonstrator near the Aida refugee camp northwest of Bethlehem during a peaceful protest Aug. 3 against Israel’s apartheid wall (AFP photo Musa Al-Shaer).

WHEN YOU PUSH the Iraqi people, and you harm the Iraqi people, you will just cause them to fight back harder. The idea that force will be enough to calm the Iraqis is a false dream.

—Harith al-Dhari, chairman of the Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars, The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2004.

During the first week in September, two bus bombings took place in Israel, a subway station in Moscow was bombed, two Russian airliners were brought down in flames, hundreds of school children were taken hostage and killed in southern Russia, and a fatal car bombing took place in northern Iraq. These attacks were only especially shocking episodes in the continuing violence directed at the governments of the world’s three leading military powers. Because the perpetrators lack warplanes and tanks, they use whatever weapons they can command, and choose the most vulnerable targets. They are therefore labeled “terrorists.”

The Russians face Chechen separatists whose moderate leaders were driven out and replaced by militant rebels when Vladimir Putin undertook to crush the independence movement in the late 1990s. The U.S. forces that invaded Iraq to oust Saddam Hussain are now battling Iraqis who opposed him but want the Americans to leave their country. Israel’s illegal occupation has made life so intolerable for the Palestinians that some are now willing to die in order to kill Israelis.

Unfortunately for the victims of the ongoing violence, the leaders of all three countries regard willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness and choose to rely instead on brute force. Putin is threatening the Chechens, whose cities already have been turned to rubble by Russian saturation bombing, with “a total, cruel, and full-scale war.” According to his top adviser, “There is no point in having talks with leaders of a nonexistent country.” The Israelis refuse to negotiate with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, while at the same time they blockade Palestinian cities, demolish Palestinian homes and crops, and subject Palestinian people to never ending misery and humiliation. George W. Bush calls the war in Iraq a “fight between civilization and terror,” and the Pentagon orders more bombing.

But such measures only breed more extremism. Anatol Lieven, an expert on the Caucasus at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that “Israelis spent decades boxing themselves into a position from which it is impossible to negotiate a peace deal with moderate Palestinians. Putin is doing the same thing.”

George Bush has declared war on “international terrorism,” and Putin and Sharon have eagerly joined up, using that war as an excuse to justify any act of oppression, and in Putin’s case to move Russia close to dictatorship. But contrary to Bush, the violence taking place in Russia, Israel and Iraq is not the work of an international conspiracy but of separate national movements, with grievances specific to each of those countries. By treating militant forces as criminals and responding only with force, the three leaders are guaranteeing that the “war on terrorism” will have no end.

As Lieven suggested, Israel has adopted a foolproof formula for perpetuating violence. Sharon took office in 2000 determined to impose his own maximalist solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by ignoring moderate Palestinian leaders and crushing any semblance of Palestinian resistance. But for every militant killed or imprisoned, more have come to take his place. Since 2001 some 4,000 Palestinians and nearly 1,000 Israelis have died, and the violence continues.

On Aug. 31, Hamas retaliated for Israel’s assassinations of its top leaders with a double suicide bombing in Beersheba that killed 16 Israelis. Israel responded with a series of attacks in Gaza that in the first two weeks of September killed 33 Palestinians, destroyed 22 homes, a police station and a fire station, and left 130,000 residents without electricity or running water. Of the more than 100 wounded, 35 were children. It would not be surprising if at least one of the children who saw their home wrecked or family member killed in these attacks grew up to wrap an explosive belt around his body and make his way to an Israeli bus stop.

This cycle of revenge and retaliation could have ended long ago if Israel had not from the start rejected any opportunity to make peace. Israeli writer Amos Elon recalled in the July 15 issue of the New York Review of Books that almost immediately after the June 1967 war Palestinian notables offered to sign a separate peace agreement with Israel in return for an independent demilitarized Palestinian state on the West Bank. Israel did not bother to respond. Arab leaders, including Arafat, repeatedly have made similar offers that Israel has either ignored or rejected.

On July 20 Arafat said in an interview with Ha’aretz that he would sign an agreement with Israel that returned 97 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians and resolved the refugee problem in a way that preserved Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. Arafat reminded the interviewer that Palestinians had already agreed to such a solution at a meeting in Taba in 2001. Sharon shows no interest in negotiations but instead continues to threaten Arafat. In an interview with the newspaper Yediot Ahronot on Sept. 14 he referred to the Hamas leaders Israel assassinated last spring and said, “Just as we acted against other murderers, so we will act with Arafat.” (Imagine the reaction if Arafat threatened to kill Sharon.)

Since at least 1982, when the Israelis invaded Lebanon while Palestinians were observing a cease-fire and Arafat was seeking international support for a two-state solution, Israel’s response to Arab peace overtures has been to intensify its attacks. In July 2002, three months after the Israeli army invaded the West Bank and left Palestinian cities and refugee camps in ruins, Arafat’s militant Fatah faction agreed to an internationally brokered cease-fire. A few hours before it was announced, an Israeli warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a Gaza apartment house that killed 15 people, including 9 children, and injured more than 140. Hamas has on several occasions suspended attacks on Israel only to have one or more of their leaders killed, often along with several bystanders.

Although Israelis insist that Hamas aims only at destroying Israel, its leaders have in fact made indirect peace overtures. On April 27, 2002, Ismail Abu Shanab, a member of Hamas’s five-member executive committee, said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that if Israel agreed to the Saudi peace plan “Hamas will cease all military activities.” If Israel withdraws to its 1967 borders, Shanab said, “It would be satisfactory for all Palestinian military groups to stop and build our state, to be busy in our own affairs, and have good neighborhood with the Israelis.” As early as October 1997, Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin offered to end suicide bombings against Israeli civilians if the Israelis stopped their attacks on Palestinian civilians.

But such relative moderation may be a thing of the past. Danny Rubinstein warned in the Sept. 6 edition of Haaretz that Sharon is courting danger by attempting to link Hamas with international terrorists when in fact the organization is engaged in a struggle against Israel’s occupation and not a worldwide battle against the West. Rubinstein warns that Sharon’s policy of ignoring Arafat and assassinating Hamas leaders is “liable to bring about a situation in which, on the ruins of these organizations, wild growths that are many times crueler and more dangerous will spring up.”

A similar warning could be given to the Bush administration, which portrays the growing insurgency in Iraq as the work of terrorists. Polls show that most Iraqis regard the Americans as an unwanted occupation force and the American-appointed Iraqi leaders as collaborators. Yet on the day the number of American dead reached more than a thousand, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld linked them to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks and attributed their deaths to “international terrorists.”

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who was once on the CIA payroll, has cooperated fully in this charade by decreeing that anyone who attacks U.S. or Iraqi forces is subject to the death penalty—in effect declaring it a war crime to shoot at a soldier who has invaded your country. Allawi also has shut down the Baghdad bureau of Al Jazeera, saying it encouraged terrorism by broadcasting statements by hostage takers. Allawi and his U.S. handlers undoubtedly object to the fact that the network shows graphic scenes of the ongoing war that the American media refuse to show. Saddam Hussain shut Al Jazeera’s offices in 2002.

Allawi is with good reason seen to be representing the Americans rather than the Iraqis and their long-term interests. Iraq’s most popular and influential leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, managed to arrange an agreement in late August with the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whereby al-Sadr’s Mahdi army would withdraw from Najaf’s Old City, where heavy U.S. bombing has leveled most of the buildings, and Americans would remain outside the city. Shortly afterward al-Sadr’s forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City also declared a cease-fire on the same terms.

But the calm was shortlived. Allawi abruptly reversed his position and insisted that U.S. troops be free to re-enter the cities evacuated by the militias and that al-Sadr disband his Mahdi army and surrender. Allawi then offered $300 million in reconstruction aid to other tribal leaders if they would withdraw their support from al-Sadr’s forces. Several of the tribal chiefs refused, however, saying that Allawi could have reached a settlement with al-Sadr’s army if he had agreed to get the Americans out of Sadr City. “The people hate them,” Qarim al Bikhaty explained. Another local leader said that by trying to divide tribal leaders from other residents Allawi was inviting internecine fighting. “This is a mistake,” said Sheikh Shaker al-Saady. “The prime minister needs to make a political settlement.”

Instead Allawi fired his security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who favored a conciliatory approach to al-Sadr, and replaced him with one of his own allies, Qassim Daoud. Sheikh al-Saady’s message was also lost on Col. Robert B. Abrams, a brigade commander in the First Cavalry Division. “There are no negotiations,” he said. “Sadr needs to disband and disarm. If they don’t disarm we will be back at this every month, forever.” Accordingly, renewed fighting flared up when U.S. troops raided the Jawadain Mosque in Sadr City and arrested seven men during morning prayers. Because Shi’i and Sunni militias are nominally in control of several Iraqi cities, U.S. forces are using heavy bombing attacks in an effort to oust them.

The result has been a nightmare for civilians. “Precision strikes” on Fallujah and other cities have destroyed homes and market places and killed scores of civilians, including children. Iraqis say that when soldiers are attacked they fire back indiscriminately and hit innocent people. On Sept. 9 U.S. forces laying siege to a city in northern Iraq reported they had killed 57 Iraqi rebels, but local hospitals said most of the dead were civilians, and Turkey asked for an end to the operation because so many of the victims were ethnic Turks. The Iraq Body Project, a British research organization, estimates that at least 12,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

The continued American presence in Iraq, and the resistance it provokes, is doing other damage as well. The U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussain caused deep fractures in a society that allowed little political freedom but in which life was at least predictable. Iraqis now have a modicum of political freedom but also severe unemployment, and with an abundance of weapons available, there is no security. The invasion also made Iraq a magnet for Islamic extremists. Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, predicts that “We will likely leave behind one of the most violent countries in the region.”

We may also leave behind a police state. The Bush administration plans to divert $3.3 billion in reconstruction funds away from water, sewage, and electricity projects and spend it on greatly expanding the Iraqi police force and army. Part of the money will also go to setting up a paramilitary force and secret service that would deal with “threats to the public order” and guard government dignitaries. The war Bush said would transform Iraq into a liberal democracy is more likely to turn it into a banana republic—with an impoverished population and a well-equipped army to keep down protest.

As if the war in Iraq had not proved to be a colossal failure, there is pressure on Bush to risk a new confrontation, this time with Iran. Such a prospect seems farfetched now, but it could nevertheless come to pass if the architects of our two current wars continue to control U.S. Middle East policy. More evidence of how influential Israel and its supporters are in determining that policy came to light with news that the FBI is investigating a Pentagon analyst suspected of passing White House policy directives on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, works closely with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, one of the top administration officials who once served as policy advisers to former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and now have close ties to the Sharon government. In a 1996 paper called “A Clean Break,” Feith, along with Vice President Dick Cheney’s assistant David Wurmser and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, urged that Netanyahu abandon peace talks with the Palestinians and instead focus on overthrowing Saddam Hussain. The same group is now arguing for a more aggressive policy toward Iran, including stricter sanctions and even regime change. One of AIPAC’s top priorities is to get Washington to adopt such a position.

An intense debate on the issue is reportedly now going on within the administration, and Franklin is suspected of giving classified documents concerning these deliberations to AIPAC, which then turned them over to Israel. This is no ordinary spy case, since any time the Israelis want top secret information from Washington they have only to pick up the phone. Franklin was evidently providing AIPAC with information that would help it make a more effective case with the administration.

Bush already has suggested that despite the CIA’s findings to the contrary, there might be a connection between Iran and Sept. 11. “We will look and see if the Iranians are involved,” he said on July 19. ”After all, it’s a totalitarian society.”

With a controversy brewing over Iran’s program for developing nuclear energy and U.S. claims that the Iranians intend to produce a bomb, the safest approach would be to seek dialogue with Iran and work for a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has offered to suspend some of its nuclear programs in return for normal relations with the West and provide guarantees that its nuclear program is intended only for peaceful purposes. The Bush administration has ignored these statements and instead is urging stiff U.N. sanctions against Iran. In doing so Bush is playing a dangerous game. By continuing to bully Iran with ultimatums and threats, he will strengthen hard-liners in that country, create more hostility to America, and invite more of the violence that he blames on “international terrorism” but is in fact a result of policies that have failed so disastrously in Israel, Russia, and Iraq.

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