U.S. Moves From Condemnation to Tacit Approval of Sharon’s War on Palestinians

By Delinda C. Hanley

“With talk of all-out war resounding in the Holy Land, the Bush administration has granted Israel its widest military freedom of action since—in an ominous precedent—a Republican administration turned a blind eye to Ariel Sharon’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon… Washington’s tacit approval of IDF military moves, coupled with its continuing pressure on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to crack down on militants in his midst, represents a marked departure from nearly two decades of nominal American even-handedness toward the battling sides… The Twin Towers and Pentagon terror strikes, as manifest in U.S. domestic politics, are at the root of the sea-change in U.S. policy toward the conflict, observes Ha’aretz commentator Akiva Eldar…In the new perception, Israel is seen as the equivalent of New York and the Pentagon, an identification only reinforced by recent news footage of Palestinian gunmen killing civilians celebrating a bat mitzva in Hadera or returning home from work on a main Jerusalem thoroughfare.”

—Ha’aretz, Jan. 29, 2002

With the election of George W. Bush to the White House, many Americans and their friends in the Middle East anticipated a more balanced, even-handed foreign policy and—perhaps naively—possibly even an end to violence between Israel and its neighbor, Palestine. Certainly the more than 72 percent of Muslim-American voters, as well as a great number of Arab Americans, who supported Bush hoped that the new president would be moved only by his conscience when it came to peace in the Middle East. Bush, after all owed no favors to the Israel lobby—its supporters having voted overwhelmingly for Bill Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore.

While no groundbreaking changes in U.S. Mideast policy occurred in the first months of his administration, hopes were still high when Bush recognized the need for a Palestinian state and surrounded himself with advisers who were considered open-minded on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Eyebrows were raised, however, when the first Middle East leader Bush invited to the White House, on March 20, 2001, was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It soon became obvious that, at Israel’s request, a similar invitation would not be issued to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Nonetheless people of conscience were relieved the following month, when the State Department condemned Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders, its plans to expand Jewish-only settlements, and its April 17 invasion of Gaza.

Then, on Aug. 29, the State Department warned Israel not to violate U.S. law by using American-made weapons to kill Palestinians. Spokesman Richard Boucher said, “Washington has made it clear that Israel’s use of heavy weaponry, especially in the densely populated areas, is a very grave issue and threatens to take the lives of civilians. This is the stance the U.S. has adopted for several months.”

Less than two weeks later, on Sept. 11, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was pushed to the back burner following the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacks. Nevertheless, on Oct. 2, President Bush said the creation of a Palestinian state had always been part of Washington’s vision for the Middle East. “The idea of a Palestinian state has always been a part of a vision, so long as the right of Israel to exist is respected,” Bush told reporters after a meeting with congressional leaders. He also said, however, that it was vital to first reduce the violence in the region.

As the world’s media was otherwise occupied with the fallout from Sept. 11, Sharon and his media-savvy advisers began turning up the heat. They and Israel’s supporters in the U.S. media began equating the terrorist attack on America with Palestinian terrorism against the Jewish state. Sharon’s strategy was simple—and effective: When things got too quiet, he’d assassinate a leader of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group once supported by Israel to give Chairman Arafat some serious political competition. Hamas would retaliate with a suicide bombing, and headlines would rage against Palestinian terrorists.

As a Jan. 17 article by Orit Shochat in Israel’s Hebrew-language newspaper Ha’ir explained, “When there are no terror attacks to avenge, the cabinet fabricates excuses for revenge. When there is no excuse, it makes a provocation. When there isn’t even a provocation, we avenge assumed intentions to kill Jews… The strategic goal is to prevent a cease-fire at all cost. To talk of seven quiet days as a precondition for negotiations, and not to be satisfied even with 70.”

Next Sharon, using the excuse of the Oct. 17 killing of Israel’s minister of tourism, Rehavam Ze’evi, by Hamas in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of its leader, Mustafa Zibri (Abu Ali Mustafa),began a full-scale invasion of the West Bank and Gaza. Some Americans, who had never much bothered with U.S. foreign policy, began to ask the right questions about Washington’s blind support for Israel, right or wrong. They noticed that it was isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world just as a consensus was required for the American-led war on terrorism.

Anyone with access to unbiased media can see by the casualty figures alone which side’s actions were those of a terrorist state. Conservative figures used by Reuters on Jan. 26 list 821 Palestinians and 248 Israelis killed since the Palestinian uprising began in Sept. 2000. A Jan. 28 report by Miftah(the organization headed by Hanan Ashrawi) includes Palestinian deaths in southern Lebanon and inside Israel, bringing the total number of Palestinian deaths to 946.

Other events in December reinforced America’s concern that Israel’s “war on terrorism” really was just a cynical euphemism for a war on the Palestinian people, whose land it illegally occupies. Following a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks, Israel destroyed Palestinian President Arafat’s helicopters in a Dec. 3 missile strike on Gaza. Dismissing Arafat as “irrelevant,” Prime Minister Sharon ordered an Israeli military blockade to surround the Palestinian leader’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah and prevent him from leaving.

When details of a new peace plan devised by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Ahmed Karia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, were leaked on Dec. 23 to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, Sharon blasted the draft proposal as “seriously harmful to Israel.” The “harmful” plan only reiterated calls for both sides to enforce the cease-fire outlined by CIA director George Tenet and to begin immediately to implement the recommendations of the Mitchell Commission.

Israel’s final public relations disaster came when Sharon prevented Arafat from attending the traditional Christmas Eve celebration in Bethlehem. Public opinion finally began to come down hard on Israel.

Just in the knick of time, though, Israel snatched back American support after its commandos on Jan. 3 seized a ship nearly 300 miles from its shores carrying weapons investigators claimed were headed for the Palestinian Authority. The Karin A carried 50 tons of Iranian-made long-range rockets, antitank missiles and explosives. Israel had been watching the plan unfold since October 2000, so the timing of the ship’s capture, as well as its real destination, is questionable.

If the PA had ordered these weapons—an allegation Arafat denies—it would be in violation of interim peace deals. Curiously, Israel’s invasions, blockades, house demolitions, assassinations of Palestinian leaders, and settlement building are not considered violations. Nor does Israel’s destruction of nearly $16 million worth of European Union-funded Palestine property, including the Gaza airport and seaport, broadcasting studios, an irrigation scheme, and a school building program, qualify as a peace violation. Palestinians are not permitted to defend themselves against their occupiers’ attacks.

The American press studiously avoided comparing the 50 tons of weapons found on the Karin A to the millions of tons of weapons the U.S. ships to Israel each year. Over the past four years, Israel has received American weapons worth $5.2 billion, the bulk of it delivered as free military aid. According to the Sept. 21, 2001 U.S. General Accounting Office Defense Trade Report, from fiscal year 1991 through 2000 U.S. military equipment sent to Israel totaled $18,763.4 million—offset by U.S. grants totaling $10,812.4 million,

Absence of Logic

Demonstrating a complete absence of logic, the White House blamed all terrorist activities orchestrated by Israel and Hamas on Arafat, locked away in Ramallah. On Jan. 24, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer implicitly endorsed Israeli military action in the occupied territories, saying that “the president understands the reason for it,” and that it “is up to Chairman Arafat to demonstrate the leadership to combat terrorism.”

In his harshest comments against Arafat since the beginning of the intifada, Bush angrily accused the Palestinian Authority on Jan. 25 of “enhancing terror” as a result of the Karin A escapade, and suspended a cease-fire mission by peace envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni. ‘’I am disappointed in Yasser Arafat,” Bush said. “He must make a full effort to rout out terror in the Middle East.’’

In the ensuing days the administration discussed cutting ties with Arafat, closing PA offices in Washington, DC, and even adding Arafat’s personal security force to the State Department’s list of terrorist groups. Further censure was inhibited only by the likely impact of such measures on moderate Arab countries cooperating with America’s “war on terrorism.”

During the winter recess no less than eight congressional delegations visited Israel. With a careful eye on November elections, most snubbed Arafat and vowed eternal devotion to Israel. Some members have returned determined to pressure the Bush administration to adopt an even more explicitly anti-PLO position.

It is obvious that Washington has abandoned the effort—or pretense—to be an honest, even-handed peace broker—at least until after the November elections. Israel has blinded yet another U.S. administration to the terror it wreaks on the colonized people whose land it covets.

Palestinians and their many supporters around the world are now asking the U.N. to step in. They should also ask the U.S. to bow out. It’s time for this country to let the U.N. do the job it was designed to do without U.S. vetoes or obstructionism. The U.N. Security Council then can adopt a resolution for the immediate deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force, end the ongoing and illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and the denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Nor is such a scenario solely in the interest of the Palestinians. For only when there is a just peace will Israel have the security it says it so dearly wants.

Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.