Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2002
Apr. 14, 2002
Who is really running America's Mideast policy? Over the past two weeks, an astounded world saw the grotesque spectacle of President George W. Bush pleading in vain with Ariel Sharon, leader of nation of only 6.3 million people which receives almost US$5 billion in annual US aid, to cease laying waste the Occupied West Bank.
Ignoring worldwide condemnation and demands from the UN Security Council, Sharon ordered his armor, much of it American-supplied, to accelerate shooting up and bulldozing Palestinian towns, refugee camps, and all symbols of Palestinian identity or statehood. Twenty years ago, Sharon invaded Lebanon, `to crush Palestinian terrorism.' His big guns and warplanes blasted Beirut for three weeks, killing 17,000 civilians. Today, he remains determined to hold Arab lands Israel conquered in 1967, to destroy any hopes or vestiges of a viable Palestinian state, and break the will of the Palestinian people.
President Bush and senior aides Condoleza Rice and Colin Powell were left looking weak, indecisive, and inept. Bush clearly is a political soulmate of ultra-hawk Sharon; they share a mutual detestation for Yasser Arafat and for Arabs in general. Bush has been encouraging Sharon's attacks of Palestine for months. But Israel's invasion of the West Bank - reminiscent of Soviet tanks crushing Hungary in 1956 - gravely threatened America's Mideast client regimes, so Bush had to demand Sharon relent. In an act of sheer farce, Powell was sent on a slow boat to Israel, via Madrid and Morocco. Before Powell even arrived, former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington, summoned fawning US Senators, and arrogantly informed them Powell's mission would fail.
While the rest of the world condemned Israel's invasion and merciless destruction of the Palestinian ghettos, not a peep was heard from the White House, Congress or America's media about Israel's violation of US law in using US-supplied armor and warplanes against civilians. Nor about Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. There were no protests when Israel's Shimon Peres described `massacres' of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers. Nor even a tut tut when Sharon named to his cabinet a fanatical rightwing general who advocates ethnic cleansing Palestinians - the same crime for which the US pursued Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and other war criminals.
There is deep sympathy in the US for the suffering Israel has endured at the hands of suicide bombers, which remind Americans of the horrors of 9/11. Still, why was America alone in defending Israel's ruthless punishment of the Palestinians? How could Bush, only a few weeks ago still bathing in the bogus glory of a military `triumph' against a few thousand medieval tribesman in Afghanistan, be so suddenly made to look foolish and impotent by events in the Mideast?
Simply put, Sharon's rightwing Likud Party has come to dominate US Mideast policy through its powerful American lobby, which `guides' Congress. Under pressure from the Israel lobby, 89 out of 100 senators and at least 280 congressmen recently demanded Bush give Sharon carte blanche to crush Palestine. As the Israeli writer Uri Avnery wryly noted, if the Israel lobby gave orders to repeal the Ten Commandements, Congress would immediately vote in favor.
America's media is strongly pro-Israel and averse to dissenting views. A coterie of hawkish, Israel-first neo-conservatives dominates media opinion-making and the Pentagon, leading the charge for a war against Iraq, Iran, and Syria. One of them even wrote Bush's foolish `axis of evil' speech. In addition, America's Christian far right strongly backs Bush and ardently supports of Israel's extreme rightists, who have long cultivated America's unworldly and naïve conservative Christians.
Tight US mid-term elections are approaching. Bush does not want to anger American Jewish voters who have been panicked by Sharon into believing Israel is in mortal danger. Bush obviously recalls that when his father sought to pressure Israel to halt building illegal settlements, Bush Senior was roasted by the media as an anti-Semite, forced to back down, and lost re-election. No wonder Sharon could thumb his nose at Bush.
Bush likes to talk tough, but this crisis has shown him the exact opposite. In Texas, they'd say, `big hat, no cattle.' Bush has so far failed to take any real action to halt America's Mideast interests being undermined by the bloodbath in Palestine and Israel.
The best way to protect Israelis from terror attacks is to withdraw their 200,000 illegal settlers and end their colonial rule over the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan; divide East Jerusalem into Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sectors; have NATO troops police peace accords; and either normalize relations with the Arabs, as the Saudis propose, or build a wall to isolate Israel from its neighbors. This cannot be done so long as settlements remain.
Sharon is dead set against this sensible idea: he and his Likud Party are hell bent to hold on to the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan at all costs, either clubbing the Palestinian population into total submission, or ethically cleansing them into the deserts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Sharon needs to be pushed the way President Eisenhower ordered Israel, in 1956, to get out of Sinai, which it had invaded and occupied - or else.
Had Bush the measure of Eisenhower's integrity or genuine patriotism, he would compel Sharon to accept the wise Saudi peace plan and forget dreams of recreating a Biblical Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. This would be a boon to Jews and Arabs alike.
But Bush junior is no Eisenhower. His dithering over the Mideast has made the United States appear both helpless, and a tacit supporter of Israel's brutal West Bank repression - and made America the potential target of more terrorist attacks from the enraged Arab world.
<--full details.
