April 18, 2004
NEW YORK - Israeli leaders know the best time to wring favors and funds from Washington is during presidential election years. Even so, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tenth visit to the White House last week produced an extraordinary bonanza.
First, Sharon almost certainly won Bush's agreement to assassinate the new leader of Hamas, Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi, who only recently replaced the movement's founder, Sheik Yassin, who was also assassinated by Israel. The Israelis used US helicopters and missiles in both killings. If Sharon did not advise Bush in advance of the killing that inflamed the entire Mideast against Israel and the US, then Sharon demonstrated remarkable contempt for the American president.
Next, breaking with three decades of US policy, international law, numerous UN resolutions, and even his own `roadmap for peace,' President George Bush accepted all Sharon's demands and strongly endorsed the Israeli leader's unilateral plans for the West Bank and Gaza.
Bush agreed to Israel's permanent retention of major Jewish settlement blocs on strategic high ground of the occupied West Bank. These, plus new Jerusalem suburbs, contain nearly 450,000 Jewish settlers. To Sharon's delight, Bush rejected any right of return to Israel of 4 million Palestinian refugees, and declared Israel need not go back to its pre-1967 War borders.
As a `concession,' Sharon offered his `disengagement plan' to pull 7,400 Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip and close some marginal West Bank outposts. In short, Sharon was trading unwanted, indefensible, settlements for the West Bank's choicest land and water. Bush called this election-year plum, `courageous and historic.'
Sharon and Bush will now proclaim a just, lasting Arab-Israeli peace, though Palestinians - dismissed as `terrorists' - were not even consulted. They are to have no say in the give-away of their land.
The `temporary' Berlin Wall being built by Sharon will seal off Jewish settlements from Palestinians, turning densely populated Arab areas into seething ghettos, packed with enraged, unemployed people.
Bush's gifts to Israel provided a potent boost to PM Sharon's troubled political fortunes. The President's claim to be bringing democracy to Iraq will now be buttressed by the equally preposterous claim to be a Mideast peacemaker.
Middle America, innocent to foreign affairs, will likely swallow this nonsense. Bush's Christian fundamentalist backers, who yearn for recreation of Biblical Israel, will be ecstatic. So, the Bush campaign hopes, will be Jewish voters.
When extremist Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad inevitably react with violence to Israel's land expropriations, wall-building, and assassinations, Bush will be able to claim he and Sharon are brothers-in-arms fighting terrorism.
The administration's pro-Sharon neo-conservatives, who engineered the calamitous Iraq war, and continue to dominate US foreign policy, have now achieved their long-sought goal of thwarting the Oslo peace process, keeping hold of the best part of the West Bank and Golan, and blocking any viable Palestinian state.
It was no coincidence Elliot Abrams, the fanatically anti-Palestinian White House Mideast chief, was point man on the Bush deal with Sharon.
The Jewish settlements - really mid-sized cities - that Bush allows to remain in the heart of the West Bank will chop up remaining Palestinian territory into 3-5 non-contiguous enclaves surrounded by Israeli security forces and cut off from the outside world. Israel will thus retain the useful land while dumping Arab population centers.
Sharon has long sought such West Bank apartheid-style `Bantustans.' No truly viable Palestinian state could exist on such fragmented territory. Now denied any hope of a real state, the Palestinian intifada will intensify, and grow more violent.
Bush's claim Israeli settlement-cities deserved to stay because they were `facts on the ground,' was not only illogical but gave Israeli settlers a green light to keep expanding and seizing more Arab land.
The president's total embrace of Israel's far right is a misfortune for Palestinians, the United States and Israel. By allying himself with Israel's expansionist right wing, Bush assures there will be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It also undermines all Palestinians who advocated non-violence - just what Sharon wanted.
This dismaying policy change further accelerates the Bush Administration's marginalization and exclusion of Israel's pro-peace moderates and left, who bitterly oppose the radical settler factions that are Sharon's political core supporters. Moderate American Jewish groups seeking to nurture peace with Palestinians have also been cold-shouldered by the White House.
The Bush-Sharon love fest will unfortunately confirm the Muslim World's growing belief the US has become their principal enemy, and that Israel's far right pulls the Bush Administration's strings.
Many Europeans share this view.
Undermining Israel's moderates and enraging Muslims everywhere will certainly fuel more anti-US terrorism, wreck hopes for Mideast peace, and further damage America's interests in the Islamic World.
What a tragedy. Bush and Sharon seem determined to wage non-stop jihad against the Muslim World. They have sabotaged any chances of real peace. As Israeli thinker Uri Avnery rightly noted, `Bush and Sharon made peace between them. But Israel must make peace with the Palestinians.'
Foreign Correspondent
