America's war against the Arabs

I was watching a news item on a satellite channel. Clinton was accompanying the leaders and representatives of the Palestinian people to the Rashad Al-Shawa Hall in Gaza. Like other Arabs that day, I felt that I was the object of an intensive US public relations drive to convince me that the Palestinians had succeeded in penetrating US policy. Clinton was being shown off to us as the first US president to travel to Gaza -- that is, to Palestinian territory -- and the first US president to allude to the Palestinians' right to self-determination on their own land.

I wanted to believe. The time had come, I told myself. It was inevitable that one day the US would open its eyes to a truth which had been obscured from it by a fatal moral or ideological blindness. Now they had acknowledged that the Palestinians have rights, and that the latter-day prophets of Israel had been deliberately insulting the American leaders ever since the US became the sole great power in the world. That day, as Clinton was giving his speech, I did my best to ignore an awkward recollection that tried to force itself on my consciousness from twenty years ago. I tried to forget that Jimmy Carter, too, had spoken of the right of the Palestinians to a national homeland and self-determination. But my memory insisted: Clinton was not the first to have led us down this alley.

Nevertheless, I let myself be thrilled by the sight of the Palestinians' delight as they pinned their new hopes to the US president. For an hour or two, I ignored the impulse to objectivity that urged me not to get emotional over such a ghostly spectacle. I had never imagined I would see the day when the representatives of the Palestinian people would rise to applaud, having just voted to ratify a memorandum that detracts from the legitimacy of their existence while at the same time giving abundant recognition to the legitimacy of Israeli rights. That day I said, as did many others, that it was their right. It is their charter. Israel is their enemy, or their partner, in a heroic peace. It is their day to rejoice. I wrote nothing at the time. I wanted to give their happiness a chance. I kept my doubts to myself, my doubts about Clinton's intentions, about the new-found influence of the Palestinians on US policy, about the tales of tension between Clinton and Netanyahu, and, more urgently, about the true purpose of Clinton's visit.

For supposedly, Clinton had come to Israel and Palestine in order to give his personal backing to the implementation of the Wye River Memorandum. It was said that he came to witness for himself the Palestinians renouncing the most important article of their national charter. Supposedly, too, he wanted to pressure the Likud government to refrain from imposing new conditions on the PA, release political detainees and lift the economic blockade. Yet though he was there to testify to that sorrowful, albeit historical, spectacle of the representatives of the Palestinian people standing to applaud the victory of the Israeli will, Clinton accomplished none of the other stated objectives of his visit.

In my opinion, the true purpose of Clinton's visit lay elsewhere. He came to the region deliberately to coordinate the new campaign of war he was about to wage against Iraq. Everything else was camouflage.

Why do I say this? For one thing, because Netanyahu knew that the Palestinian leadership had already committed themselves to annulling the relevant articles of the charter and he knew that the US had no reason to doubt that the Palestinian leadership would fulfil its commitment. What Netanyahu did want, however, was to humiliate the representatives and leaders of the Palestinians as much as possible by having the vote of annulment take place in front of the television cameras, so that it could be seen by all the Arab peoples as well as by the Palestinian exiles in their camps and countries of refuge. With the exception of this premeditated media display, however, Clinton spent most of his time in discussions over the security of Israel, its role in Jordan and northern Iraq, and its joint role with Turkey in the event that the campaign against Iraq should escalate.

Several other events can be cited to support this claim. Firstly, a shipment of Patriot missiles arrived in Israel just before Clinton's visit. Secondly, after the American bombing of Iraq began, a statement was released declaring that Clinton had spoken with Netanyahu about the campaign. (The statement did not mention whether Clinton discussed the subject with Arafat.) Thirdly, the congressmen who accompanied Clinton on his trip to Israel said that the US president had informed them of the decision to strike Iraq on board their airplane during the return flight to the US. Such clear evidence obviates the need for any more explicitly corroborative proof.

That was why I became angry. I was angry because the Palestinian people, who were furnished with American flags to wave in welcome to the arriving US president, were the victims of this manipulation. The Americans wanted the Palestinians to cheer with false optimism, instead of burning more American flags, when they began to bombard Iraq. It infuriated me even more that the Americans' actions immediately following Clinton's visit exacerbated the breaches between the Palestinian people and their leadership, as well as between the various sections of this people and their organisations. Regardless of how deeply moved Clinton was supposed to have been by the circumstances of the Palestinian people and by their zeal in altering the articles of their charter and paying tribute to the state of Israel, I will never for a moment believe that he was not simultaneously thinking about how the Palestinians would react to the forthcoming strike against the people of Iraq, the orders for which he would sign in just a matter of hours.

To give Clinton his due, the speech he made in Gaza was one of the most eloquently and coherently formulated speeches I have heard him make. It was precisely calculated to address simultaneously a number of highly diverse constituencies. Nevertheless, I was not deceived by its content. Nor was I fooled by those finely-tuned facial gestures meant to convey the most heartfelt candour and sincerity. But then, after six years of practice, he has acquired an excellent proficiency in the art of lying. Nor I am alone in this assessment. The American people and their congressional representatives, even Clinton's own family, no longer believe a single word that comes from his mouth.

I was also angered by yet another spectacle of Arab defeat. I am not referring to the Arab masses, for their will has not been broken, nor does it appear ready to break, in spite of the many attempts to grind them down. However, the events that took place during Clinton's visit and the response of the Palestinian leadership to the Iraqi bombing was a form of capitulation. So too was the communiqué issued several weeks ago by the Damascus Declaration group -- a communiqué which Washington was all too eager to produce as one of its justifications for bombing Iraq.

That US policy-makers could wield the Damascus Declaration communiqué as a proof of legitimacy against the accusation that they were violating international legality reflects the most artful cunning. It was a ploy expressly designed to pit the Arab governments against their people. It made it appear as though the parties to the Damascus Declaration sought to revive the alliance against Iraq, even though the original alliance had emerged under entirely different circumstances.

The original alliance was formed to liberate Kuwait. The new alliance, as the US interprets it, is open-ended. Its objectives are to be set by Washington alone. One of these objectives is to demolish Iraq and partition its territory. To do so is to ignite a powder keg, but the US is happy to do this, for the consequences of its explosion are no longer of any great importance to them.

Official reactions from other parts of the Arab world were also so many forms of submission. The Arab nations' attitudes towards the strike against Iraq represented, in essence, the voluntary abandonment of any right to arm in order to defend themselves against aggression from within the region or abroad. It would, moreover, appear that fate has decreed that the Arab defeat should be both resounding and painful. Russia acted against every logical expectation by taking a principled stance, however token a stance it may have been, against the attack. It would appear that some countries refuse to be broken because the alternative is too bleak, while others submit to defeat as though it were their ineluctable fate to acquiesce in the irrefutable will of a great power, or as though capitulation were the surest way of survival. What form that "survival" might take is the last thing they are thinking of when they do so.

The latest instalment of US aggression against Iraq has brought to a close the chapter on the Iraqi invasion against Kuwait, the consequences of the invasion and the anti-Iraq alliance. This is not my opinion alone. I have heard it repeated within the international decision-making institutions as well as among the elites of several Arab countries. I have heard it from moderate leaders and political cadres who have no particular commitment to Arab nationalism. I have read it in the official speeches issued from China, Russia and some of the countries of Europe and Asia. The battle of Kuwait is over. What is still going on, however, is America's war against the Arabs -- including, as usual, its "allies" in the region, and those who had been its allies until not too long ago.

In all this, I have not forgotten about the role of the UK. But at least, the British have an excuse. Their fangs -- in spite of the cruelty of fate -- still thirst for Arab blood, and their politicians, however modest their status and their national and moral ambitions, still pine for the golden era of betraying promises -- especially promises made to Arabs.