1 - 7 February 2001
Issue No.519
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 February 2001 Issue No.519 |
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Bush and Iraq
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, within the framework of a tripartite undertaking, that is, with the participation of the Americans, were pursued up to the very last moment of Clinton's presidency on 20 January. That date was seen as the deadline before which an agreement had to be reached. But the date came and went without an agreement, and the parties decided to continue negotiations without the participation of the American side, which was busy setting up the new US administration. The new target date for reaching an agreement became 6 February, when elections for Israel's new prime minister will take place. Although following the intensive round of talks in Taba Israeli negotiators claimed that a breakthrough had never been closer, it is clear that the parties will once again be unable to bridge the still yawning gaps between them before the 6 February deadline.
So far, the parties have no frame of reference to crack the difficult issues other than what have come to be known as Clinton's "ideas." But what happens after Clinton's departure and his explicit statement that these ideas are his and do not involve the American government? With Clinton out of the picture, his ideas can no longer be invoked and, moreover, both parties have declared that they do not accept them without reservations touching on central issues and not only on details.
We are thus facing a dangerous vacuum here. The Palestinian Authority and Barak's government are engaged in intensive negotiations in the absence of a frame of reference because both parties, for different reasons, want to deprive Sharon of what polls indicate is almost certain victory in the forthcoming elections. But opposition to Sharon is not in itself sufficient to overcome the deep differences that still exist between them.
There is no reason to believe that the Bush administration will endorse Clinton's ideas. Why should it? After all, these ideas were not embraced unreservedly by either of the parties. Why begin where Clinton failed? The question is whether the new administration has an alternative strategy. For all the isolationist talk now coming out of Washington, the Middle East is too important for American interests to be left to its own devices. But given the failure of American mediation to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the new administration is unlikely to concentrate its efforts in that direction.
A first test of Washington's intentions will come on 6 February, when Israel elects a new prime minister. Much will depend on whether Bush shares Arafat and Barak's aversion to the idea of a Sharon victory at the polls, or whether the new conservative Republican administration feels closer to the Likud than to Israel's Labour Party. In the latter case, Bush will not step in to ensure the success of the negotiations before the Israeli elections.
Moreover, Bush has no personal stake in the successful outcome of the negotiations, unlike his predecessor, who believed that playing a key role in resolving the historical conflict between Palestinians and Israelis could earn him a Nobel peace prize and go far towards redeeming his scandal-riddled presidency. Bush is not driven by similar considerations and is in no rush to tackle a problem that has proved so resistant to solution. Instead, he is adopting a low-profile approach to the problem, cancelling the role of special envoy Dennis Ross and relying on the reports of US ambassadors in the region to update him on the progress of the negotiations.
But if, as seems to be the case, Bush does not intend to make the peace negotiations his doorway to the Middle East, and if, as is certainly the case, America's strategic interests require it to be actively involved in determining the course of events in the region, then another way in must be found. The danger is that Bush may be tempted to approach the Middle East from the point at which his father left things before Clinton stepped in. It is true that the Middle East at the beginning of the '90s was not what it has become at the beginning of the third millennium, but it is also true that the Bush family is bound to see in the victory of the son a kind of historical continuum that was interrupted for a few years by the Clinton presidency. In that sense, the policies of Bush senior will, to one extent or another, serve as a frame of reference for his son. In a previous article, I suggested that Bush might assign Clinton to continue his peace-making efforts for the account of the new administration, but this scenario now seems unlikely.
Any attempt to define the main features of what can be described as the frame of reference, or political legacy, passed on by the first President Bush to his son, particularly in regard to the Middle East, would have to start with Desert Storm, the defining moment for the first Bush administration. At the time, Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, who now serves as an adviser to the new president, succeeded in using the dissension in Arab ranks, which came to a head with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, to transform the whole map of confrontations in the region by convincing Arab Gulf states that they had more to fear from a fellow Arab leader than they did from Israel. Once this conviction took hold, it was easy to sell them on the idea that the conflict with Israel should be "frozen," if only temporarily, so that they could concentrate all their efforts on countering the more immediate threat posed by Saddam. It was this line of thought which convinced the Arab rulers to join the Madrid conference and accept the launching of a peace process aimed at reaching a comprehensive peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The first Bush administration proceeded from the premise that exacerbating inter-Arab conflict could help overcome the Arab-Israeli conflict, irrespective of whether Israel was represented by Labour or Likud. Indeed, Israel at the time was under a Likud government led by Yitzhak Shamir. It is worth noting that some of the key figures in the new Bush administration played very high-profile roles at the time of the second Gulf war: Vice-President Dick Cheney was George Bush Sr's secretary of defence; Secretary of State Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both men have extensive experience in the region and played a key role in determining its features a decade ago.
One should also not forget that the Bush team has strong links with oil lobbies in the United States, and that many of its members have dealt with oil interests in the Gulf. This might induce one to think that the Bush administration would be more sympathetic to the Arab viewpoint, especially if we take into account the fact that the vast majority of American Jews voted for the Democratic candidates for presidency and vice-presidency, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. But the new president is also very close to the Christian far right, which strongly supports the state of Israel. It might therefore be more correct to assume that President Bush will not support all Arab parties, but rather those with whom his father built close relations, that is, the moderate Arab regimes as opposed to those described as rogue regimes hostile to the United States -- in other words, once again betting on inter-Arab conflict rather than on inter-Arab solidarity.
But there have been changes in the political dynamics of the region since the Iraqi-Kuwaiti war. For the first time in a decade, all the Arabs came together in a summit meeting, an important first step in cementing cohesion and healing the rifts in Arab ranks. Then too it will be hard to convince any Arab leader that Saddam Hussein is a worse enemy than Ariel Sharon. Moreover, the peace negotiations have opened files that can no longer be conveniently shelved by any Arab leader, such as Jerusalem with its holy Muslim shrines. If the issue of Iraq divided the Arabs for a long time, Jerusalem now unites them. There are ominous signs that Bush intends to disengage America from the defunct peace process and to use Iraq as his gateway to the region. American planes recently hit Iraqi military bases in answer to Iraqi anti-aircraft guns aimed at an American air strike near Mosul. Colin Powell has commissioned his aides to come forward with "ideas" on how to activate sanctions against Iraq. A state department spokesman declared that this move is in line with the promises Bush made during his electoral campaign.
During the traditional meeting between President Mubarak and Egyptian writers and intellectuals at the start of the Cairo Book Fair, I expressed my concern that the new American administration might be contemplating a revival of the Iraqi situation. The president pointed out that the belligerent statements coming out of Baghdad provide the Americans with the excuse they need to mobilise forces against Iraq -- which raises the question of whether there is a way to prevent the Iraqi regime from shooting itself in the foot, in the interest of all Arabs and at this particularly critical moment in the Arab world. Hoping that pre-emptive diplomacy could prevent the war of words between Iraq and its immediate neighbours from escalating into something more serious, President Mubarak flew to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait earlier this week for talks aimed at defusing any possible crisis with Iraq before it is too late.
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