12 - 18 April 2001
Issue No.529
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529 |
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In the face of recklessness
Ibrahim Nafie analyses the strategies necessary to restrain an Israeli government intent on escalating regional tensions
Israel continues to defy regional and international efforts aimed at ending its relentless assault against the Palestinian people and their national authority. In fact, rather than taking advantage of the available opportunities to pacify the situation in Palestine preparatory to resuming negotiations, the Sharon government has launched an intensive propaganda campaign to deflect international anger away from its extremist policies.
This is a government determined to press ahead with its agenda for imposing, by force, its formula for peace upon the Palestinians and the Arabs. It contains figures such as Rehavam Zeevi, the National Union leader who advocates expelling all Arabs from the land of Israel and Avigdor Lieberman, of the Yisrael Bieteinu Party, who has repeatedly urged bombing the High Dam and strikes against Lebanon and Iran. The spiritual leader of Shas, a powerful coalition member, is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who has called for exterminating the Arabs with missiles. This is, obviously, a rabidly fanatic government that holds out alarming prospects for regional peace.
If, initially, it appeared that Shimon Peres's participation in the coalition would temper its more impetuous and belligerent tendencies, a month after assuming power it has become apparent that Sharon has succeeded in winning the Labour leader over to his extremist views. Peres's position was wryly encapsulated by Yossi Beilin, a prominent Labour figure who refused to take part in the Sharon government.
"Peres has given the Sharon government license to trade on the name of the Nobel Prize," he said, referring to the international repute Peres had gained through his association with the Rabin government and which is now serving to lend the Sharon government a veneer of respectability.
It is absurd to think that such a government could seriously explore viable options to realise a lasting peace. Moreover, not only is there a disturbing consistency in the attitudes of its constituent members, it has derived considerable reassurance from the new Republican administration in the US, which is reluctant to intervene to halt the current deterioration.
Against this backdrop of spiraling tensions President Mubarak's recent visit to Washington was of paramount importance. Because Mubarak, the first Arab leader to meet with the heads of the new US administration, is unreservedly esteemed for his statesmanship and because Washington attaches great importance to Egypt's leading role in the region, the Egyptian leader was able to effect significant change in the new administration's initial attitudes. He succeeded, for example, in persuading Washington that the Palestinians were not solely responsible for the degenerating situation and that the new administration should be more active in curbing the wave of spiraling violence in the region.
Mubarak's efforts bore immediate, tangible fruit. During his visit, Secretary of State Colin Powell made several phone calls to Sharon to urge him to scale down the military assault against the Palestinians and US officials unequivocally declared their disapproval of Sharon's decision to resume Jewish settlement expansion. These actions marked a clear departure from Washington's earlier hands-off position and, moreover, encouraged other international powers to once more voice their condemnation of Israel's use of excessive force against the Palestinian people. Indeed, less than a week after Mubarak's visit to Washington, the EU vehemently reproached Israel for its decision to step up settlement construction and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed for more intensive efforts to stop the violence in Palestine and to resume negotiations.
Nevertheless, in view of the nature of the current government in Tel Aviv, such a task will be an uphill struggle. We are dealing with a government that has no compunction about spreading provocative lies, as was the case when it claimed that it had informed Cairo, Jordan and Washington that it planned to unleash a new assault against the Palestinian people, a claim that Mubarak denied in no uncertain terms, calling upon Tel Aviv to furnish any shred of evidence to support its claim. And, as we have seen, it is stacked with officials who give vent to the most inflammatory racist sentiments.
Stopping the violence in Palestine and protecting the Palestinian people from the ravages inflicted upon them by the Sharon government, therefore, will require the orchestrated efforts of all forces keen to promote peace and regional stability. If these efforts are to succeed, moreover, the US must be urged to play a more active and constructive role. Even those actions undertaken at the international level under the auspices of the UN should be coordinated with the US so as to ensure the passage of resolutions that will be effective in bringing an end to the campaign of aggression the Sharon government is waging against the Palestinian people.
In this regard, Egypt has undertaken a new initiative, via the Arab League, to present a proposal to the Security Council aimed at securing protection for the Palestinian people and resuming negotiations. This latest diplomatic initiative takes into account recent local, regional and international changes and has been carefully formulated so as not to alienate major international powers, foremost among them the US, which has the power to veto any proposed Security Council resolution as, in fact, it did very recently with the resolution calling for international observers to be sent to the occupied territories. In doing so, the US effectively gave Sharon carte blanche to escalate violence against the Palestinians. Above all, at this stage, Egypt and the Arabs must coordinate closely with Washington to ensure our prime objective -- the passage of a resolution that will furnish an international mechanism to safeguard the Palestinians from Sharon's schemes to intensify his armed repression of the Intifada and his stranglehold on the occupied territories.
Should the US indeed decide to back such a resolution, it will necessarily have a stake in ensuring that its provisions are implemented which, in turn, means that it will subject the actions of the Israeli government to more intensive scrutiny, all the more so in view of the prospects of reviving peace negotiations under its sponsorship. But, as the US still needs to be prodded in this direction the Arabs must sustain their efforts to drive home to Washington the perils that lie in store for regional stability should such a resolution fail to pass, particularly given the reckless tendencies of the Sharon government.
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