17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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A backward choreography
The Bush administration has quickly managed to plant the seeds of doubt in Arab minds concerning its desire to play a positive role in the peace process. Fairness, wisdom and responsibility, after all, are the qualities necessary from any broker who in good faith wants to end Israeli aggression against Palestinians and cut short the vicious circle of violence.
The greatest irony at present is that while the entire world has become familiar with Sharon's agenda, nobody knows exactly what the objectives of the US might be. The Bush government, having welcomed the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative, has refrained from taking a single step forward after that, though it can be argued they have taken a step or two in the opposite direction. The pretext for this was the Mitchell Report, in which Washington hoped to find justification for resuming its role in the peace process. And though it refrained from condemning either party and ignored Sharon's role in the flare-up of the Intifada, the report put its finger on an essential truth underlying the explosively unfolding events: the systematic, exponential expansion of Israel through settlements built on Palestinian land, and the constant threat to the life and livelihoods of the Palestinian people. Providing the guidelines for building trust, the report explained how the end of violence is inextricably tied with ending this process of expansion.
It does not take much intelligence to understand that what Mitchell said about the settlements is not a new discovery, and that the American government had been aware of it all long. Yet for the past decade American policy has steadily given way to Israel, particularly on the issue of settlements: first they were declared to be an unequivocal threat to peace, then they were described as having a negative effect on peace. Finally, the American administration professed ignorance of the reasons behind the violence -- as if it knew nothing of settlements -- and commissioned the Mitchell report to "find out" why Palestinians were firing at Jewish settlements.
Since the former secretary of state James Baker refused to give $10 billion in loans to Israel in an attempt to pressure it to stop building settlements, America's Middle East diplomacy has swerved radically in favour of Israel. Settlements have sprouted everywhere in Gaza and the West Bank (more than 200 now exist), a systematic strategy aimed at dividing Palestinian land into separate enclosures. Most were built with American funding that arrived under various guises. So can we expect Sharon -- leading champion of settlement policy -- to desist now, whatever Mitchell might say or do?
Bush's policy -- which helped abort the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative in a process best described as a form of diplomatic euthanasia -- will, in any case, help Israel counter the claims of the report, continuing Washington's favourite form of dance, which can best be described as one step forward, two steps back.
The American secretary of state Colin Powell initially praised the report, calling its recommendations excellent and arguing that they could pave the way to a new peace initiative. But it seems that Powell did not take Sharon's rejection of the report into account. Now that such a rejection has become clear there is every reason to expect the warmth with which the Americans supported the Mitchell report to quickly cool. America will retreat steadily before Sharon's stubbornness -- a process that began with the disclaimer with which Powell's initial statements were amended. The US is not -- no surprise here -- committed to everything in the report.
This American dance, at which Bush excels, provides little entertainment for Arab leaders who have placed their trust in the Bush administration. As for the Arab peoples, their rejection of American policies is expressed daily. And in most cases the intuition the people turns out to be right. One step forwards, two steps back -- repeated often enough it becomes clear what direction is being taken. Repeated often enough, it will provide a perfectly clear indication of US aims.
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