18 - 24 April 2002
Issue No.582
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 April 2002 Issue No.582 |
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Wagging the dog
With US Secretary of State Powell in the region, America's Middle East policy is the site of contention at home, Anayat Durrani reports from Washington
The Bush administration has made its first significant move in seeking to achieve a political solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians in dispatching Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East. Powell was sent to the region after the international community put immense pressure on the Bush administration to act as a peace-broker. However, resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has never been a pressing priority for the Bush administration which has focused on Iraq instead. Powell was sent to the region as international outrage mounted over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's depredations in the West Bank but also due to the united stance that Arab nations took in opposing a US-led attack on Iraq, the next target in the US war on terrorism. Arab leaders have emphasised that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a more pressing issue than effecting regime change in Baghdad.
ALLIES WITHIN: Palestinian citizens of Israel and their Jewish comrades demonstrate outside the US embassy in Tel Aviv, protesting Israel's war on the occupied territories (photo: AFP)
While sending Powell to the Middle East has, in general, been applauded by much of the world, Bush has come under heavy pressure in internal Washington political centres from the overwhelmingly pro-Israeli Congress which has warned him off from pressuring Israel. In a sign of the enormous influence that is wielded by the lobby in US politics, several lawmakers -- conservatives and liberals alike -- have made statements strongly supporting Israel and condemning the Palestinian Authority. Lawmakers have argued that Bush's pressure on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian areas is contradictory to his own policy on dealing with terrorism. Congressional leaders have reacted to these statements, urging US policymakers to remain united as long as Powell is in the region so as not to undermine his efforts at brokering a cease-fire and help him smooth the way for peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut was among the most recent to take a swipe at President Bush's Middle East policy hen he spoke out, on Sunday, at Florida's Democratic convention. "How can we credibly continue to... search for and destroy the remaining Al-Qa'eda terrorists in Afghanistan and throughout the world while demanding that the Israelis stop doing exactly that in the West Bank?" he said.
Lawmakers eager to take legislative action in favour of Israel include Senators Diane Feinstein (D-California) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who are proposing legislation to break ties with the Palestinian Authority, designate it a terrorist group, close down its Washington office and deny visas to its top officials. Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor to have been elected to Congress, is sponsoring a resolution on "solidarity with Israel in its fight against terrorism." Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York is sponsoring a measure in the House that calls for sanctions to be imposed on the Palestinian Authority. However, while Powell is in the region, lawmakers have agreed not to pursue their proposals.
Equating Israel's military operation in the West Bank to America's war on terrorism is a strategy the Israelis have repeatedly tried to use in countering pressure from the US to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. When former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the US Senate last Wednesday he argued that the Israelis were combating terror in the same way the Bush administration is conducting its global war on terrorism. During his visit to Washington, Netanyahu also met Vice- President Dick Cheney at the White House to discuss the Middle East conflict.
Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has been evicted from its office in Washington for failing to pay the rent. The director of the office, Hassan Abdel-Rahman, claims that Cushman & Wakefield, its landlord, used the late payment as an excuse to evict it for political reasons. He argues that the PLO offered to pay the outstanding sum but was rejected. He said the action was taken to "silence the Palestinian voice and isolate it." The PLO had been late in their rent twice in one year. The State Department responded to the shutting of the PLO office in a statement which said that it was unable to assist the Palestinians in finding a new office and that the PLO office was never given "any of the immunities or privileges of a diplomatic mission." In the meantime, lawmakers are pushing to have the PLO office in Washington permanently closed.
The Middle East peace process officially fell apart on 29 March, when Sharon launched aggressive military operations into Palestinian towns in an attempt to crush what he calls "the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure." The Israeli offensive is the largest military campaign in the West Bank since Israel occupied Palestinian land in the 1967 War. Israeli incursions into Palestinian villages, cities and refugee camps have received worldwide condemnation and prompted large anti-Israel protests in several cities, particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, Europe and the United States. International justice and human rights groups, appalled at Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians and US silence in the face of these transgressions, have joined the protests in support of the Palestinian cause.
Protests have spread to several American college campuses as well. Last week, anti-Israel protests occurred at more than 30 American universities nationwide, including Columbia, Georgetown and UC Berkeley. Organisers planned a national "day of action" to launch a campaign that called on universities to divest themselves of stock in corporations that do business with Israel, the same stand that was taken against South Africa during the apartheid era in the 1980s.
Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that started on the Berkeley campus, has now spread to other campuses nationwide. Several demonstrations have been planned in Washington and elsewhere in the coming days. The International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), an anti-war coalition, has planned protests in Washington, DC and San Francisco for April 20 to march in support of the Palestinians and against US aid to Israel. The National Campus Antiwar Network plans to hold a press conference and demonstration next Monday against Sharon's keynote speech at the American-Israeli Political Action Committee's annual gala. The group will call for an end to the occupation, an end to US financial support to Israel's war on the Palestinians as well as demanding that Sharon be indicted for war crimes against humanity.
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