Issue No. 593
Opinion
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4 - 10 July 2002 Issue No. 593 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A counterproductive strategy
What can be made of US policy towards the region? A mass of dangerous contradictions, writes Ibrahim Nafie
Although President Bush's policy statement on the Middle East contained some positive points it left many questions unanswered. It also contained potentially dangerous ramifications.
Bush's speech, delivered on Monday, 24 June, was the product of two conflicting camps of opinion in the US administration. One, led by the US vice-president, the secretary of defence and the national security adviser, champions hard-line Israeli point of views. The other, more open to the concerns of other parties involved and represented by Secretary-of-State Colin Powell, espouses a more active US role in promoting a viable solution to the Middle East conflict. Bush's speech marked the ascendancy of the first camp, a success confirmed by Powell's agreement to exclude Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from his meetings during his forthcoming visit to the Middle East.
Also ominous was Bush's call to the Palestinian people to elect new leaders. There is no other way to construe his instructions to the Palestinian people to vote in a particular way but as an intervention in Palestinian internal affairs and an affront to democratic principles. Coming from the leader of one of the world's most powerful democracies, this call is an extremely dangerous precedent.
The jubilation with which Bush's policy address was received by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters also has grave implications. Not a few Israeli commentators jested that the speech must have been originally written in Hebrew by a "Likudist", the implication being that the Israeli government and West Bank settlers would take it as a green light to step up the campaign of terror against the Palestinian people.
It is no understatement to describe Bush's address as critical. In light of the diverse reactions it triggered in the region and elsewhere and its potential ramifications, it is important to subject it to closer scrutiny.
The most encouraging aspect of Bush's speech was the difference it signalled between Washington and Tel Aviv over the question of Israeli security. It is virtually axiomatic across the political spectrum in Israel that Israeli security can only be assured through qualitative military superiority, an arsenal bristling with nuclear warheads and high-tech delivery systems, and the freedom to intimidate Arab nations with the long arm of Israeli military might. President Bush called this thinking into question when he said that occupation and force will not bring security to Israel and that the key to realising security resides in ending the occupation and resolving the question of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
This stance encouraged Israeli politicians to speak out more openly on the question of the occupation and the settlements. Of particular note were the observations of the Israeli Minister of Defence and Labour Party leader Benyamin Ben-Eliezer in his address to the Israeli Labour Party congress on Monday. It was in Israel's higher interests to see the creation of a disarmed, independent Palestinian state, he said. He also said: "Peace means dismantling some of the Jewish settlements built on the land Israel occupied in the June 1967 War... I find no problem with saying today that it was wrong for the Labour Party to allow the construction of settlements in Gaza and remote areas of the West Bank."
Although Ben-Eliezer's remarks were informed by the usual Israeli strategic and demographic considerations, his criticism of past policy and his emphasis on the dismantling of settlements may signal a significant shift in Israel.
In spite of this, Bush's speech stirred a number of hornets' nests. Foremost among these was the attempt to reduce the entire conundrum of the Middle East crisis to the person of Yasser Arafat, as though by making that leader disappear by any means the whole gamut of problems obstructing the peace process can be overcome. Unfortunately, this thinking ignores some incontrovertible facts. It was Arafat who began the peace process, who signed the Oslo accords with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitshaq Rabin and who signed subsequent agreements with Netanyahu and Barak. Simultaneously, it was always Israeli leaders who refused to implement their obligations under the American- sponsored agreements. That Netanyahu reneged on Wye River and Barak on the Sharm El Sheikh agreement should serve to remind Bush that it was Israel, not Palestine, that consistently lacked a leadership with the courage to steer its people towards peace and fulfil its end of the bargain.
Yet, while Israeli leaders were the primary cause for erosion in any confidence in the peace process, Bush declares that it is the Palestinian leadership that must be replaced. It is ironic that the Palestinian people, who live under constant threat of death, destruction and degradation at the hands of an occupying power, are being told to get new leaders and to consider their internationally sanctioned struggle for liberation a form of terrorism.
More astounding yet are the US president's instructions to the Palestinian people not to vote for Arafat in their forthcoming elections, and his threat to withhold humanitarian assistance and intervene militarily if they do. The leader of one of the West's bastions of democracy, which issues an annual report that grades other -- non- Western nations, of course -- on their levels of democratic development, has just advocated some flagrantly undemocratic arm- twisting of a people fighting occupation.
The Palestinian people are probably the first to realise that their institutions of government need reform and that a distinction should be drawn between personalities and the conduct of national affairs. Undoubtedly, too, they understand that a proper democratic system of government is founded upon the separation of powers, a freely elected legislative body, an effective and autonomous judiciary and guarantees of accountability and transparency. However, it is one thing for an outside power to advise and help establish democratic mechanisms and even to insist upon an independent international agency to monitor the integrity of the polls; it is quite another to influence the outcome of the ballot through threats of economic and military reprisals.
Both the Palestinians and Israelis need a leadership committed to the cause of peace; however, the choice of that leadership is the inalienable right of the people concerned. As far as the Palestinian leadership is concerned, I believe that there is no alternative to Arafat. He is the recognised leader of the Palestinian national struggle, the man who had the courage to lay the Palestinian groundwork for peace with Israel, the partner of late Prime Minister Rabin and the co- recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Eliminating Arafat, as Washington wants, will bring in a leadership that will be neither willing nor able to show the necessary flexibility towards the peace process. Any new Palestinian leadership is certain to lack the accumulated acumen and expertise that enabled Arafat to choose the path of a negotiated settlement.
In his meeting with his political advisers last Monday, President Mubarak stressed the need for "a mechanism to implement the substance of President Bush's statement on the situation in the Middle East". In so saying, Mubarak put his finger on a second fundamental problem with Bush's proposal: the urgency of the situation in the region demands a more dynamic process to compel both sides to work towards peace.
The most appropriate mechanism starts with an international peace conference sponsored jointly by the US, the EU, Russia and the UN. The task of such a conference would be to set the guidelines for a political settlement and to devise a working agenda for implementing the guidelines. A second component consists of a number of measures to generate a climate conducive to progress. Steps should include the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the positions they occupied before 28 September 2000, lifting the blockade against the Palestinians and halting all further incursions into PA territories and other acts of violence that provoke responses in kind. Towards this end, too, there must be an international presence to monitor and supervise preparations for the forthcoming Palestinian elections. Finally, all parties must be given to understand that the Quartet stands behind agreements already concluded.
As a whole, Bush's proposal is too ambiguous to serve the interests of a political settlement in the Middle East. As though the signals from Washington were not murky enough, it has asked Arab governments to control what their newspapers publish, specifically on matters pertaining to developments since the 11 September and Israel's belligerent policies towards the Palestinians. What are people in this part of the world expected to think when one moment Washington appeals for democratic reforms and the respect for human and civil rights and the next tells Arab governments to muffle the press and stifle free speech? Certainly such mixed messages -- or selective application of the values it vaunts -- do not help the US project a positive image, which, in turn, is counterproductive to the causes it claims to advocate.
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