Issue No. 606
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3 - 9 October 2002 Issue No. 606 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
The road to Baghdad
By involving Israel in the war effort against Iraq, writes Hassan Abu Taleb*, Washington may be setting the stage for something bigger than the removal of Saddam
US President George W Bush wants to see the United Nations "pulling its weight" in Iraq, telling the UN General Assembly that Iraq should let the international inspectors back and prove that it has no weapons of mass destruction. Bush, however, has not ruled out the use of force against Saddam's regime, indicating that while the US president wants the international community to remain involved in the crisis, he does so only insofar as the international community will be ready to endorse a US military adventure in Iraq. Washington seems determined to attack Iraq, particularly if Saddam insists that the inspectors' return be linked to a timetable for lifting the sanctions against the country.
To complicate things further, Israel is emerging as a main backer of any US military offensive against Iraq. According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the United States is stockpiling massive quantities of supplies and weapons at Israeli military bases in anticipation of the Iraq offensive. This is a serious development, and it merits Arab reaction. Thus far, however, no such reaction has been forthcoming, either from individual Arab countries or from the Arab League, an organisation that usually tries to forge a consensual response to questions of common Arab interest. Whether this is due to a loss of interest or of heart on the Arabs' part is not quite clear, though the Arabs seem to have given up trying to get the Bush Administration to distance itself from Israel, having noted that the bonds between the two are growing inexorably stronger, generally under the influence of America's Religious Right.
Muted reaction, however, hardly masks the level of Arab concern over this issue. Israel's participation in a campaign against Iraq at this specific time could open the Gates of Hell, as Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa stated at an Arab foreign ministers' meeting two weeks ago. Considering the collapse of peace efforts and Israel's mounting repression of the Palestinians, the spectacle of an Israeli-aided offensive against an Arab nation can only generate incalculable anger in Arab capitals. This is bound to place many Arab governments under unbearable pressure, raising the question of whether Washington intends this strategy to be part of an intentional endgame.
Israel's participation in the US war effort against Iraq, even by the provision of space for the storage of US military hardware, would signal an irreversible breach of faith between the US administration and its traditional friends in the region. Such a move would mean that Washington has grown apparently irrevocably insensitive to the concerns and political stability of its former Arab allies. In addition, there is a growing concern in the region that the United States will not stop at removing Saddam Hussein, a concern shared by both Arab diplomats and public. Washington, the argument goes, wants to redraw the political map of the region, perhaps even getting rid of its erstwhile allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Both Cairo and Riyadh have opposed in principle the change of Arab regimes through the use of external force, with Saudi Arabia thus far declining to allow Washington to use American bases on its territory in any campaign against Iraq. Egypt has also voiced strong reservations about US intentions, and it has ample reason for doing so. For one thing, any military campaign against Iraq will undermine Egypt's winter tourism, with, according to some estimates, the country losing up to US $4.5 billion in the first month of operations alone.
In this context, the US's reliance on Israel in its campaign against Iraq could be due to an insufficiency of military bases on Arab soil that could be used in such a campaign. Besides, the US president clearly sees Israel as the US's only trustworthy ally in the region. Israel and the United States have followed a strategic cooperation plan since 1981 that allows for the storage of US materiel at Israeli bases. However, while this agreement might at first glance seem explanation enough for the US's involving Israel in the offensive against Iraq, it is not the only explanation.
While Saudi Arabia has banned the use of its bases in any action against Iraq, the US has other regional military bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, and all of these have been expanded over the past few months, making them capable of receiving large numbers of troops and huge amounts of hardware. Many of these bases are linked by satellite to US space-based radar systems: recent satellite imagery, to give one example, indicates that two modern facilities have been added to the Al-Odeid base in Qatar over the past nine months.
Therefore, the US-Israeli strategic cooperation agreement of 1981 does not in itself fully explain the US preference for involving Israel in its planned offensive against Iraq, especially since the agreement was originally designed to allow the United States to use Israeli bases in case of threats emanating from the Soviet Union and its affiliates, threats that have since disappeared. Furthermore, during the Gulf War in the early 1990s, the then US president, George Bush Sr, made sure that Israel stayed out of military activities, not even responding to attacks on its territory by Iraqi Scud missiles, since any such involvement would have led to the collapse of the international coalition that liberated Kuwait. What has changed since then?
That the United States is willing to give Israel a role in the present conflict is significant, for it indicates an underlying US view that Israel should be allowed to assert its hegemony in the region. And, for this to happen, what harm could there be in disappointing Arab governments, or in embarrassing them in front of their populations? Israel is the thin edge of the wedge in this new US policy: get rid of Saddam, destabilise Arab governments, and let the chips -- and regimes -- fall where they may.
* The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and chief editor of its annual Strategic Report.
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