Changing hats
By
Salama A Salama
From an Arab standpoint it is difficult to separate Washington's insistence on the strict implementation of Security Council resolution 1441 and the haste with which military preparations are being made to unseat the Iraqi regime on the one hand, and its use of its veto in the Security Council to vote down a motion condemning the murder of three UN employees by the Israeli army.
The Security Council has patently become a plaything with which the world's sole super power endlessly toys. It has become well-nigh impossible to find a credible basis for Washington's perspective on international legitimacy or the criteria by which it is implemented in international conflicts.
In the case of Iraq, Blix and Baradie summed up the international observers' initial findings, concluding that the Iraqi report on arms programmes is full of holes. Yet inspection procedures have been resumed and it is impossible to come to a final verdict until they are completed at the end of January. For Washington and the UK, however, the initial results constitute a breach of the Security Council that demands the mobilisation of forces in readiness for war.
Blix and Baradie did not find conclusive evidence that Iraq has engaged, or is engaging, in prohibited activities despite the loopholes and missing facts. And though Iraq has been fully co-operative, Washington is doing its utmost to push Baghdad into a clash with the observers. It does not rest content with giving the observers intelligence information and urging them to undertake break-in operations but continues to demand the interrogation of Iraqi scientists and experts; and it is likely to insist that the interrogations take place outside Iraqi territory. Washington's sole concern seems to be completing its military preparations and mobilising the support of allies like Britain, Israel and Australia as well as a secondary group that includes Turkey, Qatar and Kuwait.
Washington sports the hat of international legitimacy only when it comes to Iraq. With respect to Israel, however, the hat, it has absolutely no scruples about wearing, has been provided courtesy of the Likud government. Following extended investigations undertaken by the United Nations following the killing, by the Israeli army, of three of its employees, as well as the destruction of a large World Food Programme storehouse in Gaza, Washington refused to discuss the issue at the Security Council, and used its veto to prevent any condemnation of Israel.
Of course, it is all too likely that any such condemnation would not have mattered anyway: it would simply be one more item to add to the long list of UN resolutions that Israel neither respected nor bothered to respond to. Nor is the use of the veto in Sharon's interest unprecedented. On the same day Washington used its influence to hamper efforts to bring the Arab- Israeli peace process back on course along the lines of the "road map" initially conceived by Washington itself. Washington, it is by now obvious, will not broach the Palestinian issue before the Iraq war, its only -- lame -- excuse being the Israeli elections, even though beginning the plan would have consolidated the peace camp in Israel and encouraged Egypt's efforts to convince both moderate and extremist Palestinian factions to call for a halt to suicide operations.
It often appears as if American policies are formulated in Tel Aviv, what with Washington's wilful placing of the Palestinian issue in the refrigerator and its determination to take no steps towards reinforcing Palestinian hopes for peace or for a fulfilment of Bush's promise, often reiterated, of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Such promises ring hollow, and the lack of fervour with which they pursued them, compared to Bush's enthusiasm for beginning military operations against Iraq, exposes them as a sham.
