Washington pipe-dreams
If the president of the US can't stand up to Israel, who can? asks Mohamed Hakki
Why on earth should a single Arab, let alone Palestinian, believe that the US is sincere about the "roadmap", or its declared intentions to foster peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Recent history has shown that peace is not a matter of "missed opportunities", as the Israeli-coined euphemism for deception of Arab hopes suggests it is, but about the US's betrayal of its promises to the Arabs.
Those betrayals go back to 1967 when the Americans asked the Arabs to accept UN Resolution 242. Mahmoud Riad, the foreign minister of Egypt at that time, told me that when he asked US Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, "Why should we accept 242 when we've already rejected the Latin American draft resolution, which was a much better one?" Goldberg replied, "Because, by God, this is the resolution that the US is going to put its weight behind." We all know what became of Resolution 242, and the countless broken promises that followed. The reason, every time, was the same. America could not or would not deliver Israel.
I was thinking about this around the time of the two summit meetings in Sharm El-Sheikh and Aqaba. What puzzled me was why any Arab leader would believe US President George W Bush. After all, he has a track record of staunchly supporting Ariel Sharon, who he has invited to the White House seven times. Then I read an account by Mohamed Dahlan, the Palestinian security minister, published by The Guardian in London.
Dahlan said, "I told Sharon: convince me you want peace. I understand that Hamas does not want a truce -- assuming they don't want peace. And you? he was silent. He didn't like the comparison."
Now we come to the crux of the matter. Dahlan said he had faith in the Americans partly because of his encounter with Bush. Also in the room were Sharon, General Shaul Mofaz, Israeli minister of defence, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister.
According to the story, Dahlan gave a five- minute synopsis of the Palestinian view of the security situation and the difficulties he faces because the Israelis have destroyed much of the Palestinian security infrastructure. At the end of the briefing, General Mofaz, jumped in. "Well", he said, "they won't be getting any help from us; they have their own security service." Bush turned to General Mofaz, "Their own security service? But you have destroyed their security service," he reportedly said. General Mofaz remained firm. "I do not think that we can help them, Mr President," he said. Bush replied, "Oh, but I think that you can, and I think that you will." A similar confrontation followed with Sharon.
The Guardian story says that towards the end of the summit, Bush told Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, that he liked and trusted Abbas and Dahlan, but Sharon was "a problem".
Perhaps Bush looked Arab leaders in the eye, as he usually does in meetings, and said, "By God, I will see that Israel respects its side of the bargain." But those were exactly the same words that Goldberg used with Mahmoud Riad in 1967.
According to Dave Milbank in The Washington Post, the day after President Bush delivered a rare public criticism of Israel, he sat down to dinner at the White House with 100 Jewish leaders, "to do some damage control". He assured them he remained pro-Israel and that his complaints about an Israeli attack on a Palestinian militant were "an aberration". Indeed, by 15 June, Bush was putting sole responsibility for Middle East violence on the Palestinian resistance movements, leaving Israel blameless and asking the world to "deal harshly" with Hamas.
The story lists the wave of protest from Israel's "defenders" on Capitol Hill and K street, including majority leader Tom DeLay (Republican-Texas) who declared that America must stand by Israel as it fights its own war on terror. Several high-ranking Israeli security officials descended on Washington, and former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Bush also faced a barrage of dissent from Israel's "Amen corner", as Pat Buchanan calls Capitol Hill's supporters of fundamentalist Christians.
Since then, Bush has singled out Hamas for criticism in public, asking the world to cut off funds to "organisations such as Hamas and condemn the killings".
Bush's response is central to the problem. Israel's Sharon torpedoes the whole idea of the roadmap by trying to assassinate Hamas leader Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi with rockets, killing his wife and daughter and several others, knowing it will trigger a response. In the Knesset, Roman Bronfman of the Meretz Party wondered if the prime minister did not have Jewish blood on his hands. The question is: if a Knesset member can raise these questions, why can't the president of the United States -- who has done everything to help the Israeli PM -- direct the mildest criticism at him? Bush used very mild language in commenting on Israel's botched attempt to assassinate the Hamas leader, saying that he was "troubled" by it.
The question that cannot be ignored is, if the president of the United States cannot stand up to Israel, who can? And why should Hamas, or the Palestinians, or indeed the Arabs, believe he can deliver on his promises? Or is this another incident, like the weapons of mass destruction where Bush will eventually say, "oops, we will find them".
So if Bush thinks that Sharon owes him one, what is Sharon doing for Bush? Is Bush asking Sharon for restraint? Is Bush stopping Israel's assassinations and killings and home demolitions? Is he even attempting to stop the expansion of settlements, which are illegal, immoral and destroy any hope of progress on the roadmap? According to widespread reports in the Israeli media, Sharon told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel, "did not accept the internationally-sponsored roadmap's requirement that it halt all new construction in its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. It is possible to build the settlements, but the people should not talk about it and dance around every time a building permit is given, they should build without talking," he said.
Did President Bush listen carefully to Sharon's closing address after the summit in Aqaba and other recent statements by the Israeli government? One Israeli newspaper said that Sharon did not explicitly accept the roadmap. Israel says that since the signing of the plan, the Israeli army and police have dismantled 11 such "outposts". Notably, only one of them was inhabited. The compliant US national media showed pictures of Israeli army and police "battling" two or three kids in this solo "outpost" consisting of two trailers on a hill. Heart breaking? The Israeli rights group Peace Now says that at least eight of these outposts have already been replaced by ones established by members of the ultra-nationalist Jewish settler movement, which ultimately aims to drive all non-Jews from what it regards as the Biblical land of Israel.
Should Bush be grateful for that? Should he thank Sharon that the settlers who are moving back even to the newest of these makeshift settlements "are not dancing around their trailers" so that the US president's humiliations would be less painful?
The irony is that some American Jews are embarrassed for Bush. In recent months, Israeli officials and Jewish community leaders in the US, have insisted that the roadmap, with its accelerated timetable requiring the establishment of a Palestinian state, was nothing more than a ruse to keep British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary Colin Powell happy; the real White House policy blue print for peace, they argued, remained Bush's speech of 24 June 2002. In that address, he insisted that no progress could be made until the Palestinians changed leaders and dismantled the terrorist infrastructure in the territories.
To add salt to the wounded pride of the US president, Netanyahu is saying that the US will revive the oil pipeline from Mosul to Haifa. He says it is not a pipe-dream, it will actually be done, and that it is only a matter of time. The question now is, how many setbacks, compromises, broken promises are the Arabs going to accept? And when they finally wake up and smell the hummus, will there be anything left to save?
