Wag the dog

A lasting peace in the Middle East remains in reach, but only if the United States asserts its independence from Israel, writes Ibrahim Nafie

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Armed with reassurances from US President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon brought his unilateral disengagement plan to a vote within the Likud Party. The results of the referendum were a forgone conclusion. If it was not clear enough before that the general Likud creed abhors withdrawal from an inch of Biblical Israel, an opinion poll taken last Sunday within the party made it patent. Of some 99,000 Likud members, representing 51 per cent of the party's membership, 59.5 per cent rejected Sharon's plan.

Yet Sharon seemed taken aback by the results. In a scramble to save face he proposed, variously, to modify the plan, to put it to a general referendum or to bring it before parliament. There was even a hint that he might call for early elections.

Washington, meanwhile, reiterated its support, describing Sharon's plan, in the words of one White House spokesman, as "a courageous and important step towards peace". The Likud referendum poured cold water on that take. Perhaps, too, it gave Palestinians some faint hope that their voice might finally be heard. Likud voters had no right to determine the fate of the Palestinians, Palestinian Minister for Negotiations Saeb Ereikat said, urging the US president to retract his exchange of letters with Sharon and return to the roadmap as the basis of negotiations.

Clearly, the foremost obstacle to peace in the Middle East is Washington's blind and unremitting support of Israel and its incessant bids to derail the peace process. The US offers the unprecedented instance of an unrivalled superpower that has placed its full political leverage at the disposal of a nation bent on violating every principle and rule of international legitimacy. A few statistics suffice to illustrate. Of the 602 General Assembly resolutions on the Middle East conflict, the US supported only 51 and opposed 305. Of 74 Security Council resolutions, the US used its veto to block 40 that criticised or condemned Israel. No wonder people in this region scoff that Israel owns the American veto.

Noteworthy, too, is that none of the Security Council resolutions that were passed against Israel invoked Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Designed as a safeguard against a threat to international peace and security, the provisions of Chapter 7 entitle the international community to impose sanctions and, if that fails, to take military action against states that refuse to abide by Security Council resolutions. Without the force of such provisions to back them, resolutions calling upon Israel to withdraw from occupied territories gave it little cause to comply. By contrast, how quickly these provisions were implemented to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, an action, it should be added, that the majority of Arabs supported.

But, today, Washington's support for and protection of Israel has gone to a further extreme in its embrace of the views of the most hawkish elements of the Israeli right. It is for this reason that I share the conviction of many that the blame for unrelenting Israeli aggression and for the tragic humanitarian conditions in the occupied territories falls on America's doorstep.

Yet, amazingly, US officials and think tank researchers wonder why anti-American hatred is on the rise in the region. Perhaps they should take the hint from the many Israeli writers who have warned of the perilous repercussions of the Bush-Sharon understanding.

Take for example, Zvi Bar'el who, in Ha ' aretz on 18 April, observed that the understandings between Bush and Sharon hark back to Golda Meir's refusal to even acknowledge the existence of the Palestinian people. While the Bush-Sharon understanding affirms that "some kind of Palestinian people exists", "it is merely an ethnic group whose territorial borders are a matter for deliberation and agreement between Israel and the US -- not between them and the international community." Israel, Bar'el continues, has received approval to countenance an independent Palestinian state only when it adjudges the conditions right, when a new Palestinian leadership arises and after the settlements demarcate the "realistic" border. Until that time, "the Palestinians constitute a political nonentity, or at most a terrorist organisation with some 3.5 million members."

On the Likud referendum, Ofer Shelah in Yediot Aharanot on 3 May remarks that Sharon had chosen this route as a way to circumvent the need for resolve and because he thought the Likud could never vote against him. He adds, "Sharon's arrogance and irresponsibility did not stop here. In a step indicative of his arrogance and lack of restraint, he recruited the American president to publicly support a plan that would be problematic for US relations with the Arab world." Now, "the most powerful man in the world stands embarrassed and confused before the resolve of the members of the ruling party in Israel."

If US policy architects do not find that sobering enough, perhaps they might heed the appeal of Sever Plotzker in Yediot Aharanot on 26 April: "In four years Israel will be 60 years old. It is time to grow up, time to normalise, time to fix borders, time to accept restrictions, time to establish public life in accordance with constitutional and moral standards, time to end the conflict with our neighbours, time to become a normal state."

Bush has the power to fulfil this hope. If the US wants to return the negotiating process to its proper track, laying the foundations of a just and lasting peace, it can. But if it continues to put itself at the service of the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli right it will only fuel the cycle of violence and make peace ever more remote.