Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2001, page 6

Special Report

 

A Dangerous Partnership: Israel Undermines U.S. Efforts to Forge Anti-Terrorism Coalition

 

By Rachelle Marshall

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 not only destroyed a portion of Manhattan and the lives of thousands of people, but opened the door to yet more killing as the Bush administration went to war against Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. The round-the-clock bombing of Afghanistan by U.S. and British forces triggered riots in Pakistan and Indonesia and street protests around the world, especially after U.S. air strikes struck at least two villages, and hit a U.N. mine-clearing agency, Red Cross relief centers, and residential areas in Kabul and Kandahar. Relief agencies complained that the bombing had halted their distribution of food to millions of refugees just as winter was setting in.

Ariel Sharon took advantage of Washington’s preoccupation with the war to launch the heaviest military assault on the Palestinians since 1967. At U.S. urging, two cease-fires were called between mid-September and mid-October, each one followed by a marked decrease in Palestinian violence. Sharon, however, determined to continue Israel’s reoccupation of West Bank territory, made sure the cease-fires did not hold. Israeli forces repeatedly provoked new confrontations during this period and carried out at least five more assassinations. During the first 10 days of October the army killed 29 Palestinians, repeatedly shelled Palestinian communities in Gaza, and leveled hundreds of acres of crops.

But worse was to come after the killing on Oct. 18 of Rehavem Ze’evi, Israel’s tourism minister, by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In the days that followed, the Israeli army stormed into Palestinian cities and villages, shelling and firing at random. In Bethlehem, 22 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s 11-day occupation, many of them civilians. Tanks roamed through the streets crushing cars and knocking down power poles, and army bulldozers turned shops and office buildings into rubble. The Paradise Hotel that had long served tourists was burned down. Even hospitals came under fire in Bethlehem and Beit Jala.

On Oct. 24, only a few hours after a State Department spokesman asked Israel to end its “incursions” into Palestinian territory, Israeli forces firing from tanks and helicopter gunships launched a pre-dawn attack on the village of Beit Rima, where they killed at least five people, dynamited houses, and took a dozen prisoners. Soldiers killed five more Palestinians in a nearby village on the same day. Israel barred journalists from entering the villages and Red Crescent medics were not allowed to treat the wounded for at least eight hours.

 

The Principal Cause?

After a week of killing and destruction by the Israeli army in which scores of Palestinians died, including children and the elderly, Secretary of State Colin Powell blamed the Palestinians for the violence. He again urged Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory, but added, “To the extent that the Middle East continues to bubble as a result principally of actions coming from the other side, Palestinian actions, which then generate Israeli responses, have not been helpful to the coalition” (italics added).

Ze’evi, who advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and said Arafat should be deported or assassinated, was mourned as a hero by Israeli officials. Sharon declared that “Arafat, and Arafat alone” was responsible for the killing, and demanded that the Palestinian leader stop all violence, deliver Ze’evi’s killers to Israel along with more than a hundred others wanted by Israel, and dismantle militant organizations—demands he knew Arafat could not meet.

Ignoring their own record of more than 60 assassinations of Palestinian leaders, Israeli officials put Ze’evi’s killing on a par with the attack on the World Trade Center. Making cynical use of America’s tragedy, Sharon called Arafat “our Bin Laden” and declared Israel to be the “U.S. bridgehead in the Middle East.” Sharon’s adviser, Zalman Shoval, former ambassador to the United States, went to Washington to deliver the same message. “The purpose,” Shoval said, “is to put Arafat squarely in the same category which appeared in President Bush’s speeches: namely, of countries or entities promoting and sponsoring terrorism.”

Israel’s frantic efforts to enlist the United States in its war on Arafat and the Palestinians ran directly counter to the White House’s desire to include Arab and Muslim states in the coalition against terrorism. Some Arab leaders openly wondered why the Bush administration did not condemn what they regard as Israel’s state terrorism, and many are worried that unless the United States disassociates itself from Israel their endorsement of U.S. actions in Afghanistan could cause unrest in their own countries. Their fears are shared by several jMiddle East scholars and antiterrorist experts, who warn that the war on Afghanistan could have far-reaching consequences for the region. Several have warned that with every civilian death in Afghanistan, the United States is planting a political time bomb among millions of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and Asia by adding to their sense of outrage over U.S. support for Israel and the continued punishment of the Iraqi people.

It is this deeply felt resentment that nurtures the fanatics who turn to terrorism, according to Philip C. Wilcox, who served as ambassador for counterterrorism in the Clinton administration. Wilcox wrote in the Oct. 18 issue of the New York Review of Books that since Islamic extremists regard themselves as martyrs and holy warriors, the effect of U.S. military attacks “would likely inspire them to carry out even more dangerous acts.” In order to reduce terrorism, he stressed, Washington must seriously reappraise its Middle East policy. Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford, agrees. In an article for the Stanford Daily he called the Sept. 11 attacks “crimes against humanity,” that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims would never condone. Nevertheless, he wrote, fringe groups such as Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization have emerged from a “broader anger that has been brewing for many years.” Contributing to this anger, according to Beinin, was the Reagan administration’s support for Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which caused the death of 17,500 civilians; the sanctions imposed on Iraq that caused the death of over a million Iraqis; the persistent use of vetoes by the United States against U.N. resolutions critical of Israel; and continued U.S. support for Israel despite its use of disproportionate force to crush the Palestinian uprising.

Robert Wallace, professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate University, argued in an essay written just before the U.S. bombing began that U.S. policy in the Middle East since 1948 “has given legitimacy to the end that supposedly justifies these terrorist means. If we would seriously put our minds (and our pocketbooks) to solving the Palestinian problem, we would have a much better chance of living in a world where no one hates us enough to do things that force us to choose between continued fear and life in a police state.”

America’s negative image in the Middle East was graphically portrayed by Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the British paper the Independent: “America’s name is literally stamped on to the missiles fired by Israel into Palestinian buildings in Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote in a Sept. 16 dispatch. Fisk described finding such a missile in the wreckage of an ambulance in which two women and four children were killed when it was fired on by the Israelis. He suggested that such incidents multiplied many times might explain why ordinary Palestinians might be reluctant to send condolences to the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Unless the Bush administration recognizes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the chief causes of instability in the Middle East, and detaches itself from what has proved to be a dangerous alliance, Americans could find themselves caught, like the Israelis, in an endless round of violence. Some of Bush’s ardently pro-Israel advisers, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, are urging him to extend the bombing to Syria, Iraq, and other countries that Israel regards as a threat, and include Hamas and Hezbollah forces as targets. Such advice could not be more dangerous. Israel’s policy from the beginning has been to respond to violence with far greater violence, a policy that under Ariel Sharon has taken on monstrous proportions. The result has been continuous conflict that has taken tens of thousands of lives, and a cycle of revenge and retaliation that has weakened moderate forces on both sides. Although Israel is today a major military power, its citizens feel less secure than ever.

However unpardonable the attacks of Sept. 11 were, the inescapable fact is that the United States will remain a target of hatred and resentment until it adopts policies aimed at easing the misery and poverty in the Middle East, and persuades Israel to leave the West Bank and Gaza entirely. Arab leaders tactfully said as much when the leaders of 56 Islamic nations met in Doha, Qatar on Oct. 9. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, president of the Islamic Conference, accused Israel of “state terrorism” against Palestinians who, he said, “have no choice but to struggle.” As spokesman for the conference he called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The Islamic leaders avoided criticizing the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, but were clearly worried that in the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it could inflame their own populations and endanger their regimes.

Bush now faces a crucial choice. He needs the cooperation of Arab and Muslim states in order to combat Osama bin Laden and his followers, while at the same time he is trapped in an alliance with an Israeli government that obviously cares nothing for American interests as it goes about shredding the Oslo agreement and reoccupying Palestinian territory. Time may now be running out for U.S. efforts to retain Arab and Muslim backing in its fight against terrorism. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, information minister of the United Arab Emirates, told a reporter for the New York Times on Oct. 1 that if the killings by Israeli forces continued, “most of us will certainly have to reconsider our role in the coalition.” Saif Almaskari, a former official with the Gulf Cooperation Council and now a consultant in Oman, said that in Oman the people “wait in vain for the U.S. to say to Sharon, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Bush moved cautiously toward a more balanced Middle East policy when he said at his press conference on Oct. 11, “I believe there ought to be a Palestinian state, the boundaries of which will be negotiated by the parties.” Although this meant that once again Israel could determine the outcome of any talks, Bush’s statement sent the Israelis into a frenzy. Avigdor Lieberman, minister of infrastructure, said “The great challenge before the state of Israel is how we can stymie this American initiative.”

Sharon invoked Munich, calling on the United States not to “repeat the terrible mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia so as to reach a convenient temporary solution.” He warned Bush not to “appease the Arabs at our expense.” It was not the first time an Israeli prime minister associated Arafat with Hitler, but Sharon’s effort to equate Israel with the weak and defenseless Czechoslovakia, and the Palestinians to the powerful Nazi army seemed especially ludicrous.

The White House called Sharon’s comments “unacceptable,” and declared that “Israel can have no better or stronger friend than the United States.” If so, there has seldom been a more one-sided friendship. In waging war on Arafat and the Palestinians Sharon repeatedly has rejected pleas by the Bush administration to help restore calm to the region. He flatly refused to endorse a key provision of the Mitchell commission’s report that Israel freeze settlement construction. Sharon’s vow after the killing of Rehavem Ze’evi that he would never yield Jewish-occupied land to the Palestinians could end any hope that the Bush administration will be able to help achieve peace in the region. Meanwhile a defiant Israeli government continues to collect billions of dollars a year in U.S. aid.

The United States will not end terrorism by dropping bombs on an already devastated Afghanistan. It can only do so by enlisting the support of governments and people around the world for its effort to hunt down and punish the suicidal killers responsible. The first essential is for the Bush administration to end U.S. aid to Israel, call unequivocally for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, and agree to the immediate dispatch of international monitors to the West Bank and Gaza. The alternative is for the United States to continue acting as benefactor and apologist for a lawless Sharon government and face the risk of becoming, like Israel, a pariah state so hated throughout the world that its citizens are condemned to live in constant fear.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

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