Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2003, pages 7-9

Special Report

 

Sharon Endorses Bush's Road Map, Then Puts It Through the Shredder

 

By Rachelle Marshall

The bus bombing in Jerusalem by Hamas on Aug. 19 that killed 18 Israelis and ended a nearly two-month-long cease-fire by the Palestinians was regarded as a death blow to the recently revived peace process. But in fact that process already was doomed. Gorge Bush's White House meetings in late July with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had left no doubt that the road map to peace was leading nowhere but to Israel's continued control of the West Bank and Gaza. Bush's theme at each meeting was that the root cause of the Middle East conflict was not Israel's illegal occupation but Palestinian resistance to it. When Abbas pointed to Israel's continued expansion of settlements, refusal to release all Palestinian prisoners, and construction of a "security" wall as provocations to violence, Bush told him the Palestinians had to "make sure any terrorist activity is rooted out before we can deal with these big issues."

Administration officials have urged the Israelis to reduce the number of checkpoints and dismantle the recently built settlement outposts, but their reasoning is that such actions would give Abbas time to strengthen his security forces enough to take on the militants. To help Abbas do so, Bush said he would send up to $300 million to the Palestinian Authority. The aid will not go toward repairing schools, rebuilding homes, or replanting ruined orchards, however, but will be channeled through the CIA to be used for rebuilding jails and replacing police equipment.

In his meeting with Abbas Bush showed only a limited awareness of the problems Palestinians face. He noted that the United States had recently granted $20 million to the Palestinian Authority for economic development, and said he would send two top administration officials to the region to help Palestinians attract investment—but he did not explain why anyone would invest in a place where land could be confiscated at any time, water was scarce, the passage of people and goods was subject to the whim of Israeli soldiers, and exports and imports faced crippling border restrictions.

When Abbas urged Bush to press for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners rather than the few hundred Israel has promised, Bush seemed equally clueless, saying, "I would never ask anyone to let a prisoner out who would then commit terrorist actions." In fact only a few hundred of the estimated 7,000 prisoners have been convicted of violent crimes and many have never been charged at all. Bush's proposal that releases be determined on a case-by-case basis would take years to carry out.

Sharon enjoyed somewhat more success. Before the meeting Bush had referred to the massive wall Israel is building inside the West Bank as a problem that would make it difficult to establish confidence between the two sides. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had even harsher criticism. After Sharon insisted "the security fence will continue to be built," Bush downgraded the 25-foot barrier from "problem" to "significant issue." He then stopped using the word "wall" altogether, with its connotation of the Warsaw Ghetto and a divided Berlin, and adopted Israel's term, "fence." In a subsequent press conference Bush did not mention it at all.

Two weeks later, however, the State Department was rumored to be urging a reduction in the $9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel that Congress granted last spring—on top of an extra $1 billion to pay for the economic impact of the Iraq war on Israel. It was only a rumor, with only a few million dollars said to be at stake, but the Israelis quickly got the message, and agreed to postpone construction on the part of the wall that extends deep into the West Bank until the matter could be discussed with U.S. officials. Meanwhile work is continuing on the rest of the 200-mile-long barrier, an Israeli official said, since the Bush administration did not object to the wall in principle, and "Israel is not under any pressure." A few days later the State Department was reported to be wavering on reducing the loan guarantees.

In the end, the meetings that were supposed to further the peace process were little more than ceremonial. Abbas returned from Washington with the promise of only token concessions and with renewed admonitions to disarm and arrest militants. Sharon promised Bush he would dismantle the settlement outposts, remove a few checkpoints, and withdraw troops from Jericho and Qalqilya. But Palestinians pointed out that new outposts go up as soon as one is taken down, there are no Israeli troops in Jericho, Qalqiliya is completely surrounded by barriers, and more than 160 checkpoints will remain.

Israeli leaders since David Ben-Gurion have managed to reject or whittle away every peace proposal that came their way, and Sharon is no exception. Abbas is committed to a peaceful two-state solution, has the confidence of the Bush administration, and has even been endorsed by American Jewish leaders. But he is also an unwavering supporter of Palestinian independence, and Sharon is determined to see that he fails.

The wall now under construction will not guarantee Israel's security, since determined individuals will always find a way to get past it. What it will do is fulfill Sharon's longterm strategic objective by trapping Palestinians inside three barely connected enclaves surrounded by Israeli territory, and calling them a "state." A map published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace shows that the completed wall will leave Israel with more than 50 percent of the West Bank, including the entire Jordan Valley. Palestinian areas will be almost entirely cut off from Jerusalem, which for centuries has been the heart of Palestinian life.

The wall is only one of the obstacles Abbas faces in trying to maintain a cease-fire. Despite a dramatic drop in Palestinian violence, life for most Palestinians has not changed. The army continues to carry out violent manhunts for suspected militants, and Israeli troops have not withdrawn from the cities they reoccupied during the intifada. Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes and expand Jewish settlements. A few hundred Palestinian prisoners have been released but hundreds more arrested. And most of the checkpoints remain in place.

As a punitive measure that dates back long before the recent intifada, the checkpoints make normal life impossible for Palestinians and invite arbitrary brutality by the Israelis. A report issued in July by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel accused the soldiers guarding them of excessively cruel and sadistic behavior, saying such behavior arises "not from operational necessity but from the hard-heartedness of soldiers, who receive from above the message of utter disregard for the dignity, freedom and lives of innocent Palestinians."

In the July 24 edition of Ha'aretz, columnist Amira Hass described the ordeal of a Palestinian plasterer who was on his way to a job near Ramallah. When soldiers at a checkpoint noticed that his family name was Barghouti, the same name as Palestinian resistance leader Marwan Barghouti, the middle-aged man was handcuffed, forced to kneel, and repeatedly kicked and beaten. A day and a half later he was released, badly bruised and with swollen, bleeding hands. The same week seven passengers of a taxi were stopped at a checkpoint near Nablus and ordered by soldiers to dance, hop, and suffer other humiliations for several hours, then told to walk back to Nablus. During a single week in late July four unarmed civilians were fatally shot at checkpoints, including a 4-year-old boy.

According to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, such incidents occur far more frequently than they are reported. As long as they continue there is danger of renewed violence, yet six weeks after the cease-fire took hold the United States still had not sent the monitors that were promised to supervise the two sides' compliance with the road map. The reason may be that Bush's attention tends to stray once a conflict is out of the headlines.

 

A Short Attention Span

After the Sept. 11 hijackings by al-Qaeda, the administration focused on combatting terrorists, beginning with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan, the administration concentrated on ousting Saddam Hussain and establishing a U.S. military presence on the borders of Syria and Iran. After Baghdad fell, Bush turned his attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and won acceptance by both sides of his road map to peace. Unfortunately, none of these accomplishments turned out to be complete or lasting.

Since Afghanistan did not receive all the aid it was promised, the Karzai government now has much less control over the country than the U.S.-armed warlords who rape, rob, and terrorize at will. The Taliban fighters who fled to northern Pakistan are slipping back into Afghanistan and are killing soldiers, religious leaders, and aid workers. Terrorism experts believe al-Qaeda is gaining more recruits and may have been responsible for the Aug. 7 car bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. And because the administration launched a war on Iraq while totally unprepared for the aftermath, U.S. forces are bogged down in an open-ended and increasingly dangerous occupation.

As Iraqis endure massive unemployment and crime, and continue to die from violence, many now see the Americans as oppressive intruders rather than liberators. As a result, a familiar cycle is taking shape. Iraqis resentful of the army's actions attack soldiers, and the army responds with excessive force that in turn provokes more anger. Civilians are killed when they fail to stop at checkpoints, or are caught in crossfire, or are mistaken for snipers. A 12-year-old boy who was shot by soldiers as he stood on his roof bled to death when the car taking him to a hospital was not allowed past a checkpoint. An auto mechanic was killed when soldiers saw him carrying a car's distributor to a repair shop and mistook it for a grenade. A car carrying five civilians was blown up by soldiers when the driver inadvertently drove past a house where the army believed Saddam Hussain was hiding.

Amnesty International blames such incidents on the fact that U.S. troops have not been trained for policing duties. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights groups had even harsher criticism of the way the army treats Iraqi prisoners, calling it "cruel, inhuman, or degrading." Captives are subjected to the same methods Israel uses: hooding, prolonged sleep deprivation, restraint in painful positions, and incessant noise. What disturbs the Iraqis most, according to AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi, is that during and after arrest U.S. troops put their boots on the back of men's heads, forcing their foreheads onto the ground in violation of Islamic law.

Dr. Jamad al-Karboli, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, said he was arrested at a roadblock on July 15, made to sit for several hours with his hands tied, and denied water. "What I suffered was very mild compared to what other Iraqis have gone through," he said. "The Americans should not be surprised when some people get angry." Wamid Nadhmi, a political science professor and opponent of Saddam Hussain, warned that "If [the Americans] keep jailing people and mistreating them like they have been doing, it will only make problems worse." The only solution, according to former Iraqi Ambassador Said Mussawi, is for the U.N. to take over until Iraq forms its own government. "But this will only work," he said, "if the U.N. has real authority and isn't just a fig leaf for U.S. domination."

Relinquishing control of Iraq to the U.N. is clearly unthinkable to the Pentagon hawks who are bent on transforming the Middle East and eliminating Israel's enemies. They regard ousting Saddam Hussain as only the first step. Even as the situation in Iraq remained volatile, the administration was issuing threats against Iran and Syria, accusing them of harboring terrorists and possessing chemical and biological weapons. At his meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on July 21, Bush declared that Iran and Syria were undermining the Middle East peace process and vowed they "will be held accountable." The Pentagon has even authorized Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress to revive the Iraqi intelligence unit that spied on Iran for the previous Iraqi regime. The agents are expected to work closely with an Iranian exile group dedicated to overthrowing the Tehran government.

The group known as the People's Mujaheddin has for years been on the State Department's terrorist list because of its brutal methods, but combatting terrorists is evidently not Washington's top priority. Seymour Hersch writes in the July 28 New Yorker that he was told by intelligence and State Department officials that in 2002 Syria provided the United States with "an outpouring of information" on potential terrorist attacks and was "one of the CIA's most effective intelligence allies in the fight against al-Qaeda." Administration hawks were willing to shut down this major channel of information even though al-Qaeda remains a serious threat. According to Hersch, CIA Director George Tenet fought a losing battle to maintain Syria as an intelligence source against members of the administration who prefer confrontation with Damascus over help against al-Qaeda. They regard Syria as a problem because of its support for Hezbollah, the organization that forced Israel out of southern Lebanon.

Hersch quoted a former high-level intelligence official as saying that despite Syria's help against terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and some of his colleagues "want to go in there next." In fact, the army has already been "in there." On June 18, U.S. helicopter gunships attacked a convoy dozens of miles inside Syria and killed 80 people, including many nearby residents. On July 15 The New York Times quoted a Syrian major guarding the border with Iraq who said the Americans on the Iraqi side were firing into Syria at random, sometimes killing villagers. As he and the reporter spoke, an American helicopter swooped down and appeared to cross into Syrian air space. "Very provocative," the major said, and expressed fear that the situation could spin out of control.

The same fear is undoubtedly shared by others in the Middle East who wonder where U.S. policy is heading and which members of the Bush administration will call the shots. The situation in the region is at a critical point. The longer U.S. occupation forces remain in Iraq, the more the Americans will be seen as oppressors. The fragile cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians could either lead to true peace negotiations or erupt in a new round of violence. The recent exchanges of cross-border attacks by Israel and Hezbollah could draw Syria and Lebanon into the conflict. In each case what Washington does could be crucial in determining the outcome. The pro-Israel zealots in and close to the administration aim at extending U.S. dominance over the entire Middle East. If Bush allows them to have their way, that part of the world will become a more dangerous place for everyone, including Americans.

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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