Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2004, pages 6-8

Special Report

 

Failed Strategies, Continued Resistance May Force Bush and Sharon to Change Course

	TOP: The front page of the Nov. 7 San Francisco Chronicle featured this photo of a soldier of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division (Task Forse Ironhorse) guarding a detained Iraqi man sitting against the wall of his home during a night raid in Baquba Nov. 6, 2003 (photo credit Reuters/Damir Sagolj). ABOVE: Israeli troops in Bethlehem arrest a Palestinian man March 2, 2003. The Israel Defense Force reportedly has sent "urban warfare" specialists to Fort Bragg, NC to train U.S. special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations, including the use of assassination squads, in Iraq (photo credit AFP Photo/Musa Al-Shaer).

By Rachelle Marshall

WE ARE IN trouble in Iraq and I think there is no other way to say it.—Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Nov. 14.

Many Israelis thought we could defeat the Palestinians by military means...but this hasn't worked. We have to change direction.—Ami Ayalon, chief of Shin Bet 1996-2000, Nov. 14.

It was no coincidence that almost simultaneously this fall George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon were confronted with the fact that their policies were not working. Since taking office in 2000 the two men have been close allies, sharing a belief in the effectiveness of brute force and in their own infallibility. Sharon's aim was to destroy the Palestinians as a people and turn them into powerless subjects of a greater Israel. Bush set out to establish America's military supremacy around the globe and transform Muslim nations into free-market democracies. The result would be a Middle East safe for Israel and favorable to U.S. interests. Instead the actions by the two leaders have led only to instability, misery, and bloodshed.

In Boris Pasternak's novel about the Bolshevik revolution, Doctor Zhivago, a character remarks that democratic institutions "should grow up from below, like seedlings that take root in the soil...You can't hammer them in from above like stakes for a fence." The same message could be applied to Bush administration theorists who claimed that by overthrowing Saddam Hussain the United States could turn Iraq into a democracy, and like falling dominoes neighboring countries would follow suit. Palestinians would then see the light and make peace with Israel.

The folly of their plan to impose democracy by force, and the contradictions it entailed, were illustrated by a front-page spread in the Nov. 7 San Francisco Chronicle. A four-column headline read, "Bush calls on Middle East to open arms to democracy." Directly underneath was a picture of a pajama-clad Iraqi kneeling against the wall of his house, his feet bare, his wrists shackled, and his bowed head covered with a burlap sack. Nearby stood a heavily armed U.S. soldier, a member of an army task force that was raiding Iraqi homes at night in search of terrorists. The news story next to the photo described Bush's speech before the National Endowment for Democracy in which he called the ousting of Saddam Hussain "a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," and challenged Arab regimes to reform and embrace democracy.

Arab officials reacted to Bush's speech with charges of hypocrisy, pointing to America's treatment of more than 600 detainees at Guantánamo, the imprisonment of Muslim immigrants, and continuing U.S. support for Israel despite Israel's human rights violations and occupation of Arab land. Professor Imad Fawzi Shueibi of Damascus University said Syrians aspired to greater liberty but did not want to hear about it from "someone who violates the human rights of people all over the world and especially the Arab world."

As Bush was speaking, the deteriorating situation in Iraq was making democracy in that country seem only a distant dream. Suicide bombings, ambushes, and mortar attacks by Iraqi guerrillas were killing or maiming scores of American soldiers, whose coffins and broken bodies are shipped back to America out of sight of the public. Iraqis were dying as well, either as victims of suicide bombings or from American gunfire. One such victim was Muhamad al-Kaadi, head of a local municipal council, who was shot by a U.S. soldier guarding council headquarters because of "his refusal to follow instructions."

In addition to the casualties, Iraqi men and boys are being "disappeared" by U.S. occupation forces, according to Kathleen Namphy of the Christian Peacemaker Team, one of the few foreign humanitarian agencies remaining in Iraq. CPT members have in the past worked as volunteers in Iraq's badly understaffed hospitals, but according to Namphy their current efforts are devoted to helping relatives locate the thousands of fathers, husbands, and sons who have been detained by the Americans without charges or even a hearing, and trying to arrange for the release of those who are innocent.

Most of the detainees are rounded up during raids such as the one described to CPT workers by a retired physician and his wife. Soldiers firing guns smashed into the family's house in the middle of the night, beat the doctor and his three sons with their rifle butts, and handcuffed and blindfolded them. After trashing the house, the soldiers dragged away the three sons, one of whom had been scheduled to take his medical school examinations the next day. Active intervention by CPT members and other human rights groups finally secured the release of two of the sons three months later, and the third is expected to be released shortly. None was charged with a crime.

"I can't believe the American military doesn't understand how many enemies they are making—here and throughout the world," a Canadian human rights worker told the Canadian Press of Ottawa in November. The rising casualties underscored his warning. Almost daily mortar and bombing attacks, and the shooting down by hostile fire of at least two helicopters, brought the total of American deaths to more than 440 Americans by mid-November. Massive retaliation by U.S. forces using helicopter gunships, tanks, and satellite-guided bombs has intensified anger against the Americans but done little to stop the resistance. After a night in which U.S. jets dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Baghdad and Tikrit, Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack announced, "We're going to use enough in our arsenal to win this fight." But a farmer whose town had just been hit by 500-pound bombs told reporters the reprisals would only increase hatred of Americans. "If they think they will scare us they are wrong," he said.

Bush at first claimed the hostile attacks were a good sign, saying "the more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react." But a leaked CIA report in early November warned of growing resentment among ordinary Iraqis. The report was backed up by a State Department poll that found a majority of Iraqis now regard U.S. troops as occupiers rather than liberators. Intelligence analysts have also expressed concern that members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council were squabbling among themselves rather than governing. "The trend lines are in the wrong direction," a government official said.

Realities on the ground finally forced a change in administration policy. Instead of "staying the course" until a new constitution is in place, the United States will turn over control to a transitional Iraqi government on July 1. American troops will remain, Bush said, but at the "invitation of the Iraqis" rather than as an occupying army. The new U.S. timetable calls for caucuses of selected local leaders who will choose representatives to a provisional government in accordance with Iraq's ethnic and religious makeup. Whether the new government will have legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people or be regarded as surrogates for the Americans remains to be seen. Nor is it clear whether Iraqi banks and factories will still be up for grabs by foreign investors, as U.S. occupation chief L. Paul Bremer has decreed, or if firms favored by the Bush administration will continue to receive fat contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. What counts most to the White House is that the new government will be in place four months before the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Reality may also be catching up with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. For three years he has used every violent means possible to crush Palestinian resistance. Palestinians have been jailed, beaten, bombed, and shot by Israeli forces. They have died when their ambulances were stopped at checkpoints. Their homes have been demolished and their fields and orchards destroyed. They have seen their children go hungry when Israeli soldiers prevented food trucks from getting through. The International Red Cross, which announced in November that it was giving up its emergency food program in the West Bank, warned that Israel's actions are leading to "the worst humanitarian crisis."

Some of Israel's most hard-headed officials have come to realize that brutal measures haven't worked, that despite the punishment Palestinians have endured they have survived with their aspirations and determination intact. As a result, there is mounting pressure on Sharon from inside Israel to change course. On Nov. 13 the prime minister was confronted with a front-page headline in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot reading: "Four directors of GSS [Israel's General Security Services, or Shin Bet] warn: Israel in grave danger." The four security chiefs warned that Israel's economy, social fabric, and identity as a democracy were headed toward decline, and said only a political solution could end the conflict. They called on the government to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, abandon most of the settlements, and end "the immoral treatment of Palestinians."

Avraham Shalom, Shin Bet chief from 1980 to 1986, said, "We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully." Shalom also called the policy of isolating Yasser Arafat, which is backed by Bush as well as Sharon, "the mother of all errors." Ami Ayalon, who headed Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, recently joined with Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, to draw up a statement of principles for a two-state solution which has been signed by 100,000 Israelis and 70,000 Palestinians.

The interview with the Shin Bet chiefs followed closely on expressions of dissent from within the military. In late October army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon declared that punishing the Palestinians was only leading to greater resistance and said a new approach was necessary. More than two dozen reserve pilots in the Israeli air force signed a letter saying they would no longer carry out airstrikes against targeted militants because too often these attacks resulted in civilian casualties. Several hundred reserve soldiers had already announced they would refuse to serve in the occupied territories.

Adding to the pressure on Sharon was the publication of a proposed peace treaty known as the Geneva Accord, copies of which were mailed to every Israeli and Palestinian household on Nov. 16. The detailed treaty, complete with maps, was drawn up by a group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians led by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, and former Palestinian Information Minister Yassir Abed Rabbo. Unlike the Oslo accords, the new proposal does not provide for interim stages but spells out the terms of a final settlement. The Palestinians would gain sovereignty over all of Gaza and the West Bank, including Haram al-Sharif and Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Israel would retain a large settlement bloc in the West Bank but turn over to the Palestinians an equivalent amount of land in Israel.

Another hopeful sign was an agreement by Hamas to take part in cease-fire talks, which were scheduled to start in late November under the sponsorship of an Egyptian mediator. Hamas has in the past observed cease-fires only to abandon them when Israel continued its assassinations and raids on Palestinian towns. Sharon until now has insisted that the army will not stop pursuing suspected terrorists until Palestinian leaders dismantle militant organizations. After newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei formed a government in October and proposed a cease-fire, however, Sharon's senior adviser Zalman Shoval said "we will probably acquiesce." Sharon and Qurei are scheduled to meet in early December.

The White House, which has been too busy spinning the bad news from Iraq to give any attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, recently renewed its appeals to Sharon to ease conditions for the Palestinians. In his speech at London's Whitehall Palace on Nov. 19, Bush urged Israel to freeze settlements and "end the daily humiliation of Palestinians," but made only a vague reference to the giant barrier going up in the West Bank.

Immediately after Bush's speech the Israelis announced that the barrier would go ahead as planned, knowing they had nothing to fear. Only three weeks earlier the United States had voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning the barrier, one of only four countries to do so. "The fence will continue," Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said after the vote. "I'm proud to be on the American side."

Because Israel is continuing settlement construction, the administration was compelled by law to deduct $289 million from the $3 billion due in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel this year. The White House softened the blow by allowing the Israelis to make the announcement and afterward expressing gratitude to Israel for agreeing to the reduction (which will only mean Israel will pay slightly higher interest rates) and stressed "the close and continuous cooperation between the two countries."

As the date approached for the formal publication of the Geneva Accord, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell praised its framers for "sustaining hope and understanding," but said the United States was still committed to the road map. If the Bush administration sticks to this position, the peace process will remain stalled while Israel continues its raids and arrests. The day before Powell sent his letter, Israeli troops shot to death six Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy. In the previous two weeks 20 Palestinians had been killed and scores arrested—including two who were seized from their hospital beds by masked Israeli commandos.

Not long afterward Israeli security agents and Special Forces troops charged into Ramallah and blew up a four-story apartment building suspected of housing Hamas members, then raided two nearby villages. Four Palestinians were killed during the operation, including a 9-year old boy, 30 men were arrested, and 50 people were left homeless. The timing of the raids was no mystery. They took place just as the Geneva Accord was being formally signed and while Hamas leaders were meeting with Palestinian officials in Cairo to arrange a cease-fire. There had been no suicide bombing in two months, and Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had told an interviewer for National Public Radio that Hamas would agree to a "longterm cease-fire" if Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders. Israel's attack was clearly designed to provoke renewed violence and forestall any possibility of a cease-fire.

Given Sharon's intent to derail peace efforts until he finishes surrounding Palestinians with a giant wall, there obviously is no time left to pursue drawn-out plans such as the road map, which contains neither an enforcement mechanism nor a clearly-defined outcome and puts almost all of the burden of stopping violence on the Palestinians. The Geneva Accord, on the other hand, is a detailed proposal that may not fully satisfy either side completely but offers hope of true Palestinian statehood. The crucial element still missing is official support from the United States and Israel. When the Accord was officially made public in Geneva on Dec. 1, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, King Mohammed VI of Morocco and several other current and former officials sent messages welcoming the agreement. Conspicuously missing was any message of support from Bush.

The president declared in late October that, in running for re-3election, "I'll be saying the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership." Sharon continues to maintain he is protecting Israel's security. In fact the two men have achieved neither peace nor security. The ever-present possibility of a suicide bombing in Israel, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the guerrilla attacks in Iraq, and devastating bombings in Turkey and Saudi Arabia are evidence that their actions have made the world a more dangerous place. But there is reason to hope that resistance to U.S. domination of Iraq, and the desire of millions of Palestinians and Israelis for a just peace, may finally force Bush and Sharon to rethink their failed strategies.

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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