The word from Washington is that President Bush was not entirely welcoming to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. US spin doctors would have us believe that the White House was critical of continued Israeli aggression in the occupied territories. The president is supposed to have pressed the hawkish Israeli leader to ease up in his campaign of violence. We are invited to accept that George W. Bush played the evenhanded statesman, the honest broker.
Such a change would be a fine thing. But, this was a victory parade by Sharon. While Israeli troops humiliate the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by bottling him up in Ramallah and while Israeli assassinations and incursions into Palestinian territory continue, Ariel Sharon was at liberty to jet off for his fourth cozy visit to Washington to take tea at the White House.
Israel’s isolation of the Palestinians has been as deadly as it has been masterful. The greatest threat to its continued close relations with Washington would have been a sustained cease-fire. When against all odds, the main Palestinian militant groups bowed to Palestinian Authority’s pressure to break the cycle of revenge attacks by suspending their operations, Sharon was in trouble. The Zinni peace mission was due to return, and the Mitchell plans which included the end of Zionist colonization were about to be brought back into play. If the cease-fire lasted much longer, Sharon and his hard-line government would be forced onto a political back foot. So the Israelis continued their provocation and attacks, knowing that if they hammered away long enough, the patience of the Palestinian militants would snap. Once that happened, Yasser Arafat’s leadership would be brought into question.
American Zionists, who had come the closest ever to losing their leverage in the White House because of an impatient and not very knowledgeable incumbent, were back in the driving seat. They could rewrite the story in easy-to-understand "good guy, bad guy" terms. Because the Israelis had a regular army, like the Americans, they were the good guys. Because the Palestinians fought in the streets with stones, blew themselves up and didn’t wear uniforms, they were the bad guys, terrorists, just like all the other terrorists Bush had sworn to stamp out.
The only reason that Bush’s foreign policy gurus told the president to frown a bit when Sharon arrived is that they want to maintain the support of the Arab world in their campaign against international terrorism. Yet what the United States cannot or will not see is that it is Israeli terrorism and brutality against the almost defenseless Palestinians that gives such offense to the Arab world and beyond. It is Israel’s crimes that have been used by extremists as justification for their terrible deeds. Moderate opinion everywhere is as revolted by the one as by the other.
But unfortunately, moderate opinion in the United States has been suckered into believing that Israelis with the tanks and the jets and uniforms are the victims and the Palestinians with the stones, the petrol bombs and the explosives strapped to their own bodies are the aggressors. As long as this distorted image remains, Ariel Sharon is free to continue his oppression. Feigned frowns of the White House would not matter to him.
