The voices of moderation in the Arab world have time and again put great faith in Washington’s good intentions in the Middle East. That faith is now stretched almost beyond endurance. While Ariel Sharon attempts to crush the Palestinians once and for all, Washington stands idly by. As Israel’s treasurer and arms supplier, all it has to do is threaten to turn off the money taps and the Israeli tanks would stop in their tracks. But it does nothing.
Furthermore, all the statements coming out of the White House indicate a horrifying level of sympathy for the Israeli government’s onslaught against the Palestinian Authority.
Is it any wonder that there is now such anti-American fury across the region? It has reached unprecedented levels; and the Bush administration’s latest pronouncement on the Zinni mission will only intensify Arab and Muslim anger.
While the Middle East burns, the White House says that it does not need to upgrade its diplomatic efforts to end the violence. Justifying such inaction, it claims that special US envoy Anthony Zinni was on the verge of a security deal before the violence escalated last week. Maybe he was — but even the most naive of observers realize that what might have worked last week is not going to work now. The circumstances have altered radically. Yet, the White House calmly reports that President Bush remains “optimistic” that Gen. Zinni can still achieve a breakthrough. Such blind complacency is beyond belief. Washington fiddles while the region hurtles toward chaos and destruction. This is gross irresponsibility on the part of a superpower that not only has the ability to bring about a peace deal but which claims that it wants to do just that. It is being either unbelievably naive or downright malevolent.
And, unfortunately, there is no shortage of people across the Middle East who choose to believe the latter. The number increases by the thousands hourly. Public anger at the US has never been so great. The outrage is such that people will now believe the worst reports of American intentions: that Zinni’s efforts were deliberately undermined by US Vice President Dick Cheney; that Washington agrees with Sharon that Yasser Arafat be destroyed and replaced by a new, probably docile, Palestinian leadership; that it has given the green light to Israel’s military rampage. And who can say with certainty that any of these is not true?
What is most incomprehensible about America’s cavalier attitude is that it pushes Arab and Muslim public opinion into the hands of the hard-liners — those who say that full-scale war against Israel is the only answer, or, like Iraq, that there should be an oil embargo against the US. The more furious and resentful Arab and Muslim public opinion becomes the more it will listen to those who say that Bush’s war against terrorism is directed not at international terrorism but at Islam; and those with seemingly slick solutions to bring the Israelis and the Americans to their knees will find ready converts.
Washington has great power for good in the world, but if it continues to deliberately withhold that power in the Middle East and, by doing so, block justice for the Palestinians, it will have only itself to blame if the consequences prove to be different from the scenario scripted by Texas philosophers.
