To nobody’s surprise and to the unconcealed glee of Israel, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s mission that was no mission has ended the way it was meant to.
Nobody would have faulted Powell if a mission that was greeted with skepticism from the very start ended in failure. But Powell or his lack of diplomatic finesse should be held responsible for his mission ending in utter chaos and acrimony.
The skepticism was not confined to Arab world. According to US commentator Alexander Cockburn, “his (Powell’s) itinerary makes Odysseus’ journey home from Troy to Ithaca look like a model of decisive brevity.” From Morocco, to Egypt, to Spain and back to Israel. All this while the occupied territories were on fire and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was doing the only thing he relishes doing — killing people, demolishing their homes and terrorizing the survivors. Everybody knew that Powell’s choreographed itinerary on the way to Israel was intended to give Sharon plenty of time to kill more women and children as part of his war on “terrorism”.
The result was shocking even by Israel’s standards. “Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life,” writes London Times’ correspondent Janine di Giovanni after a visit to the Jenin refugee camp. What remains of the camp, says Giovanni, is a wasteland of death that once housed 15,000 people.
Yoni Wolff, an Israeli lieutenant told journalists, whom he had taken on a conducted tour of the camp after all incriminating evidence was destroyed, that “we have destroyed the infrastructure of terror.”
But Powell in his meeting with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yesterday told the Palestinian leader, under captivity in his Ramallah headquarters, that he “can no longer equivocate” on fighting terrorism and must dismantle its infrastructure. Really? There are still some terrified survivors in the Jenin camp. Does Powell want Arafat to eliminate them or let Sharon unleash his willing executioners on the Jenin camp again?
Powell who shed copious tears for the Israeli victims of a bomb attack last week did not visit the Jenin camp. He did not utter a single word to condemn the blood bath that took place under his very nose. He did not ask Israel to agree to an inquiry into the carnage by an impartial body.
Worse, Powell could not secure a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas, a cease-fire, and plans for a possible international peace conference and rebuilding of the shattered Palestinian society.
We knew Powell’s brief was limited. Still there was some hope, especially after the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the secretary of state has “maximum flexibility on his mission.” If the American’s last meeting with Arafat proved a catastrophe it was only because he tried this “maximum flexibility” to extract maximum concessions from the weak party to the conflict and did this in a way which gave the impression that he was acting on behalf of the stronger party. Apparently the ex-generals have something in common. Powell can be faulted for many things but not for equivocation. He has spoken out his mind just as Sharon has unsheathed his knives.
