Conspicuously absent from US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent Middle East address on a partnership initiative with the United States was the central problem in the region, namely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anyone who imagines that he can market a partnership in the region without first ending the conflict needs to think again.
Ending the conflict begins with the acknowledgement that there is a problem — an indigenous population and territory under direct occupation by a foreign power. The occupation has not ended. If anything, Israel has dug in as never before. And the United States is playing a supporting role as never before. The newest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Jimmy Carter, asserts that George W. Bush is not impartial about the issue. “Until President Bush, every president, Democratic or Republican, has in my opinion played a balancing role as a trusted mediator,” Carter said. “Now, though, it seems obvious that the present administration in Washington is completely compatible with the Israeli government and they have completely ignored ... the Palestinian Authority.”
These are strong words but not impossible to believe, as can be seen by the appointment last month of Elliott Abrams as Bush’s director of Middle Eastern affairs at the White House. Abrams is a passionate advocate of Israel and his appointment thrilled those who had criticized the administration for being too tough on Israel and too deferential to the Palestinians. Abrams was a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace negotiations even while they seemed to bear fruit. He wrote in the 1990s that it was a mistake for Bill Clinton to trust Yasser Arafat. He advocated that position from the start of this Bush administration, until it became Bush’s position last June. No matter what atrocities Israel commits, the US adopts nothing stronger than kids gloves, never calling a spade a spade. Naturally, Ariel Sharon views such indulgence as a green light to persist in violence against Palestinians, heedless of the exhortations and censure of all international parties. Right-wing Israelis like Sharon who represent the Greater Israel ideology, claiming all of historical Palestine as a Jewish homeland, have been especially successful at making their view of the region the dominant one among US supporters of Israel. The whole theme of the war against terrorism has permitted Israel to commit war crimes against the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.
There is also American double standard at work. On the issue of Iraq, the whole point of the US going to the UN was to get a resolution so stiff that no matter whether or not Saddam Hussein complied, the US would still move in on Baghdad to remove him and his weapons. On the other hand, in late September, in a Security Council resolution passed unanimously —with US abstention — Israel was called on to end its siege of Arafat’s Ramallah compound and to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since March. Israel still refuses to comply and the underlying rationale for it doing next to nothing to enforce its own stated position is that “We understand that Israel must defend its citizens.” Why the UN is to be sought after in one instance and ignored in another is one of those inconsistencies that the US widely indulges in.
Partnership and inconsistency don’t go together.
