Before we raise our hopes about George J. Mitchell’s visit to the Middle East, or about his much ballyhooed Sharm El-Sheikh Committee Report (officially released last Monday), let’s not lose track of the fact that Washington is not initiating a peace process or putting forward a peace proposal here. The Bush administration, which has not yet developed an organizing principle to deal with the world at large, continues to show reluctance not only in playing a leading role in mediating the Palestine conflict, but even in becoming somewhat engaged.
Though the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, gave tepid “endorsement” to the Mitchell Committee Report, which seeks to convince Palestinians and Israelis to put an end to their confrontations, he explained, a touch dismissively, that “it is up to them to make it work.” He said that he will offer both sides “lifelines” that could lead to further public and personal diplomacy. In other words, America’s unique leverage and unique power, especially when it comes to Israel, will not be brought to bear — not yet, and not presumably till the situation worsens.
“We are witnessing a progressive deterioration in the Middle East,” wrote Dennis Ross, the now unemployed but still peripatetic Clinton administration chief Middle East peace negotiator, in the Washington Post last Sunday. “New thresholds of violence are regularly crossed. President Bush speaks of our efforts to try to bring the situation under control, but the security meetings we organize, the limited understandings we promote and the statements we make are quickly overwhelmed by events and outrages on the ground.”
It is true that new thresholds of violence have been crossed, in this case by Israel. We are talking here about how this entity, violence-prone throughout its history, has resorted to unprecedented extremes in an effort to subdue a helpless people it has occupied for close to 35 years.
Surface to surface missiles, F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopter gunships, surface to surface missiles, anti-personnel bombs used against densely populated areas! These are not just barbaric acts, but full-fledged war crimes whose perpetrators should be hunted down, apprehended and brought to justice before courts of law similar to those held at Nuremberg and the war crimes tribunals at The Hague. They certainly should warrant vehement condemnation by the international community. No civilized nation should remain silent in the face of such escalating brutality.
The US, however, has opted to do just that. Dennis Ross is being coy when he writes that the United States’ good intentions “are quickly overwhelmed by events and outrages on the ground,” as if Washington has absolutely say in, or control over, the lunatic extremes that Israel has gone in its confrontation with the Palestinians.
One’s suspicion here is that, very simply, the US government has opted to give Ariel Sharon the green light to go ahead with that kind of escalation. Unlikely, you say? Let’s look at the circumstantial evidence.
When Israel launched its first military incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory three weeks ago, the State Department’s reaction was immediate and blunt: Get out. Since that time, however, the incursions have increased in intensity and frequency, with nary a word of protest from Washington. Clearly, that is an indication that President Bush has since been won over by the cold warriors in his foreign policy team — especially Donald Rumsfeld, the coldest warrior of them all — who effectively runs Bush’s administration, turning him into a kind of shadow president. Israel could not be doing what it is doing today, openly, blatantly and ruthlessly, without regard for its patron’s reaction, unless there were forces high up in the administration saying to it, go ahead, you have our approval. Israel’s deadly attacks now go on daily, with the US government issuing no more than sterile statements condemning “the cycle of violence on both sides.”
How could one see this new American policy — and make no mistake about it, it is new — other than as a shift away from the peace process to giving Ariel Sharon and his army what amounts to a green light for aggression? It is no wonder then that Arabs are convinced of Washington’s complicity in this escalation. The Palestinian Information Minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, for example, told reporters in the West Bank last Saturday that Washington “is to be held primarily responsible for the escalation of Israeli aggression against our people.” He claimed that the United States approved Sharon’s dropping 1,100-pound bombs on Palestinian targets, which an American official at the US Embassy in Israel denied and termed “ridiculous.” Ridiculous? Well, then, if that accusation is ridiculous, why hasn’t anyone in the US government forcefully condemned Israeli violence and equally forcefully called for it to stop at once?
What Israel wants, beyond bringing the Palestinians to their knees, is to destroy their nascent infrastructures, assassinate their leaders, terrorize the population, and in the end make it next to impossible for them to create an independent state — thereby leaving the occupied territories occupied, open to further settlement by Jewish colonists.
And forget Mitchell’s half-hearted but well-intentioned efforts. The current administration has already made up its mind about the Palestine question: Benign neglect.
In a short telephone interview, Patrick O’Donnel, now a Washington-based freelance journalist, who had in the past covered several trouble spots around the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq, told me that he was convinced that the US government will continue to adopt an “apathetic posture” regarding the occupied territories, at least in the short term. Asked why, he responded curtly: “Because it can.”
Asked to comment on the Bush administration’s seeming endorsement of the Mitchell Committee Report, he said he was quite convinced that the Report will in time be ignored, left to languish till it is forgotten.
“It is obvious,” he said, “that the Mitchell Report, which pointedly calls on Israel to freeze settlement activity, will spell trouble for Bush, were he seriously to insist on its implementation, for it will mean having to lock horns not only with Sharon, but an Israeli lobby that has not lost any of its power in the American capital. For a long time to come, expect Washington to do zilch in the Middle East.”
As I write this, the breaking news is that eight hours earlier, at 2:00 a.m. local time on Monday, in the occupied territories — as men, women and children were asleep in their beds — the Israelis launched a murderous attack in Gaza City, firing guided missiles into what is probably the most densely populated urban center in the world. What is surprising to me is not that the Palestinian people continue to produce a suicide bomber every now and again to hit back at Israel, but they have not produced a suicide bomber to hit back at Israel every day of the week. Surely, a people who are denied the right to choose how they live, will insist on their right to choose how they die.
