US SECRETARY OF State Colin Powell began a Middle East salvage mission yesterday in which the stakes are very high. A brutal Israeli invasion of Palestinian self-rule areas, an all-out assault on the infrastructure and security forces of the Palestinian Authority, a humiliating and potentially murderous confinement of Yasser Arafat. What makes Powell’s mission all the more problematic is that all these situations have come about with the tacit approval of Washington.
President Bush has taken the simple view that Arafat is behind terrorism and Ariel Sharon is fighting terrorism. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Bush perhaps muted his criticism of Arafat but insisted on challenging the right of Palestinians to fight the Israeli occupation. Palestinians are exercising their right to self-defense as an occupied people. The UN Charter enshrines this right.
Suicide bombings cannot be compared to the state terrorism carried out by the Israeli government. The former are individual acts of despair by a people who see no future and whose plight is made all the more bleak by Washington’s blank check to Sharon. The latter are cold and rational decisions of a state and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped and financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.
Yet, in US eyes, state terrorism perpetrated by the Israeli government is legitimate self-defense, while Arafat, even while under house arrest, is ordered to rein in the “terrorists.” The Israelis, including Sharon, know that the enemy is not terrorism but the three million Palestinians living under occupation. And they will continue to be the enemy as long as Israelis pin their existence on the continuing usurpation of Palestinian land.
The aim of this latest Israeli incursion into Palestinian land and lives is not to root out terrorism but to raise the confrontation to such a level of harshness that the PA will have no choice but to surrender to the terms dictated by Israel.
But the Palestinians have demonstrated to have a backbone not even a combination of Bush and Sharon can break. Sharon came to power on a promise to finish off the uprising within 100 days. Hundreds of days have passed since, the uprising has not ended and the Israelis are no closer to peace and security than when Sharon took over. Sharon promised his people security with or without peace and the result has been unprecedented Israeli insecurity.
The Sharon government has failed on all levels: Prevention, deterrence and force. His policy of brutal repression has only fanned Palestinian resolve. The longer the siege continues the more the world rallies around Arafat and the Palestinians whatever be Sharon’s outrages and Bush’s outbursts. It is ironic that Arafat, trapped and surrounded by Israeli tanks, has never been more popular, while Sharon, with all the power of his military on show, is as discredited and isolated as ever.
Only the United States is backing the Israeli prime minister. Of course Bush on Saturday made a direct, personal request to Israel to withdraw without delay from the Palestinian cities it recently occupied. Sharon’s response has been on predictable lines.
The Israeli leader’s defiance in the face of a direct demand from Bush, delivered with British Prime Minister Tony Blair by his side, need not surprise anyone, for this is how errant children have always behaved toward indulgent fathers.
This means that, even though Powell is in the region, the momentum of the violence will prove hard to break. Either by mimicking Israel or at other times turning a blind eye to Israeli actions, Washington helped propel the situation to its present point of near anarchy. And by announcing before hand that he will not meet Arafat, the man Bush says needs to do “everything in his power to rein terrorists”, Powell has left no one in doubt as to who actually fashions Washington’s Middle East policy.
