Ah, to be a “viable” state! The word “viable” has now become the be-all and end-all of US policy toward Palestine. “For its part,” President Bush told us, “the new government of Israel, as the terror threat is removed and security improves, will be expected to support the creation of a viable Palestinian state.”
Well, since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says that the Palestinians may only get 50 percent of the West Bank and his new chums in his Israeli coalition government are all for more settlements in that same area, why should Muslims take this talk seriously? Of course, they don’t. It’s just another word-trick to kick the Arabs into support — or at least acquiescence — in the American invasion of Iraq.
Not once did President Bush mention the word “oil” — save for a brief reference to the disastrous oil-for-food program — though there was just one mention of the “occupied territories” (or “so-called occupied” as Donald Rumsfeld infamously called them). But once America occupies Iraq, what argument can the Arabs deploy against Israel? If the West Bank is occupied, well so is Iraq. If the United States occupied Iraq to spare the world from “terror”, why shouldn’t Israel occupy the West Bank to spare itself from “terror”? Few have yet worked through this dangerous equation. They should.
Much of the Bush speech to the American Enterprise Institute was written in the language of Israel. “If war is forced upon us by Iraq’s refusal to disarm, we’ll meet an enemy who hides his military forces behind civilians, who has terrible weapons, who’s capable of any crime.” This is precisely the language of Ariel Sharon. The equation that other Arab states are expected to understand is contained in that ominous suggestion by Bush that after the “passing” of Saddam Hussein’s regime, “other regimes will be given a clear warning that support for terror will not be tolerated.” Primarily, this is a message for Syria, then for Iran and then for anyone else who has not knelt before the Americans.
To support this, we are asked to believe — even the Arabs who live in the Middle East are asked to believe — that “in Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could (sic) enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world.” The same man “has close ties to terrorist organizations and could (sic) supply them with the terrible means to strike this country.” Or not, as the case may be.
And if it’s North Korea we’re talking about, you can forget all this nonsense about “regime change”. Arabs were, obviously, interested in the “coalition of more than 90 countries”, until they realized that this “coalition” was merely arresting Al-Qaeda suspects, not planning to invade Iraq. And when Bush said that the US had “arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of Al-Qaeda”, a smile or two on the faces of America’s friendly Arab dictators might be forgiven. The phrase “or otherwise dealt with” will be as familiar to them as it is shameful to the United States.
So on we go to a “free and peaceful Iraq”. But what was it President Bush told us? “Iraqi lives and freedom matters greatly to us,” he said. Since when? When Iraqi men and women were being raped in Saddam’s torture chambers in 1983, Donald Rumsfeld was in Baghdad asking Saddam if he could reopen the US Embassy. Rebuilding Iraq will require “a sustained commitment from many nations” but “we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day more.” How extraordinary. For this is precisely the same — the very same— words used by Israel when it invaded Lebanon in 1982. It took Israel 22 years and hundreds of Israeli lives — and thousands of Arab lives — before that occupation ended. Ah, what it is to fight for ithe liberty of an oppressed people! — this is Bush of Iraq — provided, of course, they are not Palestinian.
Arab News Opinion 1 March 2003
