WASHINGTON, 9 November 2003 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in trouble. His two sons, Gilad and Omri, are accused of both joint and separate political corruption crimes. The Fraud Squad is investigating Gilad over a Greek island resort project. Gilad, Omri and their father are also subjects of a campaign finance investigation over funds improperly raised from overseas donors. The younger Sharons have served as their father’s agents and either or both could end up in jail.
Israel is a highly litigious country, and such crimes, both real and imagined, are commonplace. Shady financial deals and intrigues can start off with just a whiff of scandal and bring down a government at any time. Many Israelis won’t care if their government collapses as long as Sharon is finally and definitively gone. The few Americans who do care would be delighted but for different reasons. Sharon is murderous and has proven it many times. If only all Israelis would unite to get rid of him. The problem is that there are so many rivals and most of them would do anything to take over the prime ministership.
Shimon Peres won’t be the next prime minister because Israelis don’t trust him. On the other hand, most Americans can pronounce his name and know who he is. A year ago the Israelis tried to bring a Labor government back into office, under Amram Mitzna but it didn’t take. There is no question that if Mitzna, the Israeli military hero, had won Israel would have had a new prime minister who would have moved rapidly to solve the Palestine problem. He could have used any combination of previous peace plans that offered a fair break to the Palestinians and that would be acceptable to a majority of the Israelis.
Just to select one of many peace plan options, former Mossad chief Ami Ayalon and Palestinian activist Sari Nusseibeh traveled to the United States to promote a one-page “statement of principles” they drew up. Meanwhile another group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians, including former ministers on both sides, are preparing a complete model peace plan, Geneva Accord, with maps of exact borders. Both plans look quite acceptable. One of these days one of these plans is going to work and Israel and the world will be much better off for it.
Meanwhile US Secretary of State Colin Powell is working on similar peace agreements that may provide the same result. The Europeans, meaning France, Germany and the rest of the European community, are impatiently waiting for the road map to begin. Until recently the Russians have had other things on their minds. Suddenly they, too, have expressed interest saying, in effect, “what is taking so long?”
Obviously the United Nations has asked the same question repeatedly. It’s only the United States that moves forward briefly and then loses interest. Why is a peace agreement stymied? Clearly it is because Ariel Sharon insists that the road map is not going anywhere. To most Americans it is astonishing that Israel, to use the words of the current French ambassador to the UK, “this (expletive deleted) little country can hold up the entire world when everyone else has agreed that the Palestine problem has to be solved right now.”
So why is the US stalling? Is it that President George W. Bush can’t make up his mind? Or, more likely, changes his mind according to the opinions of the last adviser he talks to. It is crystal clear that Powell wants part of his legacy to be an Arab-Israeli peace before he leaves the Bush administration in 2005. So who is holding things up? Is it Vice President Richard Cheney, by far the most influential vice president in American history? Is it Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who seems ever so vain but who doesn’t seem to have any special “thing” for Israel. Or is it Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz who, many would say, is the eminence gris of the neoconservatives? Or is it CIA Director George Tenet, a Clinton holdover who stayed on in the Bush administration because Bush liked him and felt confident with him? Or is there someone we have forgotten? I think not. I also believe that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or Tenet will probably soon have to leave. Someone has to take the blame for the many mistakes starting with the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction, which may never have existed. Cheney won’t leave because it’s his job to serve if the president is incapacitated. Rumsfeld doesn’t want to leave and eventually will do Bush’s bidding. That leaves Wolfowitz, who has no constituency of his own except for the neocons, or CIA Director George Tenet. Strangely, within the CIA itself, most of the “spooks” themselves consider Tenet a loyal American because he said bluntly that he would resign if American spy for Israel, Jonathan J. Pollard, is pardoned without ever revealing the vital secrets he has withheld up until now.
Pollard is one of the most blatant and clumsy spies in history. But he still has secrets and it is inexcusable that he should ever be allowed to leave his prison cell until he confesses to all of them. While all of this is going on in the US, Israeli Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, brought out into the open a serious dispute over Sharon’s punitive policies. Columnists for three leading Israeli newspapers said it was time to start a totally new approach in dealing with the Palestinians. Yaalon made his complaints public after weeks of security staff meetings in which he advocated easing the military restrictions on Palestinians. But in each session Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and the intelligence chief, Avi Dichter, who argued that loosening controls on travel in the territories could allow Palestinian militants to slip into Israel, overruled him. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the final arbiter in the meetings, sided with Mofaz and Dichter, the officials said. Yaalon’s comments were similar to vociferous criticism from other Israeli military officers who differ with Israeli politicians over the handling of Israel’s current war.
Some 900 Israeli and foreign residents of Israel have been killed in attacks by Palestinians and Israeli military forces have killed 2,500 Palestinians.
Israeli Brig. Gen. Yiftah Spector, one of Israel’s most decorated fighter pilots, signed a letter, along with 26 other reserve pilots calling Israeli attempts at targeting the killing of militants in crowded civilian neighborhoods “illegal and immoral.” Spector said Israel is “opposing everything I was raised on” during his career in the air force. The Israeli officer corps has begun speaking openly against the policies of the Sharon government. Said one, “the public should be made aware of how we feel. There should be a public debate in Israel on where we’re going and how far we can push the Palestinian public.”
Mofaz summoned Yaalon to his office for a reprimand on Oct. 29, the day the Israeli newspapers printed the first accounts of his remarks. The next day a military officer familiar with the dispute said Yaalon “stands behind everything he said.” This rebellion by the Israeli military may not go away and instead may set off a serious round of political recriminations.
Meanwhile the United States is ignoring the Israeli separation wall, which the Palestinians call “the line of death.” The US has said that it will deduct the cost of that wall from Israel’s proposed line of credit. If Bush and Powell stick with this resolve Israel will remain bankrupt. It’s highly unlikely that American Jews will spend their own money to bail out the profligate Israelis. That may make all the other considerations in this article moot, and that would be a very good thing for the United States.
— Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
