In the immediate aftermath of September 11, there was strong aversion in Washington to identifying the causes of this terrorist attack and, in particular, to making any linkage between the World Trade Center atrocity and the violence that dominates the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Even the mention of the term “root causes” was anathema to policymakers.
What concerned Washington most was the fear that an examination of root causes immediately after 9/11 would have served as a vehicle for the master manipulators of the region -- Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and their ilk -- who are determined to blame our policies for all that ails the Middle East. In the weeks and months that followed, the Bush Administration was right to steer clear of addressing anything but the military and security aspects of the war on terrorism. Our focus and our goals were clear. Pursue the enemy and reinstate a legitimate, representative government in Afghanistan.
Now, however, the question is how to take this fight further, and that raises several problems with potentially severe consequences for US interests in the region. First of all, as we continue to pursue the war on terrorism, we are making demands of regional leaders. We expect 100% effort and results. We need the cooperation of intelligence, law enforcement and financial authorities in sovereign states in the region. Yet, enthusiasm for cooperation in these areas could well be constrained by our perceived indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people and our failure to apply any breaks on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
At the beginning of this Administration, the fear in the Arab world was that President Bush would disengage from the problems of the Palestinians. Now the fear is that he will stay engaged on the side of Sharon. The pressure on our friends in the region is intense and the feeling is that we are not only ignoring their problems but we are attacking them at the same time. There is a sense of injury in Saudi Arabia and Egypt over the press campaign against them. This is coupled with frustration at the apparent inability or unwillingness of the White House to hear the message that Arab leaders have been sending since well before September 11.
The Saudi Crown Prince, in particular, has been trying for almost a year to point out the risks of a U.S. policy of passive disengagement from the Palestinian issue and the dangers of over identification with Sharon. Both he and President Mubarak have been deeply concerned that continued violence in the occupied territories would generate growth of fundamentalism in the area and, with it, terrorism against the moderate governments associated with the United States. King Abdullah of Jordan has echoed this sentiment on a number of occasions as well.
It is more than fear for the survival of their respective regimes that motivates our friends: they firmly believe that our policy is wrong – that we are ignoring the causes of Palestinian terrorism. Even the most charitable Arab observer places much of the blame for the violence in the occupied territories on Israeli policies and what appears to be unwavering U.S. support for those policies.
The appearance of U.S. identification with Israel is by no means a new phenomenon. During the Clinton Administration, our relations with any number of Arab states were in a manner of speaking scored on the basis of their relations with Israel. Countries that maintained Israeli offices gained access to U.S. leaders – those that did not, did not. Egypt’s cold peace lost them points, but their participation in the peace process gained them credit – unless of course they were seen to be working at cross-purposes with our negotiators.
When President Bush was elected, Arab leaders were elated by the prospect of a change in a Clinton Administration policy that seemed to use Israel as the litmus of our relations with others. And while the Administration came with good intentions to walk away from Clinton’s policies, in fact, in practical terms, the Administration is moving in the opposite direction. We no longer have dual containment for Iran and Iraq – instead we have the evil axis. It is the same policy – with the obvious curious addition of North Korea to the mix. We no longer hold countries in the region to the litmus of their relations with Israel, instead we hold them to a standard on terrorism that is seen to be supporting Prime Minister Sharon’s very broad definition of who is a terrorist and his aggressive policy of response.
What we don’t have now and Clinton did, however, is the saving prospect of a viable peace process. We were given great latitude during the Clinton years because there was genuine hope that Clinton’s policies would lead to peace and because the Administration was constant in its aggressive engagement with the parties, including the President with Yasser Arafat.
Now we have no clear commitment to the process, very few obvious prospects, and no discernable policy to seize leadership on the issue. Instead, the Administration has chosen to send the Vice President to the region on a trip whose focus seems to be designed to find or force the alliances necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein, notwithstanding the fact that the trip itself is raising red flags throughout the region and Europe and will be seen to undercut the position of the Secretary of State.
In fact, what we may be witnessing is the passing of the torch from the State Department and its diplomacy of coalition building, to the Vice President’s office and some, as yet, unclear policy approach for the future more closely attuned to the President’s very popular verbiage of the Sate of the Union message. We also may be seeing a shift in priorities away from the nitty-gritty of the war on terrorism, which would largely be invisible to the American people, towards a much more aggressive and visible policy directed toward a few identified rogue states. If this is, indeed, the direction we are going, we can expect serious policy differences with our European, Russian and Arab partners.
In reality, the Administration has not been handed any easy choices in the Middle East. In the aftermath of Camp David II and the Intifada that followed shortly thereafter, President Bush has been left with two partners in the region who clearly despise each other: Sharon, who offers virtually no prospect of a remotely acceptable deal for the Palestinians; and Arafat, who has managed to do alienate Bush at every turn. Arafat does exercise 100% effort and results when it comes to infuriating the Administration. He gives new meaning to the overworked phrase, “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” Some are even joking that he might be a Mossad agent.
It is a fact that Arafat has managed at every turn to thwart the Administration’s most promising efforts to move forward on peace. The President was willing to vote affirmatively for the most forthcoming UNSC Resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in ten years. Yet Arafat persisted in his demand for a killer amendment that forced the President to veto. Then the President publicly called for a Palestinian state. In return, Arafat gave him vacillation and rhetoric. The Secretary of State gave Arafat the premises of Camp David and Taba as a point of entry for negotiations and reestablished “occupation” as the legal premise for Israel’s position in the West Bank. Arafat reciprocated with more talk of Palestinian “martyrs”. Above all else, Arafat still seems to be equivocating on the fundamental question of terrorism against innocents. He pays lip service and then encourages the opposite among his people.
One has to wonder if Arafat has not lost his edge – his ability to play the game he used to master. It is not an idle question now to wonder if it is not time for a change. He was an elected leader but his term has long since expired. This is a question that only the Palestinian people can answer, but at the very minimum it is a question they should be asking themselves.
Most Americans and Israelis believe firmly that a precondition for pursuing peace between Palestinians and Israelis should be an end to terrorism, to the indiscriminate killing of civilians on both sides. At the same time an increasing number of Israelis are raising questions about the Sharon policy of all stick and no carrot. Several senior serving and retired Israeli security officials have recently pointed out that they cannot solve the terrorist problem through military means alone. They need a meaningful political process in order to curtail terrorism.
The Administration needs to heed what the Israeli security authorities are saying – it also needs to listen to the IDF reservists who are refusing service in the occupied territories based on what they claim are illegal orders issued by their commanders against the Palestinian people. We should be drawing conclusions from this evidence.
The need for hope among Palestinians and in the region as whole is almost palpable. The Administration cannot afford to stand by and do nothing. If we are prepared to be strong and exercise our considerable political and military will when it comes to defeating Saddam Hussein, what about engaging our full political muscle in our discussions with Arafat and Sharon.
If the Administration continues to stand aside on this issue and engage in military action in Iraq or elsewhere in the Arab world, or if it continues to appear as Sharon‘s clone, then I am afraid I can predict a massive deterioration of our position in the region with consequences for our strategic posture, our economy, the stability of our friends, and the rise of the very fundamentalism we seek to defeat.
Disclaimer: Assertions and opinions in this Commentary are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not reflect necessarily the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.
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In the immediate aftermath of September 11, there was strong aversion in Washington to identifying the causes of this terrorist attack and, in particular, to making any linkage between the World Trade Center atrocity and the violence that dominates the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Even the mention of the term “root causes” was anathema to policymakers.
What concerned Washington most was the fear that an examination of root causes immediately after 9/11 would have served as a vehicle for the master manipulators of the region -- Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and their ilk -- who are determined to blame our policies for all that ails the Middle East. In the weeks and months that followed, the Bush Administration was right to steer clear of addressing anything but the military and security aspects of the war on terrorism. Our focus and our goals were clear. Pursue the enemy and reinstate a legitimate, representative government in Afghanistan.
Now, however, the question is how to take this fight further, and that raises several problems with potentially severe consequences for US interests in the region. First of all, as we continue to pursue the war on terrorism, we are making demands of regional leaders. We expect 100% effort and results. We need the cooperation of intelligence, law enforcement and financial authorities in sovereign states in the region. Yet, enthusiasm for cooperation in these areas could well be constrained by our perceived indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people and our failure to apply any breaks on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
At the beginning of this Administration, the fear in the Arab world was that President Bush would disengage from the problems of the Palestinians. Now the fear is that he will stay engaged on the side of Sharon. The pressure on our friends in the region is intense and the feeling is that we are not only ignoring their problems but we are attacking them at the same time. There is a sense of injury in Saudi Arabia and Egypt over the press campaign against them. This is coupled with frustration at the apparent inability or unwillingness of the White House to hear the message that Arab leaders have been sending since well before September 11.
The Saudi Crown Prince, in particular, has been trying for almost a year to point out the risks of a U.S. policy of passive disengagement from the Palestinian issue and the dangers of over identification with Sharon. Both he and President Mubarak have been deeply concerned that continued violence in the occupied territories would generate growth of fundamentalism in the area and, with it, terrorism against the moderate governments associated with the United States. King Abdullah of Jordan has echoed this sentiment on a number of occasions as well.
It is more than fear for the survival of their respective regimes that motivates our friends: they firmly believe that our policy is wrong – that we are ignoring the causes of Palestinian terrorism. Even the most charitable Arab observer places much of the blame for the violence in the occupied territories on Israeli policies and what appears to be unwavering U.S. support for those policies.
The appearance of U.S. identification with Israel is by no means a new phenomenon. During the Clinton Administration, our relations with any number of Arab states were in a manner of speaking scored on the basis of their relations with Israel. Countries that maintained Israeli offices gained access to U.S. leaders – those that did not, did not. Egypt’s cold peace lost them points, but their participation in the peace process gained them credit – unless of course they were seen to be working at cross-purposes with our negotiators.
When President Bush was elected, Arab leaders were elated by the prospect of a change in a Clinton Administration policy that seemed to use Israel as the litmus of our relations with others. And while the Administration came with good intentions to walk away from Clinton’s policies, in fact, in practical terms, the Administration is moving in the opposite direction. We no longer have dual containment for Iran and Iraq – instead we have the evil axis. It is the same policy – with the obvious curious addition of North Korea to the mix. We no longer hold countries in the region to the litmus of their relations with Israel, instead we hold them to a standard on terrorism that is seen to be supporting Prime Minister Sharon’s very broad definition of who is a terrorist and his aggressive policy of response.
What we don’t have now and Clinton did, however, is the saving prospect of a viable peace process. We were given great latitude during the Clinton years because there was genuine hope that Clinton’s policies would lead to peace and because the Administration was constant in its aggressive engagement with the parties, including the President with Yasser Arafat.
Now we have no clear commitment to the process, very few obvious prospects, and no discernable policy to seize leadership on the issue. Instead, the Administration has chosen to send the Vice President to the region on a trip whose focus seems to be designed to find or force the alliances necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein, notwithstanding the fact that the trip itself is raising red flags throughout the region and Europe and will be seen to undercut the position of the Secretary of State.
In fact, what we may be witnessing is the passing of the torch from the State Department and its diplomacy of coalition building, to the Vice President’s office and some, as yet, unclear policy approach for the future more closely attuned to the President’s very popular verbiage of the Sate of the Union message. We also may be seeing a shift in priorities away from the nitty-gritty of the war on terrorism, which would largely be invisible to the American people, towards a much more aggressive and visible policy directed toward a few identified rogue states. If this is, indeed, the direction we are going, we can expect serious policy differences with our European, Russian and Arab partners.
In reality, the Administration has not been handed any easy choices in the Middle East. In the aftermath of Camp David II and the Intifada that followed shortly thereafter, President Bush has been left with two partners in the region who clearly despise each other: Sharon, who offers virtually no prospect of a remotely acceptable deal for the Palestinians; and Arafat, who has managed to do alienate Bush at every turn. Arafat does exercise 100% effort and results when it comes to infuriating the Administration. He gives new meaning to the overworked phrase, “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” Some are even joking that he might be a Mossad agent.
It is a fact that Arafat has managed at every turn to thwart the Administration’s most promising efforts to move forward on peace. The President was willing to vote affirmatively for the most forthcoming UNSC Resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in ten years. Yet Arafat persisted in his demand for a killer amendment that forced the President to veto. Then the President publicly called for a Palestinian state. In return, Arafat gave him vacillation and rhetoric. The Secretary of State gave Arafat the premises of Camp David and Taba as a point of entry for negotiations and reestablished “occupation” as the legal premise for Israel’s position in the West Bank. Arafat reciprocated with more talk of Palestinian “martyrs”. Above all else, Arafat still seems to be equivocating on the fundamental question of terrorism against innocents. He pays lip service and then encourages the opposite among his people.
One has to wonder if Arafat has not lost his edge – his ability to play the game he used to master. It is not an idle question now to wonder if it is not time for a change. He was an elected leader but his term has long since expired. This is a question that only the Palestinian people can answer, but at the very minimum it is a question they should be asking themselves.
Most Americans and Israelis believe firmly that a precondition for pursuing peace between Palestinians and Israelis should be an end to terrorism, to the indiscriminate killing of civilians on both sides. At the same time an increasing number of Israelis are raising questions about the Sharon policy of all stick and no carrot. Several senior serving and retired Israeli security officials have recently pointed out that they cannot solve the terrorist problem through military means alone. They need a meaningful political process in order to curtail terrorism.
The Administration needs to heed what the Israeli security authorities are saying – it also needs to listen to the IDF reservists who are refusing service in the occupied territories based on what they claim are illegal orders issued by their commanders against the Palestinian people. We should be drawing conclusions from this evidence.
The need for hope among Palestinians and in the region as whole is almost palpable. The Administration cannot afford to stand by and do nothing. If we are prepared to be strong and exercise our considerable political and military will when it comes to defeating Saddam Hussein, what about engaging our full political muscle in our discussions with Arafat and Sharon.
If the Administration continues to stand aside on this issue and engage in military action in Iraq or elsewhere in the Arab world, or if it continues to appear as Sharon‘s clone, then I am afraid I can predict a massive deterioration of our position in the region with consequences for our strategic posture, our economy, the stability of our friends, and the rise of the very fundamentalism we seek to defeat.