[WCUSP] "How Bush's Backing Imperils Israel" by Henry Siegman (Financial Times, London)

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

How Bush's backing imperils Israel

By Henry Siegman
Financial  Times (London, England)
September 15,  2006
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/ft-9-15-06a.html

Nothing has  been more important to Israel's security
than its special relationship with  the US, which has
provided it with virtually unlimited  military,
diplomatic and economic support. Under George W. Bush,
US  president, that generosity and intimacy have reached
levels unprecedented in  America's relations with other
countries.

However, the advantages of  that relationship have
ended, a fact that has been slow to register  with
Israel's leadership. For in the aftermath of America's
invasion of  Saddam Hussein's Iraq and that country's
intensifying civil war, which now  threatens region-wide
destabilisation and upheaval, and after Israel's war  in
Lebanon, in which it was believed by most Arabs to be
acting as  America's proxy, that relationship threatens
Israel's very survival in the  region. Its intimacy with
the Bush administration has persuaded much of the  Arab
and Muslim world that the Jewish state is Washington's
cat's paw in  furthering a neo-conservative agenda for
regional transformation.

The  main product of the war in Lebanon has been hatred,
as noted by Israel's most  prominent gadfly, Uri Avnery.
The death and destruction wrought by Israel  against
civilian targets broadcast for 33 successive days by
al-Jazeera  and other television networks have
reinforced hatred of Israel among Arabs  and Muslims,
which may take generations to undo. (Hizbollah was no
less  indiscriminate in its targeting of Israeli
civilians, but sadly that does not  mitigate Arab
hatred.)

While rightwing Israeli political and military  leaders
have exploited this hatred by invoking it as
justification for  their hardline policies, their
blindness to its destructive consequences is  the result
of their long-held conviction that there is not a
problem that  cannot be solved by Israel's massive
military superiority. It was General  Moshe Ya'alon, the
Israel Defence Forces' former chief of staff, who  said
in 2002 that Palestinians would not become peace
partners for Israel  until the IDF has "deeply seared on
their consciousness that they are a  defeated people".

One might have thought Israel would have learned  from
Hamas's election victory this year that when it seeks
to solve  political problems by military force - rather
than seeing its military  superiority as providing the
latitude to pursue political solutions -  Israel
actually "sears the consciousness" of its victims only
with a rage  for revenge.

Because there was not a clear winner or loser in
Lebanon,  an opportunity may now exist to address the
fundamental causes of Israel's  regional conflicts
rather than the symptoms. The stand-off may open  the
way to a return to diplomacy between Israel and its
adversaries, as  happened after the Yom Kippur War of
1973 that paved the way for Israel's  peace with Egypt.
What stands in the way of using this opportunityis  the
rage in the Arab world that could easily be redirected
towards  "moderate" Arab regimes. Whether Israelis like
it or not, the only protection  from that rage, and most
threats facing them, is a decision to negotiate a  fair
agreement with the Palestinians in peace talks whose
starting point  is the pre-1967 armistice line, subject
to mutually agreed  changes.

Israel has refused to deal with a Palestinian Authority
led  by Hamas. However it is uniquely Hamas - not
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian  Authority's president,
nor a discredited Fatah party - that can  offer
redemption to Israel in the Arab and Islamic world. An
understanding  between Israel and a Hamas-led
Palestinian Authority (with or without Fatah)  that ends
violence and allows for the development of informal  co-
operation that would lead to more formal agreements is
the only path  to overcoming the wall of hatred that now
encircles Israel.

An  opportunity to launch the adversaries on such a
political path has now been  opened by the agreement
between Mr Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, the  Palestinian
Authority's Hamas-appointed prime minister, to form  a
government of national unity that accepts the Arab
Initiative of 2002.  That initiative commits Arab
countries to the establishment of normal  relations with
the Jewish state following the conclusion of a  peace
agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. When
asked whether  this means that Hamas no longer has a
problem recognising Israel's 1967  borders, Hamas's
spokesman replied, "Yes, we have no problem with  that."

But far from taking advantage of this opening, Ehud
Olmert's  government announced a diplomatic offensive to
ensure that this new  Palestinian unity government will
not be recognised by the international  community and
that the brutal sanctions that have been imposed
against it  remain in place. It has been reported that
Washington intends to support  Israel's position. If
Israelindeed rejects this opportunity for dialogue  with
a Hamas prepared to end violence and accept Israel's
pre-1967  borders, its problem is not finding a
Palestinian peace partner, but its  rejection of any
such partner in favour of reliance on the IDF to  impose
Israel's will by force on its Arab neighbours. Such a
decision, and  Israel's continued identification with Mr
Bush's misguided crusade against  "Islamo-fascism", will
allow the hatred that surrounds Israel to undermine  its
existence in a part of the world that for the Jewish
state would turn  - sooner or later - into "the heart of
darkness".
____

The writer  is director of the US/Middle East Project
and a visiting professor at the Sir  Joseph Hotung
Middle East Programme at the School of Oriental and
African  Studies, University of London 



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