-Caveat Lector-
From: International Justice Watch Discussion List
Subject: Sharon has more power in Washington than Powell
Sharon has lots of support in the US and he can do whatever
he wants.
Not even the straight-talking Mr Sharon is irritable enough to say so
in public, but he seems to regard the United States less as a
superpower which must be obeyed, than as a potentially useful enabler
which will create the conditions for Israel to survive and flourish;
the best judge of those conditions being Israel rather than the US.
Daniel
-------------------------------------------------------------
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) April 14, 2002, Sunday
Israeli leader has more power in Washington than Powell
BY: JOHN SIMPSON
The United States reached the limits of its power this week. A group
of Arab leaders obliged Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, to say
that he was, after all, determined to meet Yasser Arafat during his
visit to Israel, even though Washington had earlier regarded the
Palestinian leader as an irrelevance.
The Israeli government, so dependent on American economic and military
aid, ignored Washington's wishes and refused to compromise over a
withdrawal from the West Bank. And a fanatical young woman strapped
some explosives around her waist and killed and maimed dozens of
innocent people in Jaffa Street here, demonstrating how even a single
individual can frustrate the plans of a superpower. No wonder
President George W. Bush did his best during his first year in office
to ignore the Middle East; there's nothing to be gained here but
embarrassment and humiliation. Now, though, his administration is
involved despite itself, and its prestige requires some progress
towards a visible solution.
There's no sign of that. The sudden twists of policy which the White
House and the State Department have gone through during the past
couple of weeks have made it harder than ever to be certain what the
United States does want here. Does it now consider, for instance, that
Mr Arafat must still be given a significant part to play in
negotiating with Israel, in spite of the harsh things President Bush
said about him recently?
Or would Washington be secretly glad if Ariel Sharon, the Israeli
Prime Minister, were to do what he would like and deport Mr Arafat
from Palestinian territories altogether? (Mr Sharon now has all the
political pieces in place to do that, if he judges the time is ripe:
he has won the support of a far-Right religious party, which would
make up the numbers in his coalition if the Labor Party resigned in
protest at such a move against Mr Arafat.)
It is only ten days since the world's press was trumpeting President
Bush's new, tough line on Israel: withdraw from the towns and cities
of the West Bank, or face American displeasure. And it's only four
days since Mr Powell insisted in Cairo that he was
definitely going to meet Mr Arafat when he came here; a decision which
Mr Sharon then called "a tragic mistake". "Any meeting like this would
only encourage him, and has never brought him to stop the terror," he
said.
At the brief press conference which Mr Sharon held with Mr Powell on
Friday, the Secretary of State's language, body and verbal, certainly
were not that of the paymaster coming to call a client to account. Far
from it. Mr Powell seemed ingratiating, deferential; no doubt he
realises how much support Mr Sharon has back in Washington and how
much influence his friends there have with the President.
Not even the straight-talking Mr Sharon is irritable enough to say so
in public, but he seems to regard the United States less as a
superpower which must be obeyed, than as a potentially useful enabler
which will create the conditions for Israel to survive and flourish;
the best judge of those conditions being Israel rather than the US.
The State Department clearly doesn't like it; who would? But Mr Powell
has to recognise that his voice is not as powerful in Washington as
Donald Rumsfeld's [the Defence Secretary] and those of the other
hawks. The received wisdom is that President Bush's father lost the
1992 election in part because his Secretary of State, James Baker,
told Israel in a moment of bluntness and irritation that if Washington
was paying, it expected to get what it wanted. But that's not how
things work.
George W. Bush wants to do better than his father and win the 2004
election, and if he is to do that he knows he will need to look like
Israel's best friend, not its schoolmaster.
And in the meantime, Mr Sharon is proving difficult to stop. Almost
exactly 20 years ago, as defence minister, he insisted that the
security of northern Israel required a swift and limited incursion
into southern Lebanon. Four months later, having captured Beirut, he
put Mr Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation on ships which
took them out of this part of the Middle East altogether.
Now he insists that the security of Israel as a whole requires Israeli
troops to stay in the towns and cities of the West Bank for a little
longer; he favours a limited incursion into southern Lebanon to stop
Hezbollah firing rockets at northern Israel; and - yes - he says he
wants to ship Mr Arafat out of this part of the Middle East
altogether. It's an old foreign correspondent's adage that if you wait
long enough, the same stories always come round again. Nowadays, it
seems, you don't have to wait that long.
John Simpson is World Affairs Editor of the BBC
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2002 The Telegraph Group Limited
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