Why Bush dances to Sharon's tune
Israel's right-wing Likud party dominates U.S. Mideast policy through a powerful lobby in the American Congress
Who really is running America's Mideast policy?
Last week, the astounded world saw the grotesque spectacle of President George
W. Bush pleading in vain with Ariel Sharon, leader of a nation of only 6.3
million people which receives almost $5 billion in annual U.S. aid, to cease
laying waste the Occupied West Bank.
Ignoring worldwide condemnation and
demands from the UN Security Council, Sharon ordered his armour, much of it
American-supplied, to accelerate shooting up and bulldozing Palestinian towns,
refugee camps and all symbols of Palestinian identity or statehood. Twenty years
ago, Sharon invaded Lebanon, "to crush Palestinian terrorism." His big guns and
warplanes blasted Beirut for three weeks, killing 17,000 civilians. Today, he
remains determined to hold Arab lands Israel conquered in 1967 and to destroy
any hopes or vestiges of a viable Palestinian state.
President Bush and
senior aides Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were left looking weak,
indecisive, and inept. Bush clearly is a political soulmate of ultra-hawk
Sharon; they share a mutual detestation for Yasser Arafat and, it would seem,
for Arabs in general.
Bush has been encouraging Sharon's attacks on
Palestine for months. But Israel's invasion of the West Bank - reminiscent of
Soviet tanks crushing Hungary in 1956 - gravely threatened America's Mideast
client regimes, so Bush had to demand Sharon relent.
SHEER FARCE
In an act of sheer farce, Powell was sent on a slow boat to Israel, via
Madrid and Morocco. Before Powell even arrived, former Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu summoned fawning U.S. senators and arrogantly informed them Powell's
mission would fail.
While the rest of the world condemned Israel's
invasion and destruction of the Palestinian ghettos, not a peep was heard from
the White House, Congress or America's media about Israel's violation of U.S.
law in using U.S.-supplied armour and warplanes against civilians. Nor about
Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. There
were no protests when Israel's Shimon Peres described massacres of Palestinian
civilians by Israeli soldiers.
Nor even a tut-tut when Sharon named to
his cabinet a fanatical right-wing general who advocates ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians - the same crime for which the U.S. pursued Serbia's Slobodan
Milosevic.
To be sure, there is deep and justified sympathy in the U.S.
for the frightful suffering Israel has endured at the hands of suicide bombers,
and its need for self-defence.
Still, why was America alone in defending
Israel's ruthless punishment of the Palestinians?
How could Bush, only a
few weeks ago, still bathing in the bogus glory of a military "triumph" against
a few thousand medieval tribesman in Afghanistan, be so suddenly made to look
foolish and impotent by events in the Mideast?
Simply put, Sharon's
right-wing Likud party has come to dominate U.S. Mideast policy through its
powerful American lobby, which "guides" Congress.
Under pressure from
the Israel lobby, 89 out of 100 senators and at least 280 congressmen recently
demanded Bush give Sharon carte blanche to crush Palestine. As the Israeli
writer Uri Avnery wryly noted, if the Israel lobby gave orders to repeal the Ten
Commandments, Congress would vote in favour.
America's media is strongly
pro-Israel and averse to dissenting views. A coterie of hawkish, Israel-first
neo-conservatives dominates media opinion-making and the Pentagon, leading the
charge for a war against Iraq, Iran, and Syria. One even helped to write Bush's
foolish "axis of evil" speech.
Tight U.S. mid-term elections are
approaching.
Bush does not want to anger American Jewish voters who
believe Israel is in mortal danger.
GEORGE SR. ROASTED
Bush obviously recalls that when his father sought to pressure Israel to
halt building illegal settlements, Bush Sr. was unfairly roasted by the media as
an anti-Semite and forced to back down. No wonder Sharon can thumb his nose at
the White House.
Bush likes to talk tough, but this crisis has shown him
to be the exact opposite. In Texas, they'd say, "big hat, no land." Bush has so
far failed to take any real action to halt America's Mideast interests being
undermined by the bloodbath in Palestine and Israel.
The best way to
protect Israelis from terror attacks is to withdraw their 200,000 illegal
settlers and end their colonial rule over the West Bank, Gaza and Golan; divide
East Jerusalem into Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sectors, have NATO troops
police peace accords and either normalize relations with the Arabs, as the
Saudis propose, or build a wall to isolate Israel from its neighbours. This
cannot be done so long as settlements remain.
Sharon is dead set against
this sensible idea. He needs to be pushed the way Dwight Eisenhower ordered
Israel, in 1956, to get out of the Sinai, which it had invaded and occupied - or
else. Had Bush Eisenhower's integrity or genuine patriotism, he would compel
Sharon to accept the wise Saudi peace plan and forget dreams of recreating
biblical Greater Israel. This would be a boon to Jews and Arabs alike.
But Bush junior is no Eisenhower. His dithering over the Mideast has
made the United States appear both helpless and a tacit supporter of Israel's
West Bank repression - and made America the potential target of more terrorist
attacks from the enraged Arab world.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
Letters to the editor should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit his home page.
THE END
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