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Deafening
Arab silence on U.S. plans
By George S. Hishmeh,
Gulf News
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Almost a year ago this March, the Arab League summit meeting conference
was held in Beirut and in the opinion of one Mideast scholar-in-residence
at the prestigious Middle East Institute here adopted "momentous
resolutions" including Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace plan.
Murhaf Jouejati, echoing somewhat similar opinions elsewhere, wrote quite
perceptively at the time: "The achievements of this summit make it
the most significant in the Arab League's 57-year history. For the first
time since 1948, Arab states collectively offered to normalise their
relations with Israel in return for Israel's complete withdrawal from the
territories it occupied during the 1967 (Arab-Israeli) war."
In the following months relations between the Arab world and the West,
particularly the United States took a nosedive, primarily due to
Washington's volte face. Instead of pursuing the war on terrorism, it
turned its guns on Iraq, in the meantime giving Israel's Ariel Sharon a
free-hand to plunder the self-ruled Palest-inian areas and elsewhere in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that are awaiting liberation.
The Israeli war on the Palestinians continued virtually unchallenged by
the world community - over 40 Palestinians were killed last week thanks to
the periodic Israeli show-of-force in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
city of Nablus.
Again, Natan Sharansky's Ho-using and Construction Minister, has continued
its colonisation schemes, issuing a tender for 126 new residential units
in a neighbourhood of the West Bank settlement of Efrat - and no one
raised an eyebrow.
Economic collapse
Due to the economic collapse in the Palestinian areas, where 60 per cent
of the population lives on less than $2 a day, as a result of the
Israeli occupation and the 30-month uprising, the World Bank is now asking
for $1.1 billion in humanitarian assistance to cover "the most urgent
day-to-day needs."
Physical damage by the Israelis in the Palestinian areas was estimated at
over $700 million and a UN economic adviser, Michael Keating, underlined
at a two-day donors meeting in London that "only a political solution
can offer some hope of resolving the humanitarian crisis."
But this did not appear to be the case. Rather, a new right-wing coalition
has been forged by Sharon, a development that at best sidetracks any
movement toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians, probably all to
the better. After all, his like-minded partners are the centrist Shinui, a
secularist party, and the hawkish Nationalist Religious Party (NRP), a
champion of Jewish colonies and an opponent of Palestinian statehood.
Adding oil to the fire on the other side of what once was called the
Fertile Crescent, is the case of Saddam Hussain's Iraq which could go up
in flames at any moment this month, thanks to non-stop American
warmongering.
Come hell or high water, the Bush administration seems determined to
intervene militarily, even at the risk of alienating many U.S. allies and
friends. The American leader has not been swayed by the millions who
marched in some 600 international cities against a U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq or the castigation of the Non-Aligned Movement, or even severe
criticism from such pastoral leaders as Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, the
Vatican foreign minister, who said "a unilateral war or aggression
would constitute a crime against peace and against the Geneva
Convention."
Some foul-mouthed, if not chauvinist, Americans may delight in hurling all
the vile they can on the "Old Europe" leaders or others but they
ought to stop and digest the comment of one European guest scholar at the
Brookings Institution here.
He told The Washington Post that there has been a natural progression in
attitudes overseas. "It was anti-war, not anti-American. Now it's
anti-Bush, not anti-American ... that image is stuck in people's
consciousness."
The only chance for changing the Bush administration attitude rests with
two peoples - the British and the Arabs, especially the fabled "Arab
street," some analysts at American think-tanks believe. Should
British Prime Minister Tony Blair lose more ground in his own country
because of the growing opposition to war and back away, Bush may be
compelled to mark time or follow suit.
The other possibility lies within the unpredictable Arab world which has
so far failed to show some backbone against Ameri-can designs in the
region, be it on Palestine or Iraq. (Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin
Ramadan complained to the Associated Press: "There is no official
support from the Arabs.")
Cover
The upcoming meeting of the Arab heads of state, which was moved from
Bahrain to Egypt, is facing premature inter-Arab divisiveness. Not all the
Arab countries of the 22-member league are supporting delaying the meeting
for two weeks until mid-March. The ostensible reason is that Iraq is too
involved in the upcoming UN negotiations, but some believe that a summit,
particularly if divided, may give a cover for an American invasion.
Whatever, I am struck with a perceptive comment made a year ago in The
Independent of London by British journalist Robert Fisk which regrettably
may still hold true today: "(The Arab leaders) will issue ringing
declarations of support for the Palestinians and almost equally earnest
support (this time as well for the Iraqis and) for a war against
'terrorism.' They cannot criticise U.S. policy, however outrageous they
believe it to be, because they are almost all beholden to it."
Or else, how could we explain the Arab silence and helplessness while the
whole world has been voicing outrage at Bush's war-in-the-making?
The writer can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com