US is turning a deaf ear to good advice George S. Hishmeh

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

US is turning a deaf ear to good advice

George S. Hishmeh

Special to Gulf News | 25-09-2003

Never before has the United States appeared so alone as when President George W. Bush spoke at the opening session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday night, pleading for international support to shore up the flagging American occupation of Iraq and its discredited policy on pre-emption, an approach initiated by the Israelis in their 1967 war against the Arabs.

The United States finds itself in this regrettable position mainly because President Bush has banked on the neoconservatives of his administration who had championed an ill-considered foreign policy course that has yet to show promise on many international issues, particularly in the Middle East.

Stone-walling, Bush turned a deaf ear to the rising chorus of criticism against his rationale for acting pre-emptively in Iraq, most likely because of the serious drop in his popularity at home after the war in Iraq and the downward trend in the US economy.

"There is something deeply ironic," commented Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic Studies in washington DC, "about going to the United Nations to seek military help to deal with the aftermath of a war the UN asked be delayed, a war the United States fought to deal with a threat that so far does not seem to have existed, and a war in which the United States needs military assistance to deal with the aftermath of a major 'victory'."

But the most stinging criticism came from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who warned that a policy of pre-emption, as was with the American-led war, could lead to "a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force".

The American president received a humiliating 20-second applause at the conclusion of his remarks, a sharp contrast to the praise he won last year when he agreed to seek, albeit without success, support from the UN Security Council for his military action against the regime of Saddam Hussain.

Much as he seemed stubborn about his self-righteous position on Iraq, the Bush administration was equally unresponsive to the Jordanian delegation lead by King Abdullah when they visited Washington and Camp David, the presidential retreat, last week.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher told the Washington Association of Arab Journalists that the US administration was adamant against promising any move in the stalled peace process before the Palestinians, first and foremost, tackle the "security problem", meaning the freehand that Hamas and other like-minded Palestinian militant groups seem to have.

"There aren't any new ideas within the administration," he said, on the next steps or dealing with the fate of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who has been shunned by the Americans and Israelis. The administration would not deal with him "under any circumstances" and would not entertain new ideas about circumventing the aging Palestinian leader who has won renewed attention thanks to Israeli threats.

"If the (Palestinian) security issue is treated, the US is ready to accelerate the peace process," he said.

This unyielding American position must have disappointed the Jordanians since they offered the administration some undisclosed ideas on how to deal with this stalemate. The Jordanians, echoing the views of many Arab governments, believe that the ill-defined roadmap lacked specificity, like simultaneous first steps and a timetable.

But Dr. Muasher advised strongly that it would be unwise to talk about "the death of the roadmap" – a formula advocated by the so-called Quartet, a body that represents the United States, the United Nations, European Union and Russia. He underlined that the roadmap took several months to come to fruition.

The Arabs can ill-afford to expect a new approach since time is of the essence, primarily because Israel is still building more settlements and a "separation" wall despite mild American naysaying. These pose "a serious threat to the creation of a Palestinian state" in 2005 as envisioned by the roadmap.

If nothing else, the stalemate attests to continued weakness of Arab governments in standing up to the Bush administration. On the other hand some realpolitik has been injected by no other than former US President Jimmy Carter this week in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post which must cause some serious concern in Arab capitals.

The former president wrote: "Today, except for the fact that the Palestinian issue has become one of the foremost causes of international terrorism, our strategic interests are much less involved in the Israeli-Palestinian violence. There seems to be no urgency in resolving the relatively localised dispute...

"Confident that our support is unshakable, Israeli leaders eventually began to assert their independence, and real American influence has reached its lowest ebb in 50 years. In the face of certain rebuffs, why would any American president become deeply involved in a balanced mediating role?"

Carter, who had just observed the 25th anniversary of the Camp David Accords last week at a celebration in Washington, turned the tables on the Israelis. He concluded: "No matter what leaders the Palestinians might choose, how fervent American interest might be or how great the hatred and bloodshed might become, there remains one basic choice, and only the Israelis can make it: Do we want permanent peace with all our neighbours, or do we want to retain our colonies in the occupied territories of the Palestinians?"

He thought it would be America's "worst betrayal of Israel" should it support the second choice.

Likewise, it would be Israel's worst betrayal of America should it continue to infuriate the Arabs against the Jewish state's arch-supporter.

The writer can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).