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George Junior in Wonderland
Phyllis Bennis
23 April 2002 (unedited version; to be published in Middle East International)
On April 20, more than 100,000 Americans did something that, in the wake of 9/11, seemed very brave: they packed the Washington Mall, they marched and rallied from the Washington Monument to the Capitol, and filled the streets of San Francisco. In Washington they gathered in four separate mobilizations, focused on a number of separate but related causes - the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan, attacks on Arabs and Muslims and broader civil liberties assaults within the US, the war in Colombia, corporate-driven globalization and meetings of its institutional backers, the IMF and the World Bank. But what dominated the entire mobilization was Palestine. And more than just Palestine, the consistent cry was the demand to end US support for Israel's occupation of Palestine, its backing of Ariel Sharon, and its funding of Israel's war machine.
It was less than a week after a different large gathering laid claim to the Mall in the name of supporting Israel. But all the attention came back to the US
The demonstrations took place as the Bush administration struggled to regroup and recast its Middle East policy following the debacle of the Cheney, Powell, and Zinni failures.
The failure of the shuttling triad - vice-president, secretary of state, and special Middle East envoy - followed months of post-September 11th flip-flops over Middle East, and especially Israel-Palestine policy. The triple pillars of US policy in the region - Israel, oil, and stability - would remain in place, but priorities among them would shift significantly.
In the first months of its term, prior to September 11th, the Bush administration adopted a policy of keeping up the aid to and diplomatic protection of Israel, but keeping their head down and their hands off on peace talks. It wasn't terribly surprising - this was an administration
whose economic and political power was thoroughly enmeshed in the oil industry. The oil and stability legs of the policy triplets were primary, while Israel slid down into third place. Certainly the existing close US ties to Israel didn't disappear. But despite the continuity of $4 billion or so in military and economic aid, and a continued threat and/or use of UN vetoes and walk-outs to protect Israel in the United Nations, the Bush policy became known as "disengagement". Europe, Arab states and others around the world began crying for "greater engagement", as if Washington's billions in aid, the protective vetoes, the diplomatic privileging of Israel did not constitute intimate engagement. What was needed, of course, was not MORE engagement, but an entirely different kind of engagement. And that was not on Bush's Middle East agenda.
Immediately after the World Trade Center attacks, the Bush administration appeared to distance itself from Israel. The need for maintaining Arab and Islamic government support in Bush's new "anti-terrorism war" trumped the warm and fuzzy embrace of Israel, although US economic and strategic backing remained quietly unchanged. Fearing exactly that reaction, Israeli spokespeople launched a near-frenzied campaign of linkage, claiming unparalleled unity with Americans as victims of common terror and common Arab/Islamic enemies. It didn't work very well beyond the punditocracy, and in November, both Colin Powell's Louisville speech and Bush's own UN General Assembly address paid more attention to words the Palestinians and - more strategically - Arab governments and their restive populations, wanted to hear. Bush's call for a "state of Palestine" and Powell's "the occupation must end" appeared to herald a new, maybe even even-handed approach of US diplomacy.
But it was not to last. At about the same time that keeping a coalition together became less important in Afghanistan - about the time when major cities under Taliban rule were falling - the tactical pendulum swung back and Washington returned to a more public embrace of Israel and Sharon. The form was an announced effort to "re-engage" in the "peace process". The first messenger was General Anthony Zinni, whose two brief visits at the end of 2001 ended in failure (once after a suicide bombing, once following the discovery of the shipload of arms en route to Palestine ostensibly from Iran). For a while the administration appeared unconcerned with the escalating violence, appearing to believe against all evidence that Palestine could burn and the crisis would stay contained.
But by February or so Iraq reemerged as a central feature of US regional efforts. The stakes were going up, a new round of regional shuttling was required to lay out the requirements and lay down the law to Washington's Arab allies. General Zinni wasn't quite high enough in the administration hierarchy for this one, so into the breech stepped Vice-President Dick Cheney, an experienced Middle East hand from his years as secretary of defense in the Bush Senior administration. (Actually, Cheney's oil-driven loyalties were clear long before: as a member of the House of
Representatives, Cheney supported the 1981 sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia, despite Israeli opposition, and in 1979 he voted against the windfall profits tax on oil revenues. Just to fill out the record, Cheney also voted against the Panama Canal Treaty (1979), the Department of Education (1979), South African sanctions (1985) and safe drinking water (1986).
In fact, the vice-president had carried out a virtual identical Middle East regional round-up once before - on the eve of the Gulf war more than a decade ago, and for a similar purpose: to insure Arab and broader regional (read: Turkish) support for a new strike against Iraq. In the wake of 9/11, with dependent and already compliant Arab regimes virtually falling over each other to climb on board the Bush anti-terror train, the administration seemed to anticipate Cheney's job would be a push-over. Sure there might be some unease in the palaces over how Arab populations were raging over the rapidly deteriorating crisis in the West Bank, but it was assumed that however much they twitched and weasled, Washington's Arab
allies would stand reluctantly with Washington.
As it turned out, it wasn't quite so easy. While there is little doubt that at the end of the day the Arab kings, emirs, princes and presidents would indeed do as their patron ordered, public opinion throughout the Arab world had hardened not only against Israel and its occupation, but against its global sugar-daddy, the United States. Arab governments, already facing severe crises of legitimacy, would do as they were told, but they would pay a very high price for their alliance with Washington. Israel's escalation in the occupied territories provided what seemed to provide an easy dodge for the Arab royals: "how can you even talk to us about supporting an invasion or overthrow campaign against Iraq when Palestine is burning and
you are doing nothing?"
Some time before Cheney's Air Force Two took off, someone in Washington realized what was about to happen, so General Zinni was sent back to the region. His mandate had not changed, there was little chance he would "succeed", however that elusive word was defined, but that was okay. His real role had far more to do with developments in Arab capitals than it did in Jerusalem and Ramallah where he began a shadow shuttle. Zinni was Cheney's political cover. "What do you mean we're doing nothing - we've sent General Zinni!" was the vice-president's new mantra.
As it turned out, that plan didn't work either; while Arab dependents were still likely to cave in to US pressure when it was finally exerted, shaky governments were simply not willing to concede prematurely and risk further destabilization or even potential threats to their regimes. Cheney's trip fizzled, and the Bush spin operation focused on convincing an only mildly skeptical audience inside and outside Washington that the vice-president never HAD gone to consolidate support for an attack on Iraq. His trip, we were to believe, was simply a visit to shore up regional backing for the "war on terrorism". (That didn't happen either, but few paid attention.)
Then it was Secretary of State Powell's turn. Following Cheney's failed trip the Bush administration called a brief time-out in the new game of engagement. Pundits played the Washington version of Kremlinology, trying to read tea leaves and photo ops to judge who was up and who was down in the Bush entourage. The early splits that had characterized the administration were still in place: once shaped by policy disagreements over Iraq, the division between the Powell pragmatists vs. Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz ideologues now played out over Palestine. Should any US official higher than an acting assistant deputy under-secretary ever sit in the same room with Yasir Arafat? Could any US official criticize anything that Ariel Sharon did since he was fighting terrorism just like the US was doing in Afghanistan?
The press focused largely on the messenger. Was General Zinni simply too far down in the hierarchy to have the requisite clout with Sharon and/or Arafat? Would Bush send General Powell, ratcheting up the four-star factor? What was largely left out of the debate was the reality that it was not the messenger, but the mandate that would determine the success or failure of the mission. Zinni failed not because he wasn't of high enough rank, but because he had no mandate to seriously dictate terms to Israel. As it turned out, neither did Powell. Two suicide bombings in late March,
killing dozens of Israeli civilians inside Israel, raised the stakes; Washington clearly was going to respond.
But even before any new decision was announced, March 29th came, and with it the unprecedented Israeli military offensive across the West Bank, punching into Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and tiny villages in between with tanks, helicopter gunships, armored bulldozers and F-16s. It looked, on the Israeli side at least, like what UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called "a conventional war".
At that point Bush himself jumped into the fray, in a major speech in the White House Rose Garden on April 4th. He announced he would send Powell to the region, and outlined a vision, if a bit skimpy and more than a bit blurry, of what a peaceful settlement might look like: "This could be a hopeful moment in the Middle East. [But it wasn't.] The proposal of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, supported by the Arab League, has put a number of countries in the Arab world closer than ever to recognizing Israel's right to exist. [Conveniently ignoring that such recognition would
only follow a complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.] The United States is on record supporting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a Palestinian state. [Though everything we do helps prevent those aspirations from becoming reality.] Israel has recognized the goal of a Palestinian state. [If one defines a set of divided, non-contiguous bantustans with no international borders made up of about 40% of the West Bank as a state.] The outlines of a just settlement are clear: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, in peace and security".
If a Palestinian state had not been achieved, Bush said, Yasir Arafat had only himself to blame: " The situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making. He's missed his opportunities, and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he's supposed to lead. Given his failure, the Israeli government feels it must strike at terrorist networks that are killing its citizens". Israel's actions might "run the risk of aggravating long-term bitterness and undermining relationships that are critical to any hope of peace". But despite that, Bush would not criticize Sharon's assault, only remind Israel "that its response to these recent attacks is only a temporary measure".
For long-term thinking, the words were all there: Israel must stop settlement activity, and "the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries..." Four days later Bush said he told Sharon, "I expect there to be withdrawal without delay". He talked the talk of serious pressure; but he refused to walk the walk.
The key action was limited to sending Powell back to the region; there would be no pressure on Israel through use of any tools available to Bush: no cut in the billions in military aid, no brake on the pipeline of military equipment being used against civilians, no reversal of the
Israel-backing veto in the Security Council preventing the deployment of international protection or even observer forces.
It should have surprised no one that Sharon paid little attention. As veteran Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory described Bush's posture, "the leader of the free world lolled in a lounger in Crawford Texas, and told Sharon to go to it". The real limits of Bush's intentions were made clear in the timetable. Powell would go to the region, but he would take his long sweet time getting there. Arriving first in Morocco the young
king welcomed Powell with the question "why are you here, why aren't you in Jerusalem?"
Powell's languid pace, from Morocco to Madrid, to Jordan, to Egypt, before arriving almost a week later in Jerusalem. It was, without doubt, a week-long green light for Sharon's assault on the cities, villages and especially refugee camps of the West Bank. It was a green light for the
horrors of Jenin, which soon joined Qibya, Gaza, Sabra/Shatila in the lexicon of Sharon's war crimes.
And when Powell returned, President Bush welcomed him home with the claim that US goals had been met, that the trip was a success, that all was well with the world. It was an Alice in Wonderland moment, with Bush announcing straight-faced that "I do believe Ariel Sharon is a man of peace" and "history will show [Israelis] have responded" to Bush's call for an immediate pull-out.
Israel's assault gradually wound down in parts of the West Bank, even as tensions mounted around Bethlehem's besieged Church of the Nativity and Arafat's tank-encircled presidential compound in Ramallah where several dozen international solidarity activists appeared to be all that stood
between stalemate and an Israeli effort to storm the grounds, sending the Palestinian leader into exile once again. But the goal of the Bush administration, the aim of the Zinni, Cheney, Powell shuttles as well as those of their underlings who took over when the big men went home, had failed. The objective of stabilizing the region sufficiently that Arab regimes could safely endorse a US military strike against Iraq without fearing domestic upheaval, had not been reached.
And at home, the Bush administration faced its first serious foreign policy challenge from the right - as Christian fundamentalists and other components of the Republican Party's hard right edge moved into an even tighter embrace of Ariel Sharon's Israel, rejecting even Bush's rhetorical
pretense of concern for Palestinian rights. Paul Wolfowitz, ardent pro-Israeli hawk and Bush's deputy chief of the Pentagon, was booed by tens of thousands of pro-Israeli demonstrators when he had the audacity to mention as a brief side-light that Palestinian children might be suffering too. The danger of a serious split within the Republican Party, with its right-wing backing Israel, while the Bush-oriented "moderates" cling to their traditional ties to big oil, the Arab regimes, military assault on Iraq (which both wings can unite on), remains a Texas-sized nightmare for the president with a Beltway-sized vision.
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