Surprised that the new US president isn't towing a Zionist line, Israel is resorting to all kinds of pressure tactics to maintain diplomatic cover for its colonial practices, writes Ayman El-Amir* When in 1956 Israel dragged its feet about withdrawing from Sinai after the failed tripartite Israeli-British-French invasion of Egypt, US president Dwight D Eisenhower sent a letter to Israeli prime minister David Ben- Gurion expressing grave concern regarding reports that Israel did not intend to withdraw. "Any such decision by the Government of Israel", Eisenhower wrote, "would seriously undermine the urgent efforts being made by the United Nations to restore peace in the Middle East, and could not but bring about the condemnation of Israel as the violator of the principles as well as the directives of the United Nations". At the same time, Eisenhower instructed the Justice Department to "review" the tax- deductible status of individual contributions by US nationals to Israel. That alone did it. The United Nations and the word of the US president then carried a great deal of weight. They could not be easily overridden by the pressure of powerful Israeli lobby groups such as the currently infamous, all-powerful AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which was then in its infancy. After four decades of accommodating, collaborating or intimidated US administrations, now comes a US president who is prepared to test wills with a recalcitrant Israeli government bent on bulldozing all chances for peace in the Middle East with the same peace of mind it bulldozes Palestinian homes to build settlements for Israelis in their place. The game of subtle pressure and counter-pressure between the US and Israel seems to be gaining momentum. More recently, the Obama administration has let Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu know that its Middle East envoy, Senator George Mitchell, would not meet him in Paris as initially scheduled. It was signalling to Netanyahu that it found nothing worth discussing in his Bar Ilan University speech, particularly his position on settlement activities or his concept of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. The US seems to have a large array of pressure tactics to use. It has firmly reiterated its position that Israel should cease all settlement activities, whether illegal outposts or the so-called "natural growth" that gobbles up more chunks of land in the West Bank that are presumably earmarked for a Palestinian state. Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar, writing in the daily Haaretz recently, recalled that during his presidential campaign Barack Obama had stated that, in his opinion, a "friend of Israel" is not synonymous with being "a Likud member". According to Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy, the establishment of a Palestinian state is considered a US national interest in Obama's view. In this tug-of-war, Netanyahu has tried to divert attention from the paramount issue of peace and stability in the Middle East -- the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. He instructed Obama to focus instead on the more urgent question of the Iranian nuclear programme that, in typically manipulative and emotional Israeli terminology, he called an "existential threat" to nuclear Israel. When this failed to dissuade the Obama administration from supplanting the Palestinian problem with Iran, he resorted to plan B -- activating the ever-ready pressure machine known as AIPAC and its foot soldiers in the US Congress. AIPAC flashed its teeth and called in May for a conference on the occasion of the visit of Israeli President Shimon Peres to the US. In a muscle-flexing gesture, AIPAC gathered thousands of US supporters of Israel, including, according to the organisers, half the members of the US Senate and most members of the House of Representatives. Far from retaliating, the Obama administration has simply opened the Pandora's box that has long kept under lock and key: all the taboos in US- Israeli relations. Israel's secret nuclear arsenal was brought under glaring light in May at the preparatory conference for the 2010 Tenth Review Conference of the 189-member Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a statement before the conference, US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gotemoeller called on Israel to join the NPT -- a daunting challenge that no other administration has ever dared to pose. Raising the question that has been shrouded in the "Don't ask, don't tell" classification adopted by the Nixon-Kissinger administration 40 years ago, and that afforded Israel the freedom and the technology to develop its nuclear arsenal, has forced the issue into the open. It caused the Israeli government considerable embarrassment at a time it has championed a global campaign accusing Iran of harbouring designs to develop military nuclear capability. Both Israel and the US face an uphill battle in the current game of arm- twisting. Since its 1967 conquest and occupation of Arab and Palestinian territories, Israel adopted a long-term policy of annexation, confiscation and settlement of occupied land. Initially Israeli governments cited security reasons for confiscating land and bulldozing Palestinian homes, inflating the problem of refugees. Then Israel launched a war against the Palestinians in Lebanon (1982), in the West Bank (2002), against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-9. In the meantime, Israeli governments adopted as a strategic objective the concept of annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "the historical land of Israel". Supported by the Bush administration, the Ariel Sharon government changed the terminology of UN Security Council Resolution 242 from "occupied territories" to "disputed territories" with little protest from the international community. Israel has also set up more than 600 roadblocks in the West Bank to dismember the territory and to cultivate despair among the Palestinians who have to cross from one section of the territory to another. The rabid rightwing Netanyahu government and its religious allies have combined settler-colonial mentality with religious fanaticism to create stumbling blocks that would pre-empt any peace negotiations leading to the two-state solution. It adopted the "disputed territory" policy to put into question that the West Bank is Palestinian territory. It inculcated "the historical land of Israel" ("God gave us this land") myth to embolden the estimated 160,000 settlers in the West Bank to defy any present or future government plans to evacuate this territory in any future peace settlement. It has set up pre-conditions that would make the creation of an independent Palestinian state impossible. More than engaging in a battle of wills with a new administration that has adopted a different line of thinking, the Netanyahu government is pursuing a Masada-style siege mentality. No one except hard-core pro-Israeli lobbyists believes in the myth of Israeli vulnerability. Its settler-colonial policy has enraged even its tradition allies in the European Union, which has conditioned upgrading diplomatic relations with Israel on ending its settlement activities. The world public was shocked by Israeli atrocities in Gaza during the 2008- 09 war and invasion. The US public, including many in the American- Jewish community, is beginning to question the extraordinary influence of the pro-Israel lobby on US foreign policy and the impact it has on America's image and interests. To many political veterans it is reminiscent of the Chiang Kai-shek lobby -- the most powerful lobby in the US in the early 1950s that steered US foreign policy into unquestionable support of Nationalist China (Taiwan). It was ultimately doomed. Israel is fighting a desperate battle to dash all Palestinian hopes and aspirations and to maintain its occupation of Arab territories under devious excuses. This time it is not up against the Arabs it has often vanquished and subdued, but against a new US line of thinking. President Barack Obama's speech at Cairo University on 4 June primarily sought to assure Muslims worldwide that the US is neither their enemy nor is it opposed to their vital interests. Unlike his predecessor, Obama realised that to fight Islam in the name of fighting terrorism is a losing battle and that the way for the US to strike a mutually rewarding alliance with Muslims passes through the Palestinian problem. The myopic Israeli leadership of Netanyahu may opt for wrestling down President Obama, either through its loyalist Congress whose members are elected by Jewish donations, through AIPAC or through raising tensions in the Middle East by engaging in a suicidal pre-emptive strike against Iran as diversionary tactics. They are all risky options, but Israel, with US support, has always prided itself on taking risks and winning them. However, taking risks by surprising the ill-prepared Arabs is one thing, and trying to turn the US public against a popular president is another. It is time that the Israelis, their stubborn government and the pro-Israel lobby worldwide realised that Israel's ultimate battle is with itself. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
