Arab public opinion is increasingly incensed by Washington's machinations. Ibrahim Nafie examines the reasons For a week now Israel's army of occupation has maintained a relentless siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. And what strikes one most forcibly in this latest round of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people is the mildness of the response such brutal aggression has met from the international community, and from the US, in particular. Major powers with enormous regional interests appeared to have simply decided to bide their time before delivering non-committal statements. Indeed, the resident EU representative assigned a portion of the blame for the current situation to Palestinian "terrorism", and while Russia, France and Germany urged Israel to end the blockade, the White House -- after a significant lapse of time -- issued a statement saying only that Israel's siege would not help end Palestinian attacks. No sooner had Israel begun its siege of Arafat's headquarters than President Hosni Mubarak appealed to Washington to prevail upon the Israeli prime minister to end the assault against the symbol of Palestinian national aspirations. In an urgent letter to Bush, Mubarak warned that Israel's actions were jeopardising the security and stability of the region. Israel's current onslaught presages a very dangerous phase in the configuration of regional and international relations. The present configuration still favours a political settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is increasingly difficult to predict how long this will persist in the face of tensions that threaten to destabilise the region and undermine the credibility of major powers, as well as that of the UN. The most ominous consequence of the current situation in Palestine is that it furnishes Arabic public opinion with proof upon proof of the futility of the peace process. This, in turn, plays into the hands of those elements promoting non-diplomatic solutions to the conflict. What is the point of negotiating with an Israeli government that espouses military solutions, they ask. Why should we rely on the UN when it is obvious that it is powerless to protect a defenceless people from the tyranny of occupation? The public has every right to ask why the US is so lax about acting on Security Council resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territory and the establishment of a Palestinian state while simultaneously marshalling everything in its power to force the Security Council to pass another resolution on Iraq that would furnish it with a mandate to launch a military assault on the grounds that Iraq has failed to comply with UN demands. Is it surprising that such manoeuvres have incensed Arab public opinion? The Arab world supports the principles of international legitimacy, but only when those principles are applied equally. Within which context the Arab public asks, justifiably, what of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the war crimes it commits day after day against the Palestinian people. Tellingly, in his extolling of the virtues of free societies before the UN General Assembly on 12 September, Bush's speech acted to reinforce Arab cynicism over the selective application of principle. Perhaps the injustice that most angers Arabs is Washington's determination to invert the facts -- to describe the Palestinians' internationally sanctioned right to resist occupation as terrorist and the violence perpetrated by the occupation as legitimate self-defence. We condemn all operations that target civilians inside Israel; however, such operations must be viewed in their context as a process of action and reaction in the cycle of Israeli aggression and Palestinian response. That Israel remains unchecked in its relentless onslaught against an occupied people who are not accorded international protection against mass murder, the wanton destruction of their lives and homes, furnishes fertile ground for those forces who reject a negotiated solution to the conflict. The current Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people and their national symbols, while the US steps up its campaign to undertake a military operation against Iraq on the pretext of enforcing UN resolutions, begs many questions. Is there some written or unwritten pact between the US and Israel to work together towards the implementation of a jointly devised plan? Have Washington and Tel Aviv based their projections on the likelihood that the Arab world will acquiesce to the substance of their agreement and will ultimately reconcile itself to living with the consequences? Are Washington and Tel Aviv interpreting the watchful suspense of the Arab world as a sign that it is indifferent to the way events unfold in Palestine? If the US and Israel are indulging in such delusions they are likely to receive a rude awakening for growing anger among Arab populations cannot be indefinitely contained by their governments.
