Contest heats up over the Palestine linkage

US President Bush has declared support for the creation of a Palestinian state. But opposition has dogged his every step. Mohamed Hakki, in Washington, writes
Something happened to change US President George Bush's mind in the last two weeks. A fortnight ago, speculation was rife that he would meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at the United Nations in New York this week.
The meeting never took place. The excuse Bush gave visiting Arab dignitaries last week was uncompelling. He argued that each time the US comes close to embarking on a new Middle East policy, the Palestinians commit an act of violence. Bush blamed Arafat, even though he does not hide his exasperation and even disgust with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Arabs also expected Bush to reiterate his support for a Palestinian state at the UN. On this they were less disappointed. In his speech to the UN, Bush said more emphatically than ever that there should be a Palestinian state. "We are working towards the day when two states, Israel and Palestine, live peacefully together within secure and recognised borders," he said. The US media reported that Bush's use of the word Palestine seemed intended to appeal to an Islamic public that has grown uneasy with the war in Afghanistan. But it seems that the president can hardly take a step forward before he is forced to stride two paces back.
The reason is that right-wing conservatives and Israel "first-ers" exert an unusual degree of pressure on a US president. Those conservatives were described as fearful that the White House effort to protect its global coalition would mean policy shifts on "hot button issues" such as Israel and Iraq. Bush immediately dispatched National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose formative political years were spent as the mediator who facilitated the transfer of Russian Jews to Israel, to House Majority Whip Tom Delay's office to meet pro-Israeli Republicans concerned by Bush's policies. They thought that the president had changed his position and was now calling for a Palestinian state. Their apprehensions deepened after Sharon snubbed Bush after the US president's icy demand that Israel withdraw from the West Bank towns it had recently reoccupied. Rice reassured the representatives that the president remains steadfast in his support for Israel. It seems likely that this ultramontane group was able to persuade the president that now is not the time to push for a settlement. Their argument, repeated by many Israeli supporters, is that somehow to pursue a settlement would tell terrorists that their actions bring rewards.
The result was the farcical sight of President Bush talking of a two state solution at the UN while Yasser Arafat sat disbelievingly in the audience, his chin in his hands. Neither any longer trusts that the other is sincere. Arafat, like most Arabs, believes that the solution will come not only from US pressure but when the US actually intervenes to impose a settlement. Americans who know anything about Israel agree, even though not all think solving the issue will abolish terrorism completely. At a recent meeting hosted by the Brookings Institute, Philip Wilcox, former consul general for Jerusalem, Mary Anne Stein, of the Moriah Fund, and Landrom Bolling, Middle East Quaker authority, all observed that violence will end only when Israel withdraws its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and political control is passed to the Palestinian state.
But there are less hopeful signs. Apart from Henry Seigman of the Council on Foreign Relations, American Jews have been remarkably silent on the current situation. In the past, such as at the Camp David Accords, American Jews were initially helpful to President Carter. (They later discarded him when he demanded that Israeli settlement building freeze during the self-determination talks that were expected to last five years).
Nor has Bush heard much from his own party, apart from the virulent Jewish lobby. One representative has bucked the trend. Representative Henry Hyde was quoted as saying, "I think our relationship with Israel is fomenting a lot of this hate," meaning the discontent on the Arab street with the policies of America. But his was a dispiritingly lone voice.
Yet despite the monopoly of the pro- Israel camp on public debate, Bush chose to sound like a nation-builder (or a multilateralist in the jargon of the press) during his speech to the UN. Perhaps he was truly appalled at the tone of those Republican right-wingers.
Or perhaps the reasons were more practical: Bush needs the UN and the support of an international coalition in his war against terror. He cannot be sure of it while buffeted by extremist war-mongers at home who are urging him to take military action against a broad range of countries around the world.
Those extremists, though, are gaining ground. War advocates in the Pentagon, such as deputy Defence-Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and adviser Richard Perle, along with others have quietly gone the rounds of the intelligence establishment and asked a former CIA director, James Woolsey, to seek evidence that would justify a US attack on Iraq.
It is also reported that this group has been energetic in attacking Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the national US press, think-tanks and congress. Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer says that this group seeks to discredit both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, partly to undermine the idea that the Palestinian conflict helps cause terrorism against the United States and partly to diminish or ruin US relations with Arab countries. Geyer says that the campaign aims to prove that the events of 11 September did not grow from street anger at Israel's war against Palestine, but from "unrepresentative and oppressive Arab governments."
Indian Muslim writer Muqtedar Khan has pointed out in the Detroit News that far from being victims of "unrepresentative Arab governments," 650 million Muslims in fact "live in democratic societies (Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Europe, North America, Malaysia, and Australia)." Khan also goes on to say that "two Muslim nations have female heads of state, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Pakistan and Turkey have had women leaders. The global chief of Amnesty International is a Muslim woman. In contrast, the United States has not had one [a female head of state] in more than 220 years."
The Washington establishment, though, prefers not to consider these nuances. Instead it asks, in the words of Representative Henry Hyde, how the US could have invented Hollywood yet failed in its public diplomacy.
The droll might remark that Hollywood is the problem: witness the destructive stereotypes of Arabs found in Hollywood features. But the reasons for failure are more prosaic. Simply put, the public diplomacy is unwinnable, given US policy. Consider, for example the fact that the US is the principal, if not the sole, supporter of Israel's illegal occupation and its throttling of the Palestinians' basic human rights.
America's sniffiness towards cultural exchange with the Arab world is another cause of its failure to win diplomatic battles. Several writers have pointed out that America cut its public diplomacy programmes in the 1990s. In Turkey, American consulates and cultural centres in Izmir were shut. American libraries in Ankara and Istanbul have given away most of their books and closed their doors. Security concerns contributed to the decline of exchange and information programmes in Egypt and Lebanon. America's government- financed radio station, Voice of America, barely audible in many countries, is said to reach under two per cent of the population of 22 Arab countries, which bears no comparison with the wide reception of the BBC.
Other forces have attenuated the amount of information about current problems available to the US public. The New York Times wondered in a long weekend article about censoring Bin Laden. The Times remarked that the administration had persuaded the networks that self-censorship was necessary to the war effort. It pointed to the fact that Al- Jazeera broadcast an interview with Bin Laden and also invited a response to him from an American official. As Christopher Ross, former ambassador to Syria and Algeria, pointed out, "the people of the Arab world received a more complete picture of the charge against America and its response than almost anyone in America, the citadel of the free press and the free speech."
There are more insidious forces, though, even than censorship, at work. The fact is that anyone who tells the truth about Israel, the Arabs, or Islam, is viciously attacked by pro-Israeli institutions. Some are intimidated and blackmailed. Recently, Georgetown University's John Esposito was subjected to a venomous, McCarthyite attack by the Washington Institute because he dared to argue that the institute is "not primarily concerned with what is best for America." The Institute was founded by the American- Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Esposito has just joined a host of writers, scholars, diplomats, politicians, and columnists listed in representative Paul Findlay's book, They Dared to Speak Out.
Perhaps this should not gall too much. The incident shows the degree of nervousness that this and other pro- Israeli institutions feel right now. Despite the millions and millions that they spend, public opinion in America is turning against occupation, against injustice, and wants to know more about Islam. Unlike Israel's friends, they are now demanding, "What is best for America?" More than ever, it is clear that Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 should prevail. In today's climate, going back to the Mitchell and Tenet plans and interminable negotiations will not do.
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