Five months of primaries and the Middle East has not yet had a walk on part in the US elections. Not that that should come as a surprise, writes Ayman El-Amir* Arab interests have scarcely made a dent in US presidential elections or the primary campaigns leading up to them. Arab focus on these elections, though, is inordinately keen, almost as if bets had been placed on a horse race. But in this relationship, one that includes the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, the string of behemoth US military bases in the Gulf Arab states and the insatiable appetite for oil, the Arabs look more like cheerleaders in a basketball game whose ultimate reward is to get a nod of approval from the winning team. This imbalance in the consideration of each other's interests does not bode well for the future of the region or for the US. Except for the war in Iraq and the threats against Iran, the Middle East and the Arab- Israeli conflict have barely figured in the five- month-old primaries. Both Democratic and Republican party candidates have carefully side- tracked the issues involved, restricting their comments to safe-haven statements about unquestionable solidarity with Israel. If anything, competition for showing loyalty to Israel was the order of the day, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton warning Iran of "total obliteration" if it ever attacked Israel. On the other side, the Arab media, political institutions and pundits are awash with analyses, preferences and forecasts about the prospects of the candidates. They comb campaign statements for any hopeful sign of change in any candidate's assessment of the festering Middle East situation. They have found hardly anything to celebrate, as has always been the case in US-Arab relations. When it comes to vital interests, Arab-US relations have been a one-sided affair, with the Arabs waiting for a handout from the US while Israel plays the role of eminence grise. Although the tale of the powerful Israeli lobby versus Arab ineptness is true, it is not the whole story. There is also the question of shared values, of admirable military prowess and of perceived Arab backwardness. How many Arab countries can boast of a system of democratic change, respect for human rights, free and fair elections, peaceful rotation of power, equality before the law, freedom of expression and respect of the rights of women? Of course it is a different story when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians or the Arabs in Israeli-occupied territories, but Americans understand that as a foreign policy issue that has little to do with their primary issues of concern. It is not the Iraq war, which has come home to haunt them and raise the national debt, or the sky-rocketing price of gasoline, or the emotional issue of the threat to the survival of Israel as orchestrated by the Israeli lobby. Six-decades of Arab-US relations has ebbed and flowed with changing US policies, presidents, Israeli influence and the stability of the region. In 1945, at the end of World War II, King Abdul-Aziz bin Saud vehemently opposed Jewish immigration to Palestine and almost succeeded in persuading President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when they met aboard the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lakes of the Suez Canal, to pressure British prime minister Winston Churchill to limit the flow of Jews into Palestine. But Roosevelt died two months later, leaving the issue to his successor, Harry S Truman, the European-dominated United Nations, the strong lobby of wealthy European Jewry and to Arab inertia. The 1967 war, when Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, defined Washington's security priorities in the Middle East and canonised Israel as America's strategic fortress. This was further cemented by the arrival of former president Richard M Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger to the White House. Maintaining Israeli military superiority in the Middle East became a basic rule of thumb and was strengthened by subsequent administrations. At the suggestion of Kissinger, the Nixon administration suspended in 1971 what had by then become a symbolic annual inspection of the Israeli Dimona nuclear facility, while Israel worked feverishly and secretly on the development and production of its nuclear weapons. The die was cast. The Arab-Israeli conflict did not end with the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. It only took Egypt out of the equation and watered down the confrontation. During the presidency of George H W Bush in the first half of the 1970s, US Middle East policy was defined by Washington positing itself as the "honest broker" that regarded Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Arab territories as "illegal and an obstacle to peace". In typically messianic terms, outgoing President George W Bush, during the 60th anniversary celebration of the creation of the state of Israel last week, foresaw 300 million Americans fighting alongside the seven million population of Israel. US Middle East policy has undergone a 180 degree change. To the Arabs Washington's Middle East policy is as regressive as it is baffling. For the Gulf Arab states the Middle East problem consists not of a historical burden but a show of solidarity, while those in the Middle East who fought Israel alongside the Palestinians are left only with the tools of diplomacy in the face of Israeli guns, missiles and US support. Diplomacy has its limits but for the Arabs there is nothing beyond it. The will to confront Israel has been replaced by the will to coax Israel and to win US support. Arab moderates -- as defined by the US they include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan -- are not even testing the limits of diplomatic pressure, whether on the US or Israel. We are not talking about the so-called oil weapon, a naïve concept that was symbolically tested during the October 1973 War. But there are other means to make US support of Israel too costly, and in ways that American taxpayers will understand. If an Arab oil embargo, along the lines of the 1973 boycott, is tantamount to a declaration of war against "Western civilisation", playing the financial markets is not. Why is the sale of oil and gas by Gulf Arab states, Kuwait being the exception, pegged to the US dollar which has lost 30 per cent of its value in the last six years? Why Arab moderates are tightening the noose on Hamas and Hizbullah, the last bulwarks of resistance against the Israeli occupation, while soliciting only the most negligible of Israeli concessions, is similarly inexplicable unless viewed through the prism of US interests and domestic politics. The Arabs are reluctant to exercise the kind of pressure the US would frown upon. Some 50 years ago, after the end of the 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli war on Egypt, Israel dragged its feet about withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula. It was trying to gain from its illegal aggression, even though the British and the French were withdrawing their troops in humiliation. In response, President Dwight D Eisenhower ordered the US Justice Department to review the status of tax-free donations by Americans to Israel. Within a couple of weeks of the presidential order Israeli forces were scurrying out of Sinai. After more than 40 years of Israeli occupation the Arabs and the Palestinians are running out of options, except for armed resistance. Israel is consolidating its occupation, hardening its position and getting more US support for it. Israel has even introduced the novel and dangerous idea of declaring itself a Jewish State, making its citizenship conditional on the religious origin of its inhabitants. As expected, President Bush supported the move. The Palestinians, both citizens of Israel and in exile, responded by making the UN- endorsed "Right of Return" the slogan of their commemoration of the Nakba, the day when the state of Israel was proclaimed and the Palestinians evicted from their homeland. The only diplomatic answer the Arabs, Muslims and their sympathisers can adopt is to revive the United Nations General Assembly Resolution equating Zionism with racism, a resolution that was adopted in 1975 and then repealed in 1991 under US pressure. The issue, however, goes beyond futile diplomatic manouevres to the heart of regional security. Counting on US goodwill and the illusion of an identity of interests will only lead to greater submission by the Arabs and consolidate US hegemony in the interest of Israel. The regional security paradigm will have to undergo a radical shift whereby Iran, not Israel, would become the Arabs' natural ally. Arab Gulf states' multibillion dollar purchase of Western weaponry will make no difference to the equation. The regression of the Palestinian problem created by the establishment of Israel will further radicalise the region. If the recently-concluded Kuwaiti legislative elections are any indication, they point to the rise of fundamentalists and Shia followers. And the trend will spread throughout the Arab Middle East despite warnings by the moderates about the mortal danger of the progress of the so-called Shia Crescent overtaking the majority Sunni trend of which Wahhabi Saudi Arabia considers itself chief guardian. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
