There is much discussion in the Arab press of noticeable indecision and feuding within the Bush administration over Middle East policy, after Secretary of State Colin Powell was seemingly rebuked by the White House for the remarks he made in his interview ­ reported in this column yesterday ­ with the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.
And while Arab commentators try to make sense of the conflicting signals from Washington, many are convinced that if anyone is charting America’s course in the region, it is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The UAE daily Al-Khaleej sees no inconsistency between President George W. Bush’s avowed refusal to consider a timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state in keeping with his professed “vision,” and Powell’s suggestion to Al-Hayat that a “provisional” Palestinian state could be set up as a step toward full statehood as part of a final peace settlement with Israel.
Their remarks combined “clarify the features of the American game for formulating a booby-trapped solution outside the remit of international law or UN resolutions,” the Gulf newspaper says.
Bush’s remarks imply that he wants to avoid making any commitment about the Palestinian state he promised, in deference to Sharon, “who wants more time to finish destroying the current Palestinian Authority (PA) and tailoring a new one to his specifications and to Israel’s political and security needs, and also to complete the destruction of the Palestinian economic and social infrastructure so as to present the Palestinian people with a new fait accompli,” Al-Khaleej writes.
Powell, for his part, made clear that the administration was committed to a Palestinian state, but then went on to “cast it in an ambiguous framework, hitherto unknown to political science,” it remarks. “History has never previously recorded, nor has the world ever witnessed ­ in times ancient or modern ­ the establishment of a ‘provisional state.’” But in its quest to impose its hegemony on the world by force, the Bush administration “believes it can not only impose the solutions that suit it, but also create and restructure states according to its interests.”
With the US treating Israel’s interests as its own and prepared to justify anything in the name of combating “terror,” the “invention” of a “provisional Palestinian state” serves Israel’s purpose of blocking the establishment of a genuine Palestinian state that enjoys independence and sovereignty.
But, Al-Khaleej writes, America has no problem with a “provisional” state that would be “on Israeli tryout,” and in a “suspended condition” until it conforms to Israel’s wishes and designs.
“In political science there can be temporary governments or interim administrations, but there is no such thing as a ‘provisional state’ that can become a ‘permanent state’ if it succeeds in performing its American- and Israeli-designated function, and taken out of existence if it fails,” the paper says.
“Faced with this American invention designed to evade responsibility for the establishment of a genuine Palestinian state and continue indulging the Israeli side and adopt Sharon’s view about future solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab states and the Palestinians must be wary of falling into traps,” Al-Khaleej counsels.
Abdelwahhab Badrakhan, writing in Al-Hayat, says that while Powell’s statements can sometimes be as encouraging as Bush’s are exasperating, “they’re supposed to be expressing the same policy ­ if there ever was one.”
The difference between them “is that Powell no longer needs the State Department’s spokesmen to clarify what he means, whereas Bush drops verbal bombshells and his spokesmen are left to limit the damage. But most times it transpires that what the president said, rather than what the spokesmen explained, is the real policy.”
Washington’s approach to the Middle East “is a perfect example of how to put together a nonpolicy,” says Badrakhan.
It is a package of obfuscation and ambiguity, in which the only coherent element is unqualified support of Israel “at the expense of international law and norms, of American ‘values,’ and of Washington’s relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds.”
Everything else is a product of internal politicking within the administration and Congress, where the Zionist lobby dominates.
So when Bush declares his commitment to achieving peace by engaging with all parties, the Congress can come up with legislation targeting some of those parties, and tie his hands.
And while Bush may be persuaded that he needs to deal with a certain party, his vice-president, defense secretary or advisors might not be, and that also inhibits effective action to achieve breakthroughs.
When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak suggested a timetable for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, he did so to ensure the talks would be serious and not end up “in a maze or endless dark tunnel.” Yet, taking his cue from the Israelis, Bush declared that he was not prepared to agree to such a timetable. This was where Powell’s role came in, explaining to Al-Hayat that the president had merely indicated that, at the instance when he was speaking, he had not yet come to a decision about the subject.
“Powell’s explanation ostensibly sounds reasonable and convincing. But it so happens that the Palestine question has been dragging itself for half a century. It so happens that there is a peace process which has been waxing and waning for over a decade. It so happens that Bush and Sharon’s views are astonishingly analogous. And it so happens that the Bush administration has made plain from the outset its distaste for proposing any Middle East initiative. A timetable means a commitment, and the administration wants to avoid involvement so long as Israel is not ‘ripe’ for peace ­ and she will never ripen now that she has been buoyed by her military ‘victory,’” Badrakhan says.
Similarly, he continues, Powell told Al-Hayat the administration would continue dealing with Yasser Arafat as elected Palestinian leader. He presumably meant it, as he and other US officials went to see him in his besieged headquarters.
“But all that the Americans want from Arafat is that he arrange the process by which he would relinquish power and go into retirement wherever he wants. In other words, they have been recruited to implement Sharon’s wishes,” he remarks.
“When Arafat failed to show that he agreed with or understood what they meant by ‘reform,’ they sent the director of the CIA to threaten him. And when he behaved as though he didn’t hear the threat, and proceeded to form his new government, the Israelis carried out the warning and prevented the government from meeting. Then Sharon went to Washington to say he didn’t like that government, and Bush said he didn’t like it either. This while the Arabs and Europeans considered it ‘a step in the right direction.’”
The Palestinians themselves had “nothing but criticism” for the new government, but for totally different reasons. For them, reform should entail elections. But Sharon doesn’t want to see Arafat as a presidential candidate again, and Bush doubtless agrees with him ­ “because ‘reform,’ as far as they are concerned, means Arafat not remaining leader.”
“Sharon is once again showing himself to be the maker of US policy. And when Bush tells any visiting Arab leader that he is ready to act but doesn’t trust Arafat or doesn’t favor dealing with him, that turns Arafat’s fate into an Arab problem,” Badrakhan reasons.
Saad Mehio comments in Al-Khaleej that those Arabs who think Bush is idiotic for supporting Sharon as he pushes the Middle East into mayhem are mistaken.
Sharon’s policies indeed foreshadow a “headlong plunge toward the precipice of anarchy, explosions and security troubles” for the region, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Bush’s endorsement of them is a symptom of insanity, he remarks.
“Bush knows exactly what he is doing, and he does not adopt Sharon’s military and security outlook because the latter has exceptional powers of persuasion, but because he wants to be persuaded in the first place,” he writes.
“Persuaded of what?”
First, that the top priority for the US now, and perhaps for years to come, is war rather than peace.
Second, that Israel is a “strategic treasure” to the US “rather than a tactical liability.” Israeli intelligence “provides an endless stream of information on all things Arab. Its military establishment serves as an excellent deterrent to anyone who might think, even merely think, of challenging the US (the example of Gamal Abdel-Nasser in 1967). And its political leadership has, since the days of Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, made a point of serving the hegemonic power in the Middle East.”
And third, that post-Sept. 11 America should not suffice with tinkering with the region’s regimes but replace them completely “(the Taleban yesterday, the PA today, a number of Arab states tomorrow),” and Israel could play a big direct or indirect role in that.
From such a perspective, the “Sharonization” of American policy makes sense, as Israel’s supporters in the US have been arguing by citing the role it played during the Cold War.
They point out that it thwarted “radical Arab nationalists” in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, and kept the former Soviet Union’s ally, Syria, “under check” for years. Its wars enabled the US to test its weaponry against Soviet-made hardware. Israel also served as America’s channel for extending military backing to regimes and groups that were unpopular with the American public, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa, the Islamic Republic in Iran, and the military junta in Guatemala. And Israeli “advisers” helped out US clients such as the Nicaraguan Contras, the generals in El Salvador, and occupation forces in Namibia, while Israeli intelligence helped the CIA gather intelligence and carry out covert operations. Moreover, Israel had nuclear weapons and missiles that could have hit the heart of the Soviet Union.
“All these valuable services rendered in the past appear urgently needed in the present,” says Mehio. “The United States, having entered into what could prove to be its toughest and most vicious war in the Middle East, will find it hard to resist the idea of employing Israel’s military and security assets in such a war.”
The pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi writes that during his latest visit to Washington, Sharon was given “an open-ended American mandate to carry on his crimes in the occupied Arab territories, bury the Palestinian Authority, and deport its chairman, Yasser Arafat, to any Arab or European country that might agree to take him in.”
That was visible from the way Bush echoed Sharon’s rejection of the reforms Arafat has been introducing into his administration, and stressed the need for new Palestinian institutions that would nurture the emergence of new leaders.
So the Palestine question appears to be regressing to pre-Oslo days, with the peace agreements effectively torn up and Sharon gradually reoccupying the West Bank and tightening the noose around Arafat.
Sharon may be able to get his way in Washington, “but he will certainly not be able to achieve security and peace of mind for Israelis,” the paper says. “For the Palestinian people will, quite simply, not cease to resist the occupation, either with the PA in place, or after it has been exiled and the remnants of its institutions have been destroyed.”

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