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October 19, 2001
Michael
Colby
A
Mailroom Manifesto
October 18, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
Avoiding
a New Cold War
Patrick
Cockburn
US
Planes Pound Taliban
Jamey Hecht
Gerald Ford
and the CIA
Mokhiber
and Weisman
3
Arguments
Against This War
October 17, 2001
Ballinger
and Marsh
Music
and War Resistance
Steve
Perry
The
Anthrax Chronicles
Chris
Kromm
Operation
Infinite Disaster
Susan
Block
Sex
Not Bombs
David Vest
Osama Speaks
October 16, 2001
Steve
Perry
War
Without Frontiers
Douglas
Valentine
The
CIA and Anthrax
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif
John
Troyer
Return
to Normal?
Moji Agha
A
Jihad Against Ignorance
October
15, 2001
Tariq
Ali
Alternatives
to War
John
Pilger
War
American Style
Umberto
Eco
The
Roots of Conflict
Marwan
Bishara
Clash
of Civilizations? Hardly
Patrick
Cockburn
Modern
War in
A Medieval Village
October
13, 2001
Carl
Estabrook
Letters
to Editors
Molly
Secours
War:
The Procter and Gamble Perspective
Alexander
Cockburn
War
Can't Save the Economy
October
10, 2001
Cockburn/St.
Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
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Ridge Long Groomed
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Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
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October
19, 2001
Bush's Palestinian state
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
A few days before the war against Bin Laden broke
out, President Bush announced that "the idea of a Palestinian
state has always been part of the US vision in the Middle East,
as long as the right of Israel to exist is respected." According
to the New York Times and the Washington Post, this statement,
the first time ever a Republican American president has acknowledged
the need for Palestinian statehood, was part of an initiative
the Bush administration was on the verge of announcing before
the terrorist attacks of 11 September on New York and Washington.
Although there was no mention of Clinton, knowledgeable sources
say many of Bush's ideas are similar to those proposed by the
former president at Camp David, while avoiding the pitfalls that
provoked the breakdown of the talks at that time.
Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis
reacted with enthusiasm to Bush's statement. Most Palestinian
factions questioned his motives. According to Moussa Abul-Marzouq,
a Hamas leader, Bush's statement is just a "manoeuvre aimed
at deceiving the Palestinian National Authority and driving it
to end the Intifada. It is an American attempt to persuade Arabs
and Muslims to join the international alliance against Bin Laden."
A statement issued by the Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine claimed that Bush's proposal was "a step in
the right direction, but it will not be useful unless it is reinforced
by effective, practical measures." The Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine also described the statement as a
"manoeuvre." These are assessments that Arafat cannot
disregard, especially since it was Bin Laden, not Arafat, who
was hailed in the streets of Gaza when the war broke out.
On the Israeli side, an enraged Sharon
reacted swiftly. In a violent diatribe accusing the Bush administration
of opportunism, he called on Western states, in particular on
the US as the leader of the "free world," not to repeat
the mistake that triggered World War II, when the European democracies
tried to stave off the military confrontation that broke out
the following year by sacrificing Czechoslovakia to Hitler's
ambitions at the Munich conference in 1938. Sharon pledged that
"Israel will never be a second Czechoslovakia," and
that, accordingly, it would now have to rely only on itself.
He concluded by announcing that Israel would resume its assassination
campaign against Palestinian activists who keep the Intifada
alive, and abandon the policy of "restraint" to which
it had "committed itself" under the terms of the cease-fire
agreed upon in the wake of the unprecedented wave of violence
that killed dozens of Palestinians and injured more than 200
others.
With the attention of the entire world
now focused on the military operation aimed at routing Bin Laden,
Sharon will be tempted to exploit the situation by stepping up
his campaign of assassination against Palestinian activists to
target Arafat himself, the man he has recently taken to calling
the "Bin Laden of the Middle East."
The logic behind Sharon's increasingly
belligerent statements is the traditional racist logic that attributes
terrorism to specific races, not specific situations, a variation
on Huntington's "clash of civilisations" theory. Nor
is he the sole proponent of this theory, which assumes the existence
of superior civilisations that act in a refined manner in opposition
to inferior civilisations that are genetically inclined towards
barbaric acts of violence and terrorism. One such inferior civilisation,
according to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is Islam!
Although following the outcry that met his overtly racist statement,
Berlusconi offered a weak apology for "offending the sensibility
of my Arab and Muslim friends," others have stepped in to
fan the flames of racial hatred. Former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher accused British Muslims of not reacting with
sufficient outrage to the New York and Washington bombings, implying
that their religion somehow rendered them lacking in such fundamental
human qualities as compassion.
Thatcher's statement was condemned as
racist not only by Britain's Muslim community but by the entire
political establishment in the United Kingdom. Michael Heseltine,
the former Tory deputy prime minister who played a major role
in dislodging his former mentor from the party leadership and
replacing her with John Major, said he could not find words to
express the horror he felt when he heard the statement. A savvy
politician, Heseltine was no doubt aware how counterproductive
Thatcher's incendiary words could be at a time the British government
was engaged in difficult negotiations to build an international
alliance against terrorism.
Bush was no doubt thinking along the
same lines when he dismissed Sharon's angry reaction to his statement
on Palestinian statehood as "unacceptable." Categorically
rejecting Sharon's allegation that the US was appeasing the Arabs
at Israel's expense, he angrily denounced the Israeli prime minister's
attempt to compare him to Chamberlain and Daladier, the European
leaders who sought to appease Hitler at the Munich summit by
ceding Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany. Twenty-four hours
after his tirade against American policy, and just before the
military attack on Afghanistan, Sharon was forced to change his
tune, downplaying his differences with the American administration,
extolling the strong relations between the US and Israel and
reiterating his support for Washington's campaign against terrorism.
Sharon's wildly inconsistent statements are indicative of the
confusion in which his government is now plunged.
Still smarting from the criticism that
met his "this is a Crusade" faux pas, Bush is now careful
to make a clear distinction between the phenomenon of terrorism
on the one hand and Arabs and Muslims on the other, paving the
way for Donald Rumsfeld's visit to the Middle East just before
the military strike against Afghanistan to mobilise Arab and
Muslim support for the American war effort. As far as Egypt is
concerned, President Mubarak made it clear that while Egypt is
committed to fighting terrorism, a scourge from which it has
suffered greatly, it will not take part in a military operation
against Afghanistan. In an address to the Egyptian armed forces
marking the 28th anniversary of the October War, Mubarak said
that the army's function was to defend Egypt, and that he will
not send Egyptian troops abroad to fight a war under American
command, thus involving Egypt in a possible confrontation with
Arab and Muslim peoples at a time no irrefutable evidence of
an Islamic connection to the terrorist attacks in America has
been presented.
President Mubarak is not the only Arab
leader to require that terrorism be portrayed as a global aberration
that is by no means exclusive to Islam. In fact, such a distinction
is a necessary condition for the participation of most Arab and
Islamic states in America's war against terrorism. According
to US sources, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Uzbekistan are reluctant
to allow the United States to launch military raids on Afghanistan
from their territory. Other Arab and Muslim states are disinclined
to lend their unqualified support to an open-ended military enterprise
that many fear will eventually spill over into other countries
suspected of sponsoring terrorists, notably Iraq. Nor do they
want to be involved in a war of retribution that is bound to
claim a substantial number of civilian casualties. There is also
a great deal of unease at the massive US military buildup in
the region, the largest deployment of weaponry since the 1991
Gulf War. In fact, Rumsfeld was despatched to the Middle East
and Central Asia not only to drum up support for the American-led
war on terror but to allay growing fears of a hidden US agenda.
In offering the Palestinians a carrot
in the form of their own state, Bush was acknowledging the role
of the Palestinian problem in fuelling the phenomenon of terrorism.
As President Mubarak said recently, 50 per cent of the phenomenon
stems from the Palestinian problem. But Sharon's intransigence
on the issue, his pledge to step up his campaign of assassinations
against Palestinian leaders, could destabilise Washington's efforts
to overcome Arab and Islamic reservations about joining the American-led
war against terrorism. It remains to be seen whether Bush is
serious about translating his "vision" of a Palestinian
state into reality or whether the offer was no more than a tactical
manoeuvre aimed at overcoming Arab reluctance to become more
closely involved in the international alliance. Can he convince
Sharon of the truth of Mubarak's assertion that a Palestinian
state is the best guarantee for Israel's stability? Or will he
find it easier to persuade the Arab and Islamic states to set
aside their misgivings and rally to his cause? The whole future
of the region hinges on which of the two approaches Bush will
choose. The wrong choice will destabilise not only the war theatre
in south Asia, but the entire Middle East, making it as much
a victim of the 11 September attacks as the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.
Mohammed Sid-Ahmed writes a weekly column for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram.
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