What U.S. is trying to do in Palestine
By Richard Becker
Is Washington contemplating a U.S. protectorate in
Palestine? According to Martin Indyk, who ran the White House's
Middle East policy during President Bill Clinton's first term,
the answer is yes.
On May 7, President George W. Bush welcomed Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon to Washington for the fifth time in his
16-month presidency. Bush, formerly known as "Governor Death"
for the record number of executions he approved as governor of
Texas, once again called the bloodthirsty Sharon "my friend"
and "a man of peace."
At the same time, Bush attacked Palestinian Authority
President Yasser Arafat, with whom he has never met, in highly
arrogant and condescending terms. "He has disappointed me as a
leader," Bush said of Arafat. "He has to lead ... he has to
perform ... he needs to earn my respect," etc., etc., ad
nauseam.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollars continue to flow like a mighty
river into Israel's coffers, at a rate of $321,000 per hour, 24
hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year-half of it in
the form of military assistance.
Given the above, no one can believe that the U.S. is an
honest broker. Clearly it's not just an Israeli, but a
U.S.-Israeli war, being waged against the Palestinians.
As in all wars, what binds the alliance partners together is
a common enemy, not necessarily common goals. Both seek to deny
the long-oppressed Palestinians any real justice or
self-determination. But beyond that, the real aims of the U.S.
and Israeli ruling groups are far from identical.
Commonalities and differences
The differences between Bush and Sharon emerged immediately
in their May 7 meeting. When asked by the media if a
Palestinian state should be the goal of the "peace process,"
Bush replied, "Yes, I haven't changed my position."
Sharon responded that it was "still premature to discuss
this issue," before there was "reform" of the Palestinian
Authority. It would be hard to imagine a more openly
colonialist position than Sharon's.
The Bush-Sharon meeting ended with news that a suicide
bombing had killed 16 people and wounded more than 50 others.
The bombing in the Israeli city of Rush Le Zion was said to be
in retaliation for Israel's massive assault on Palestinian
cities and refugee camps, which killed hundreds of people and
left behind enormous destruction.
What Sharon and his government are seeking is clear: to
incorporate as much of the West Bank as possible into the
Israeli state and prevent the emergence of any kind of
Palestinian state. Bush, on the other hand, wants to offer the
Palestinians a weak, broken-up and U.S.-dominated entity that
might be called a "state," but would lack control over its own
borders, economy and security forces.
Sharon is part of the dominant grouping in Israel which, for
more than half a century, has aspired to expand Israel's
borders. As long ago as 1949, merely a year after the creation
of the Israeli state, Sharon's mentor Moshe Dayan told a U.S.
diplomat, "The present borders of Israel are ridiculous."
Sharon's is the latest in a long series of Israeli
governments-Labor, Likud and "National Unity"--determined to
expand those borders. Central to achieving this objective is
the liquidation of the Palestinian resistance movement and the
elimination of all institutions and organizations that
challenge Israeli hegemony.
The Bush administration and the U.S. ruling class agree that
the Palestinian national liberation movement must be eliminated
or decisively weakened. That is why the U.S. initiated what is
known as the Oslo "peace process" in the early 1990s.
What is driving U.S. policy, however, is not Palestinian
land, but a much larger interest: the long-established goal of
controlling the Middle East as a whole, and the Persian/Arabian
Gulf-home to two-thirds of the world's petroleum reserves-in
particular.
To secure that strategic objective, the Bush government is
very anxious to launch a new all-out war on Iraq, a country
already decimated by nearly 12 years of blockade and bombing.
Iraq itself possesses 10 percent of the world's oil.
While Iraq has been greatly weakened by the U.S. war and
sanctions, its government has not surrendered to Washington's
demands. For the past several years, "regime change" has been
the official U.S. policy toward Iraq. In other words, the U.S.
openly states its intention to overthrow the Iraqi government
and replace it with one that will take orders from
Washington.
But there is no Iraqi opposition movement with the popular
base to lead this effort, even with massive U.S. support. The
projected overthrow, Pentagon planners have concluded, can only
be accomplished by a U.S. invasion of Iraq involving hundreds
of thousands of troops. Recent reports speculate that the
Pentagon is planning such an operation for early 2003.
Establishing a puppet government in Baghdad would also
greatly weaken the position of Iran, the other relatively large
and populous country in the region not in the U.S. orbit.
Obstacle to new war against Iraq
A major obstacle to launching such a major new war is the
already burning anger toward the U.S. throughout the region.
This anger has several sources, including the U.S. military
occupation of much of the Gulf region and the suffering of the
Iraqi people due to the U.S./UN blockade.
What has greatly intensified popular outrage throughout the
region is the vicious repression of the Palestinians. While the
corporate media here focus on Israeli casualties, media in the
Arab world regularly show the far greater and more systematic
suffering imposed on the Palestinian people by the Israeli
occupation.
That popular anger manifested itself as a political force in
March and April when the largest and most militant
demonstrations in decades broke out in capitals and smaller
cities throughout the Middle East. Even the most aggressive
militarists in the administration had to acknowledge the
seriousness of the situation.
Vice President Dick Cheney's tour of 10 Middle East
countries in March was intended to line up support for the new
war on Iraq. But Cheney found that even the most compliant
regimes-like those in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Bahrain-demanded that the U.S. put off its Iraq plans until
something was done to calm the rising anger over Palestine.
Exacerbating that anger with a new strike on Iraq, it quickly
became clear, could endanger the very existence of some
pro-U.S. regimes.
It was the Palestinian struggle and mass support for the
Palestinian cause that forced the Bush administration to
re-engage in the "peace process."
The administration's strategy promises nothing positive for
the Palestinians. While the besieged Arafat leadership has been
calling upon the U.S. to restrain Sharon and the Israeli
military, administration officials have made it clear that the
price for any such actions is PA subservience to the U.S.
An example was the deal to release Arafat from his captivity
in Ramallah. Six Palestinians, including the leader of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), were
turned over to U.S. "supervision" inside a PA jail in
Jericho.
A Palestinian 'protectorate'?
On the day after the latest Bush-Sharon meeting, the New
York Times editorially demanded that "the United States must
seize control of the political agenda in the region and ... not
let renewed violence sabotage efforts to construct a lasting
peace."
Martin Indyk, in charge of Middle East affairs for the
National Security Council in Clinton's first term, and
subsequently U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote in the Israeli
daily Yediot Aharonot of April 26 that Bush's advisors are
contemplating an "imposed solution. They are thinking in terms
of a big response, really big.
"How will this imposed solution look? Concerning the
Palestinians, because of Arafat's failed leadership and the
collapse of PA institutions, this solution will require an
international protectorate for a three-year period, which will
remove control of the Palestinian state from Arafat's hands.
With the help of guarantees from the Arab states, this
international body, headed by the U.S., will be responsible for
establishing the institutions of the new Palestinian state.
These will be democratic, professional, transparent and open to
criticism. This body will supervise the formulation of the new
Palestinian constitution, in which the "ra'is" [president, for
example, Arafat--RB] will have a function like that of the
president in Israel.
"It will also supervise the inflow of aid on an enormous
scale for building the state's economic infrastructure. The
trustees will also need an international military force, to be
headed by the U.S., which will maintain order, confront those
who oppose the agreement, and build the new Palestinian
security apparatus."
The imposed solution, said Indyk, would oblige Israel to
dismantle some isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip and in
the West Bank. The other settlements would be concentrated into
three blocs, as envisioned at Camp David. The two sides would
negotiate on final borders, on the future of Jerusalem, and on
the refugees. No Palestinian refugees would be allowed to
return inside the 1967 borders of Israel under the plan.
"How can Bush impose such a thing," Indyk asked, "when he
can't even achieve a cease-fire?" Indyk answered that if the
conflict intensifies, endangering vital U.S. interests, "oil
and regional stability, the world's only superpower, with
massive international backing, will be able to do what it
wants."
Whether Indyk's prediction is borne out remains to be seen.
But there can be no question that the U.S. is moving in the
direction of greater direct intervention.
As Sharon flew to Israel on May 8, Bush announced that he
was dispatching CIA Director George Tenet to the region to
begin organizing a new Palestinian security force in the West
Bank, to replace the one largely destroyed by Israel.
Reprinted from the May 16, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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