« home

AMNON LORD:
---------------------------------------------------------
Reasonable doubt

If more than 10 of the terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers in Manhattan and the Pentagon had turned out to be Israelis, I doubt whether President George W. Bush would have invited the Israeli ambassador the very next day to sit with him and quietly smoke cigars on the White House balcony.

I also doubt whether, in such an eventuality, the Israeli prime minister would have been invited to an extended, intimate meeting at the family ranch at Crawford, Texas.

But, thank God, they were not Israeli but mostly Saudi terrorists. And therefore it was Ambassador Bandar and Crown Prince Abdullah who received such intimate and friendly invitations after the strategic attack on the US.

Today we also know that two weeks before the September 11, 2001 attack, the Saudis gave the American administration an ultimatum on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Immediately afterwards (August 29) President Bush issued a written promise to the Saudi crown prince, stating: "I firmly believe that the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and to live peacefully and securely in their own state in their own homeland."

No such political commitment was given to any Arab party even by former president Bill Clinton. A short while after the September 11 attack and after the declaration of a global war on terrorism, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon apparently found out about the presidential promise to the Saudis. That was a moment of truth, and for those who remember, Sharon called a press conference at which he made the dramatic declaration that Israel would not be the "Czechoslovakia" of the war against terror. He may have retracted it after a presidential reprimand, but there has been a feeling since then that Israel is convenient currency in a policy of appeasement towards Saudi Arabia.

It appears that the primary goal of US policy in the Middle East has remained as it was: how to protect Saudi interests — identified as American national interests — without betraying Israel too openly. This is also what gave birth to the war in Iraq.

The immediate goal was to take the American bases out of Saudi Arabia and place them somewhere else in the region. At the same time, other important goals were achieved as well: removing the threat of Saddam Hussein from Saudi Arabia, encircling Iran and placing Syria under threat.

All told, two years after the September 11 attack and three years after the beginning of the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, it appears that the moral clarity of Bush’s policy against terror had no basis when it came to Israel’s war.

A STRANGE formula has emerged in the way Israel and the US handle the Palestinian issue. First, both countries place a political obstacle in their own paths with their own hands. Then they move in zigzags and in roundabout ways with the goal of removing the political obstacle that obstructs the war on terrorism. So it was with the Camp David understandings in 2000, to which the current administration is committed, through Secretary of State Colin Powell, and so it is following the introduction of the road map. Minefields have been left on the ground in the form of the Mitchell paper and the Tenet and Zinni plans.

Since Sharon came to power in March 2001, Israel has gradually had to nibble away at artificial red lines in order to effectively confront Palestinian terrorism. Initially, the "A‘ areas of the Palestinian Authority were considered sacred, and when IDF forces first entered them, they had to withdraw within a few hours — due to ’American pressure.‘ Only after a blitz of massacres, that lasted from June 2001 (the Dolphinarium) to the end of March 2002 (the Pessah massacre) were IDF forces permitted to operate for a period of some two weeks inside ’A" areas.

About a month before Operation Defensive Shield, the forces operated — with success that surprised all the pessimists — in the heart of the terror bases in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Ramallah. But the arrival of US emissary Gen. Anthony Zinni compelled the IDF to withdraw its forces well before completing its mission. The IDF paid heavily for this premature cessation in its next operation in Jenin. The futile negotiating process gave the terrorists in Jenin and in other places precious time to organize to fight in the midst of a civilian population.

But what has been proven is that when Israel initiates bold moves, ultimately the Americans stand behind it, though first we have to pay the full price in civilian lives.

On the eve of last summer’s false cease-fire (hudna), there was a similar occurrence: Israel sharply increased the pressure of its targeted killings, which reached their peak in the attempted assassination of Abdul Aziz Rantisi. Bush’s initial reaction was condemnation: This was, supposedly, the crossing of a red line. Within 24 hours, however, the US changed its tune and sided with Israel by declaring war on Hamas. By the time Israel attempted to kill the Hamas leadership a few weeks ago it was accepted as natural. Likewise, the policy of isolation and neutralization of Yasser Arafat was carried out gradually at Sharon’s initiative, and today there is only one red line in that regard: Just don’t kill him. The fate of this red line may well be the same as that of the other red lines.

IT SEEMS that the main problems in the US-Israel relationship in the last years are the result of domestic entanglements inside Israel, a lack of clarity as to its goals, and a decline in the quality of its diplomacy. As a global superpower, the US, naturally, has a broad range of interests, many of which create internal contradictions. But when little Israel is entangled in its own internal contradictions, with different leaders and political forces, it creates many misunderstandings and convoluted trajectories that unnecessarily complicate situations.

Years of experience have taught the Israeli leadership that for domestic political survival it needs the appearance of a warm and intimate relationship with the American administration and especially the US president.

Prime ministers who led Israel on an independent path and achieved good results received cool treatment from the White House, in conjunction with political and economic pressures. Such was the case during Yitzhak Shamir’s term and also at the end of Binyamin Netanyahu’s term. Netanyahu got the cold shoulder from Clinton, while Arafat became a welcome guest at the White House.

It has been proven that such an attitude towards an Israeli prime minister shakes the confidence of the Israeli public, and in both these instances this led to those prime ministers’ downfall. There is no doubt that this is the lesson Sharon keeps in mind, and as a result he is sometimes prepared to sacrifice Israeli interests, to avoid confrontation with the American administration, the latest example of which is the fence. The administration’s behavior on this issue contradicts Bush’s promise that he is committed to Israel’s security.

The writer is the author of The Israeli Left, from Socialism to Nihilism and a columnist with Makor Rishon.