Tuesday, December 31, 2002

US hoodwinking the world

PV VIVEKANAND


ALONG WITH the growing certainty of a US-led war against Iraq, it is becoming abundantly clear that Washington would be a fighting the war partly for Israel as much as for driving a deep stake of military control in the Gulf region that would suit its strategic interests, primarily in the international oil market.
US officials doing the rounds through the Middle East ahead of the possible war against Iraq have been known to have promised Arab leaders that Washington needs to take care of the Iraq crisis -- that is of American making in the first place in any case -- before turning the wagon to Palestine.
There is as much substance in the American pronouncements that the US is seeking a fair and just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as in there is life in the Dead Sea. The Bush administration's promises that it would get around to serious efforts to just, fair, comprehensive and durable peace in Palestine after it takes care of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad ring hollow since its track record speaks otherwise.
Indeed, the US wants to see peace in Palestine but only at Israel's terms, and that would little semblance of justice, fairness, comprehensiveness or durability.
The shape of peace that the US favours is designed by Israel, and the clearest indication of that came is in the added emphasis in the "revised road map" of the Quartet on the conditions it imposes on the Palestinians by insisting that they end their resistance against occupation while demanding little from Israel.
No doubt, US President George W Bush will definitely seek to settle the crisis in Palestine after the war on Iraq, but the outcome of the American effort would be a peace agreement being forced down the Palestinian throat, with the Arab World and the international community unable to step in and help rectify the lopsidedness.
It is a different story whether the Palestinians would accept any Israeli-designed peace, and Washington should know it better than anyone. But then it has not diluted Washington's hoodwinking assertions.
In the meantime, the sole Middle Eastern beneficiary from sought-for removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, coupled with the installation of a US-friendly (read US-controlled) regime in Baghdad, would be Israel.
For the US, a successful war would open the door for gaining absolute control of Iraq, with all that it entails -- including a base for its military in the region without being held answerable to anyone and the strategic prize of Iraq's oil wealth at its disposal.
That is not to underplay the immense dangers facing the US military in Iraq and prospects of a protracted conflict there that would put off any prospects of peace in Palestine and would only worsen the continuing cycle of violence there.
For Israel, Iraq would cease to be a source of military threat as Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and others go around executing their sinister designs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region, including Syria and Lebanon.
As such, there is indeed deceptive substance in American claims that "the road to Arab-Israeli peace will go through Baghdad," with the only difference being the conflicting interpretation of what fair, just and durable peace means.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who recently visited the Middle East and met Sharon, told a Chicago audience upon his return home: "Military force alone will neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle East."
According to Hagel, Sharon admitted as much in a private conversation with Hagel and other members of the US Congress that the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Why would Sharon hold Saddam as his arch enemy?
There are many reasons indeed. It was under Saddam that Iraq had tried to develop its nuclear programmes before Israel bombed out the country's nuclear research plant in Baghdad in 1981; Iraq has a track record of taking part in every Arab-Israeli war; its army has acquired better combat skills than any other Arab country from the 1980-88 war with Iran; Saddam refuses to recognise Israel and openly supports and even funds Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.
Many Arab political observers entertain the notion that the machinations towards a war against Iraq would be frozen if Saddam declares in public today that he recognises the state of Israel and is ready to deal with it. That might indeed be stretching the issue too far at this point in time, but that the idea exists in the Arab mind highlights the perception that the US would be removing a major thorn on Israel's side by ousting Saddam.
Concrete signs of the US moves in the Middle East are largely Israel-centric have also been given by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has been going around Capitol Hill meetings maintaining that Lebanon's Hizbollah and not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the most dangerous "terrorist" organisation and needs to be taken care of. It was as if Sharon had moved in and was speaking up.
Rice has no explanation to offer when confronted with the question that Hizbollah has no recent record of taking part in any action outside the region or mounting attacks against any government except that of Israel.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, pointed out in a recent interview that "outside this fight [against Israel], we have done nothing." Indeed, the group's anti-US rhetoric is fierce and bitter but that comes in the context of Washington's unreserved support for Israel.
Against the reality that Israel lives in perpetual fear of Hizbollah, which forced an end to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Rice's unfounded claim is nothing but a reflection that the US is being manipulated by Israel and American gunsights could turn to Hizbollah after Iraq - meaning that Bush's war against terrorism is also being redesigned to fit Israel.