doubts grow in pro-Israel circles about US policy
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9630
August 31, 2006 In Pro-Israel Circles, Doubts Grow Over US Policy by Jim Lobe
A growing debate within Israel over whether United States President
George W. Bush’s Middle East policies really serve the interests of
the Jewish state has spread to Washington, where influential voices
within the U.S. Jewish community are questioning the administration’s
hard-line positions in the region.
Coming in the wake of the month-long war between Israel and Lebanon’s
Hezbollah, during which Washington provided virtually unconditional
support and encouragement to Tel Aviv, the debate has focused
initially on the wisdom of Bush’s efforts to isolate rather than
engage Syria, the indispensable link in the military supply chain
between Iran and the Shia militia.
But the debate over Syria policy may mark the launch of a broader
challenge among Israel’s supporters here to the administration’s
reliance on unilateralism, military power, and “regime change” in the
Middle East – whose most fervent champions have been neoconservatives
and the right-wing leadership of the so-called “Israel lobby.”
“Bush has been convinced by self-appointed spokesmen for Israel and
the Jewish community that endless war is in Israel’s interest,”
asserted the lead editorial in the U.S.’ most important Jewish
newspaper, the Forward, immediately after the cease-fire took effect.
“[Bush] needs to hear in no uncertain terms that Israel is ready for
dialogue, that the alternative – endless jihad – is unthinkable,”
declared the paper, which argued for Israel’s participation in a
regional dialogue with its Arab neighbors, including Syria, for a
comprehensive peace settlement. “Now is time to change the tune,” the
Forward concluded.
While such a regional negotiation is unlikely to be accepted either
by Washington or Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the short
term, the question of engaging Syria is rapidly moving up the agenda
both in Israel, where several Cabinet ministers have endorsed the
idea, and in Washington, where the traditional foreign policy elite –
from Republican realists like former Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage to Democratic internationalists such as former
Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright –
publicly criticized Bush for rejecting talks with Damascus, at the
very least to probe its willingness to rein in Hezbollah, if not
loosen its alliance with Iran, during the past month’s fighting.
“I can’t for the life of me understand why we don’t [talk with]
Syria,” said James Dobbins, an analyst at the RAND Corporation who,
as a senior State Department official, coordinated the Bush
administration’s diplomacy during and immediately after the war in
Afghanistan.
“I think this idea that we don’t talk to our enemies simply has to be
jettisoned,” he told a forum at the New America Foundation (NAF) in
Washington last week.
Dobbins’ critique echoes those raised by a number of prominent Jewish
figures, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, former UN
ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Dennis Ross, the main U.S.
negotiator on Israeli-Palestinian issues under Bush’s father and
former President Bill Clinton, and organizations in recent weeks.
The most direct challenge surfaced here Tuesday when the Zionist
group Americans for Peace Now (APN) sent a letter to Bush calling on
him to clarify whether his administration opposes renewed peace
negotiations between Israel and Syria.
“Unfortunately, many in Israel and the U.S. believe that your
administration is standing in the way of renewed Israel-Syria
contacts. We urge you to clarify, publicly and expeditiously, that
this is not the case” said the letter, which also called on Bush to
“reject the thinking of those who view the Syrian regime as
irredeemable.”
While the administration is likely to dodge the question, its
commitment to isolating Syria, particularly since the 2005
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has
never been in doubt.
Indeed, in the opening days of hostilities between Hezbollah and
Israel, the White House not only reportedly rebuffed an appeal by
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself for Washington to quietly
approach Damascus about pressing Hezbollah to release two Israeli
soldiers whose capture touched off the crisis, but also urged Olmert,
according to one account in the Jerusalem Post, to attack Syria
directly.
“In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, [Deputy National
Security Adviser Elliot] Abrams indicated that Washington would have
no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other
northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the
intended target was Syria,” a well-informed source, who received an
account of the meeting from one of its participants, told IPS this week.
While Abrams was discreetly urging Israel to expand the war to Syria,
his neoconservative allies, some of whom, like former Defense Policy
Board chairman Richard Perle and former House of Representatives
Speaker Newt Gingrich, are regarded as close to Vice President Dick
Cheney, were more explicit, to the extent even of expressing
disappointment over Israel’s lack of aggressiveness or success in
“getting the job done.”
Cheney’s own Middle East advisers, John Hannah and David Wurmser,
have long favored “regime change” in Damascus, and, according to the
New York Times, argued forcefully – and successfully with help from
Abrams and pressure from the Israel lobby’s leadership – against
efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to persuade Bush to
open a channel to Syria in an effort to stop the recent fighting.
But Bush’s adamant refusal to engage Damascus is precisely what has
raised doubts in Israel about whether his policies are in the long-
term or even in the immediate interests of the Jewish state.
Since the cease-fire, a growing number of former and current senior
Israeli officials, including Olmert’s defense, interior, and foreign
ministers, have called for talks with Damascus. And, while Olmert
himself has rejected the idea for now, he has also abandoned his
previous precondition for such talks – that Washington remove Syria
from its terrorism list.
Of the officials, the two most important are both former Likud Party
members – Interior Minister Avi Dichter, the former head of Israel’s
Shin Bet intelligence agency, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who
reportedly enjoys a strong relationship with Rice and has appointed
her former chief of staff, Yaakov Dayan, to explore possible ways to
engage Syria.
Meanwhile, other prominent Israelis are asking even more basic
questions about the regional strategy pursued by Bush and its
consequences for Israel.
In a column published by the Ha’aretz newspaper last week, former
Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued that, in the aftermath of the
Lebanon war, which, in his view, had “proven the limits of [Israeli]
power,” a peace accord with Syria and the Palestinians had become
“essential” for Israel, particularly in light of “the worrisome
decline of the status of Israel’s ally in this part of the world and
beyond.”
“U.S. deterrence, and respect for the superpower have been eroded
unrecognizably,” he wrote. “An exclusive Pax Americana in the Middle
East is no longer possible because not only is the U.S. not an
inspiration today, it does not instill fear.”
Indeed, the widespread perception that Washington’s influence in the
region has fallen sharply as a result of both the war in Iraq and the
administration’s stubborn refusal to engage its foes diplomatically
has raised new questions about whether Bush and his neoconservative
advisers have actually made Israel less rather than more secure.
“[The] Bush administration at first avoided and then was unable to
deliver the diplomatic agility that was called for, and that is bad
news for Israel,” wrote former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy
in this week’s Forward. “The United States had no direct channels to
or leverage with key actors, and could not commit troops to any cease-
fire implementation force.”
“The idea that current American policy advances Israeli security and
national interests is thoroughly discredited – something that is now
openly aired in the Israeli media, and raised, albeit in more
discreet circles, by Israeli Cabinet ministers,” according to Levy,
who currently directs the NAF’s and Century Foundation’s Middle East
Initiative.
(Inter Press Service)