Doubts whether Bush is good for
Israel By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - A growing debate within
Israel over whether US 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 US Jewish community
are questioning the administration's hardline
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 Israel, 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 Shi'ite militia.
But
the debate over Syria policy may mark the launch
of a broader challenge among Israel's supporters
in the US to the Bush administration's reliance on
unilateralism, military power and ''regime
change'' in the Middle East, whose most fervent
champions have been neo-conservatives 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
United States' most important Jewish newspaper,
Forward, immediately after the ceasefire 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," Forward concluded.
While
such a regional negotiation is unlikely to be
accepted either by Washington or by 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.
In Washington, the traditional
foreign-policy elite - from Republican realists
such as former deputy secretary of state Richard
Armitage to Democratic internationalists such as
former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and
Madeleine Albright - have 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) last week.
Dobbins' critique echoes that raised by a
number of prominent Jewish figures, such as New
York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, former
ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke and Dennis
Ross, the main US negotiator on
Israeli-Palestinian issues under presidents George
H W Bush and Bill Clinton, and organizations in
recent weeks.
The most direct challenge
surfaced on Tuesday when the Zionist group
Americans for Peace Now sent a letter to President
Bush calling on him to clarify whether his
administration opposes renewed peace negotiations
between Israel and Syria.
"Unfortunately,
many in Israel and the US believe that your
administration is standing in the way of renewed
Israel-Syria contacts," the letter, which also
called on Bush to "reject the thinking of those
who view the Syrian regime as irredeemable",
stated. "We urge you to clarify, publicly and
expeditiously, that this is not the case."
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 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 the Israeli prime minister, 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 Inter Press
Service.
While Abrams was discreetly
urging Israel to expand the war to Syria, his
neo-conservative allies, some of whom, such as
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 ceasefire, 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
pre-condition 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 newspaper Ha'aretz, former
foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued that, in
the aftermath of the Lebanon war, which, in his
view, had proved "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".
"US 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 US 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 Bush administration's stubborn
refusal to engage its foes diplomatically has
raised new questions about whether Bush and his
neo-conservative 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 or leverage with key actors, and
could not commit troops to any
ceasefire-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,"
wrote Levy, who currently directs the NAF's and
Century Foundation's Middle East initiative.
