Page 3 of 3 DISPATCHES
FROM AMERICA Yes,
Bush is naked, what of
it? By Tony
Karon
enrichment. The fear
of losing the power of patronage, poorly wrapped
in rhetoric about national goals, was what
prompted Fatah's leaders to press Abbas, from the
moment the election results were in, to overturn
them.
The regime Abbas is now creating
will prove little more than a carbon copy of the
decrepit, autocratic Arab regimes in the region
most
willing to follow US dictates. As Beirut Daily
Star editor-at-large Rami Khouri observed this
year, such regimes tend to speak for their
immediate entourages, their security chiefs, and
little more. The Americans and Israelis know that
Abbas (like those regimes) has few cards to play
and is likely to have no choice but to take
whatever he's given.
Abbas' domestic
problems are not limited to the influence of
Hamas. Analyst Khaled Amyreh points out that his
faction within Fatah is very small and its
willingness to accept US tutelage is rejected by
those who had been closer to Arafat. Perhaps
recognizing the danger of his isolation (even
within his own party), Abbas appears now to have
sacrificed Dahlan, his national security chief (as
well as Bush's and Condi's anointed favorite).
It's hard not to suspect that Abbas may yet
consider the possibility of some kind of
rapprochement with Hamas.
3. The Arab
regimes The Arab autocrats whose presence
is now required whenever Bush puts on one of his
no-clothes shows recognize themselves in Abbas'
predicament. They, too, have precious little to
show their people in return for allying with
Washington. Their citizenry, too, has watched them
stand by helplessly as Washington has sanctioned
and encouraged the systematic trampling of the
Palestinians, the pulverizing of Lebanon, and the
chaotic destruction of Iraq (which now produces a
September-11-equivalent death toll at least every
few weeks).
Those citizens, too, see that
only the Islamists seem willing to stand up to the
US and Israel. The autocrats, too, beg and plead
with Washington to enforce a two-state solution
based on Israel's 1967 borders and face the same
smug dismissal of their concerns or the same
meaningless ritual endorsements.
How many
times do they have to be reminded by US
administration officials that Bush was the first
American leader to call publicly for a Palestinian
state? Of course, he was also the first formally
to endorse Israel's right to the massive
settlements built in the occupied West Bank in
violation of international law.
So
cavalier were Bush's tailors in the early days of
his Mesopotamian expedition that they actually
envisaged getting rid of longtime US trustees in
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere. They imagined a
"democratic tsunami" that would sweep the region,
replacing previous allies with a cadre of Ahmad
Chalabis, Fouad Ajamis, Kenan Makiyas, Amir
Taheris, and other neo-con-approved Middle
Easterners.
The Hamas victory last year
made clear that the beneficiary of any Arab
democracy would initially be the Islamists, so
Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and the Kings Abdullah of
Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as their
entourages will have to do for now. Their function
in the Bush schema, however, is simply to serve as
a "native" cheering section as he tilts at Iran,
while bolstering Abbas in his role as Palestinian
gendarme.
4. The Europeans
Unlike the Arab allies smiling painfully
as they quietly agitate for Bush to put on some
clothes, the Europeans, bizarrely enough, have
stripped down to the buff and joined Bush on the
catwalk. Europe, too, is enforcing a financial
siege against the elected Palestinian government
in the vain hope that this will force a symbolic
surrender from Hamas. (The Arab regimes, at least,
have the excuse that the US is using its dominant
position in the international banking system to
prevent them from sending money to Gaza; the
Europeans are not doing so as a matter of policy.)
And it's not just critics who think they
should know better; they admit that they do know
better: US national-security analyst Mark Perry
reveals that, after he and Crooke briefed European
leaders on the arguments for engaging with Hamas
despite US pressure for a boycott, one ambassador
responded: "We know you are right, really we do.
But we will not break with the Americans. We just
cannot do it."
If a willingness to
strangle the Palestinians in Gaza is the test of
loyalty to the US, it also takes the Europeans out
of any meaningful role in the region - as Tony
Blair will discover as soon as he embarks on his
fool's errand of "mentoring" Palestinian
institution-building under occupation and siege -
on terms that exclude the democratically elected
government from his mentoring, no less. Sadly, the
end of an independent European role will have
tragic consequences for the Israelis and the
Palestinians, as well as for the rest of us. After
all, as the Europeans have surely noted, under
President Bush and his top officials, the US has
made itself part of the problem, not part of any
prospective solution in the Middle East.
That really is one great tragedy of the
Bush administration, which in essence outsourced
its policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to
Ariel Sharon. Sharon's ideas are now so deeply
embedded in the mainstream of both parties on
Capitol Hill that Congress is even more
anti-Palestinian than the administration. As the
presidential candidates of both parties fall over
one another to take ever harder-line stances on
the Palestinians, Iran, and any other subject of
concern to Israel, it's an odds-on bet that the
naked imperial fashion show will continue, no
matter who replaces Bush on the imperial throne.
Tony Karon is a senior editor at
Time.com where he analyzes the Middle East and
other international conflicts. He also runs his
own website, Rootless
Cosmopolitan.
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