Feeding the flames

The visits to the Middle East by Dick Cheney and Antony Zinni appear to have only complicated the situation for both the US and Arab leaders on the Iraqi and Palestinian fronts, writes Michael Jansen
While it was obvious to leaders, analysts and citizens of the Arab world that US Vice-President Dick Cheney's Middle East mission had failed, the folks back home were fed another line. According to leaked "classified" reports sent by members of Cheney's entourage to Washington while the vice-president was in the region, the eight Arab leaders he met were, in private, more positive about the Bush administration's plan for a military campaign against Iraq than their public statements indicated.
These reports alleged that the Arab rulers would not mind if the US topples Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. However, the officials said the Arabs could not countenance US military action against Iraq as long as Washington permitted Israel to wage war on the Palestinians.
The conclusion drawn by some US pundits was that the Arabs would support a US campaign against Iraq if Washington secured a cease-fire in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and established contact with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. To sum up, the American public was led to believe that there was a trade-off: Saddam Hussein's head for Arafat's continued political existence.
This carefully concocted message was meant to help Cheney save face. Before embarking on his tour of eight Arab capitals, the US vice-president confidently predicted that he would secure the support of Iraq's four key Arab neighbours without whose backing an offensive could not be launched. The four are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Not only was Cheney told by all eight Arab leaders that the US should not attack Iraq, but Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah went on US prime time television before Cheney arrived in the kingdom to make the point that there was no contradiction between what the Arabs were saying in private and in public.
Having failed to win over the Arabs to the Bush administration's plan for Iraq, Cheney proceeded to antagonise them by sticking to the policy of speaking only to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, blaming the ongoing conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories on Arafat and refusing to meet the beleaguered leader. This has proved to be an unproductive policy over the past year and has led to an estrangement between Arab leaders and the Bush administration. Even Europe has expressed exasperation with the US line.
President George W Bush might easily have avoided humbling and humiliating his administration by not sending his deputy on an unprofitable mission. Since the Arabs gave Bush ample warning of their views, Bush should either have dropped the idea of a tour of the region by a top official or dispatched a different envoy. He might instead have dispatched Antony Zinni, the retired Marine Corps general with no political position who is serving as the administration's mediator between Palestinians and Israelis. Zinni could have heard all of the Arab "Nos" without batting an eyelash and reported honestly back to Washington.
But Bush believed that Cheney, who was the defence secretary in the senior Bush's administration and coaxed the Arabs into the 1991 Gulf War coalition, could convince at least the four key rulers to go along with Washington's plans. The Saudis delivered a double blow to Cheney when they told him that they would not permit the US to launch attacks on Iraq from their territory. The Saudi refusal makes it all the more difficult for other Gulf states hosting US naval, air and ground forces to go along with Washington.
Cheney, instead of Zinni, should have gone to Jerusalem on the cease-fire mission. As the number-two man in the administration, Cheney has the prestige of the presidency behind him. Bush would have acted more constructively by sending Cheney to see Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon before the latest escalation of violence and demanded an end to Israeli incursions into Palestinian self-rule enclaves, assassinations of Palestinian militants, closures, blockades and sieges.
Instead, Zinni turned up after Sharon had launched his massive assault on Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps, actions to which the Palestinians responded by inflicting unacceptable civilian casualties on Israel. Neither side was in the mood for a cease-fire. Consequently, hostilities continued. Furthermore, Palestinian civilians are so angry over the suffering and destruction wreaked by Israel that they are prepared to endure more as long as militants continue to kill and maim Israelis. And, nearly half of the Israeli population now favours the "transfer" of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza. Zinni, it would seem, has succeeded only in pouring oil on the fire.
Cheney, the highest-ranking member of the administration to visit Israel since Bush took office in January 2001, just might have succeeded in imposing a cease-fire. However, the US vice- president would have been unlikely to persuade Sharon to accept anything more than the plan put forward last year by Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet. Sharon does not dare move towards implementation of the Mitchell recommendations because his coalition would come apart. His government has never formally accepted the recommendations, which call for a freeze in settlement activities. Indeed, Sharon has done his best to show his contempt for the Mitchell commission by establishing 34 new settlements in the past year. Determined to support rather than challenge Sharon, Cheney adhered to the policy of holding Arafat responsible for the hostilities in spite of the fact that even Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres argued for a more even-handed US approach.
Bush, Cheney and Zinni are maintaining the fruitless policy of blaming Arafat for the failure of peacemaking under the administration of former President Bill Clinton and the warfare in the occupied territories, although this strains relations between the US and its long-time friends in the Arab world. The "blame game" is preferable in American eyes to tackling Israel over the occupation -- the root cause of the current conflict. Attacking Iraq in the present climate of animosity by the Arab public towards the Israel-subservient US could precipitate further unrest in an already restless region.
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