“This moment of conflict in the Middle East is painful and tragic,” President Bush conceded in his radio address on Saturday, July 30. “Yet,
it is also a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region.”
That opportunity would come, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assured the President,
when Israel’s armed forces have eliminated Hezbollah’s militia in
Lebanon. Olmert’s government apparently could then continue to impose its
will on the Palestinians without outside interference. That might be “the
new Middle East” for which Secretary Rice is pleading.
There is, however, one big flaw in the calculations of Messrs. Olmert and Bush.
Not only is Hezbollah likely to survive Israel’s ravaging raids on Lebanon,
it is gaining massive popular support throughout the Middle East. The more carnage
Israeli bombs inflict on non-combatants in Lebanon, the more intense the outrage
grows in the Muslim world and beyond.
For that reason, an increasing number of foreign affairs specialists are criticizing
the Bush administration’s failure to stop Israel’s assault on Lebanon.
Richard Haass, State Department planning director from 2001 to 2005, warned that “People
will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon, and this will just drive up
anti-Americanism to new heights.” Mara Rudman, a deputy national security
adviser under Clinton, foresees a “worst-case scenario of a much more radicalized
Islamic fundamentalist Middle East and much more isolated Israel and a much more
isolated United States.”
Senator Chuck Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, asked: "How do we realistically believe that a continuation of
the systematic destruction of an American friend--the country and people of Lebanon--is
going to enhance America's image and give us the trust and credibility to lead
a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?" Brent Scowcroft,
national security adviser to presidents Ford and Bush senior, stressed the obvious: “Hezbollah
is not the source of the problem; it is a derivative of the cause, which is the
tragic conflict over Palestine that began in 1948.” U.S. foreign policy
has too long been narrowly guided by the wishes of Israel’s rightwing leaders
rather than by America’s vital interest in good relations with all people
in the Middle East.
Scowcroft wants the President at long last to forge and impose a “comprehensive
settlement” of the Arab-Israeli conflict on both Israel and its neighbors.
After all, the American people have been paying much of Israel’s bills
for decades. So it is only fair for Americans to ask their Israeli friends not
to hurt U.S. interests in the region even further through reckless military adventures.
It was reckless indeed when Israel’s minister of justice asserted that “All
those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.
In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants
in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before
ground troops move in.”
Israel’s continuing destruction of Arab lives and property, and the abandoning
of the peace negotiations, is bound to be costly for Israelis, Arabs, and Americans
alike. Long after the Bush administration has left office, Israelis and Americans
are likely again to face the bitter hostility of the Muslim masses who will not
forget the indiscriminate killing and maiming of hundreds of non-combatants in
Lebanon.
How can the leaders of Israel and Hezbollah be compelled to end their senseless
slaughter? “Much depends on how far the man in the White House will go
with his instincts,” Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University wrote
in The Nation. “If he reins in his darker impulses and those of the Israeli
general staff, which is running the show on that end of the alliance, the current
slide into the abyss can yet be halted.”