Even though over 4000 miles separate the Middle East from America’s
shores, Americans have been increasingly embroiled in the troubles
of the region since 1948, most heavily than anywhere else since the
end of the Cold War in 1989. Today, the United States finds itself
stuck with six wars with foes that it counted as its friends sixty
years ago: (1) the war between Israel and the Palestinians, (2) the
war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon;
(3) the cold war with Iran’s Shi’ite-dominated regime,
(4) the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, (5) the
war to democratize Iraq, and
(6) the war against anti-American terrorism world-wide.
It began with the approval of the division of the pluralistic land
of Palestine and the recognition of the state of Israel. While Israelis
and Arabs fought successive wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, the
U.S. Congress made it repeatedly clear that it was determined to support
Israel with whatever it needed in financial, military, and political
support.
Yet, neither the United States nor the other big powers assembled in
the U.N. Security Council pressed for the crucially needed comprehensive
peace settlement between Israel and its neighbors. That failure to
make peace has come to haunt not only the people of the Middle East
but also Americans and their allies.
Since 1967, Israel’s oppressive occupation of the Palestinian territory
led to increased resistance, as exemplified by the Palestinian Liberation Organization,
the Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. The stronger and the more self-assured Israel grew,
the less its leaders were willing to discontinue their settlements in Palestinian
territory, to end the occupation, or to share Jerusalem with the Arabs.
In unilateral attacks upon its neighbors in the 1980s, Israel wiped out an Iraqi
nuclear reactor and invaded Lebanon, bombed West Beirut to destroy Palestinian
strongholds there, and occupied Lebanese territory for the next eighteen years.
In reaction to the Israeli threat, Shi’ites organized another resistance
movement, Hezbollah. Neither Israel’s nor America’s leaders seemed
to worry about the growing Arab and Muslim hostility toward their unilateral
decisions.
When the American-backed Shah of Iran was overthrown by a Shi’ite theocracy,
the U.S. encountered another bitterly bellicose regime. Without diplomatic relations
and with torrents of recriminations, U.S.-Iranian relations have been frozen
in a cold war since 1979.
The more Israeli and American military power dominated the Middle East, the more
the two countries found growing segments among the 1,300 million Muslims around
the world turn hostile. Unable to assert their interests militarily, militant
extremists among Muslims lashed out with terrorist suicide attacks on Americans
and their friends.
Was there really nothing U.S. Presidents and Congresses could do to spare Americans
the huge human and material costs of the repeated Middle East conflicts and the
loss of good will among Arabs and Muslims? Did the blatantly one-sided favoring
of Israel’s rightwing leaders over even moderate Arab and Muslim governments
really help our Israeli friends?
In an August 15 memorandum, Peter Wehner of the Office of Strategic Initiatives
made it clear that the White House sees “the lack of political liberty
and free institutions in the Arab Middle East.” as America’s fundamental
problem. “We are at the outset of what may well be a historic transition,” Wehner
wrote, “and such transition can be jolting and uneven. … That will
take longer to achieve than the historical blink of an eye.”
The White House memorandum clearly implies that it is the Arabs who are solely
responsible for the violence in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of the
Palestinian territories is made to appear as the Arabs’ own fault. They
will gain peace only with “the rise of liberty and civic habits” among
them.
Based upon this view, Americans are likely to remain burdened with those six
protracted wars for the indefinite future. Talking and reasoning with our alleged
enemies in the Middle East and initiating an early conference for lasting peace
seems not in the offing.