From 2003: The Israelization of America

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Published 00:00 04.04.03
    Latest update 00:00 04.04.03

The Israelization of America

The events in Iraq can be seen as the Israelization of America. Close your eyes for a moment, and you can imagine that the Marines in Karbala are Golani infantry in Tul Karm. And it's not surprising that two political camps in Israel with diametrically opposite views think something good will come out of the war.

By Gideon Samet

The events in Iraq can be seen as the Israelization of America. Close your eyes for a moment, and you can imagine that the Marines in Karbala are Golani infantry in Tul Karm. And it's not surprising that two political camps in Israel with diametrically opposite views think something good will come out of the war. For example, they look on with curiosity as American soldiers there are blown up in suicide attacks and observe the reaction of the army. After a taxi blew up, killing the soldiers who were coming to check it, the Marines blasted the next vehicle, liquidating its civilian occupants. Left and right are not especially interested in what the American military is learning from the war. What intrigues them is the political and diplomatic lesson that the White House will learn. Never has there been a war in which Israel did not participate but which is expected to impact so forcefully on its future.

The reason for this does not lie in the comparison Israelis typically like to make between their fate and the new American effort in our tough neighborhood. The impact derives, of course, from the Americans' need to operate intensively in the region after the shooting stops. From an Israeli point of view, it's possible to say two radically opposed things about this American interest. According to the official definition, which has the imprimatur of the right wing, it conflicts with the Israeli interest to the degree that America will strive to obtain a settlement and exert pressure to impose one. The left, for its part, sees such an American move as conferring a clear national benefit on Israel. Under the auspices of the war, and in the face of the American declaration that it is determined to implement the road map, Jerusalem is already doing all it can to thwart the scheme.

Will it succeed? The left doesn't have enough of a basis to cultivate the hope that Ariel Sharon will fail in this next stage of his efforts at preemption. True, America is as bewildered as many Israelis who are learning to understand the national damage caused by becoming involved in the passion and history of another people. There is much that is illusory and insubstantial in the comparison between the two wars that has swept the political landscape in Israel. Washington doesn't want to annex parts of Iraq and hasn't set up any settlements there. Moreover, it is rash to conjecture that the attitude in America toward embattled Israel will be improved in the wake of the war's lessons. Even after its bitter experience, it will not coddle up, eyes moist, to the Israeli generals who are pounding the territories. It is also too early to believe that the enmity toward the Jews of the world, who support the campaign, will soon fade. Politically, though, the United States will emerge from the war as a different place. It will prepare for the presidential elections. Its political system will be particularly sensitive to every pressure group capable of influencing the outcome.

An Israeli diplomatic campaign is already under way in the U.S. Congress to sabotage the road map - that still-unfinished document that is terrifying Jerusalem. Congress will be bitter at President Bush for sending the country into war without actually asking for its consent. Bush's political situation will improve commensurate with victories supplied by his generals in Iraq, but no one will forget the shaky process that preceded the declaration of war. This will certainly be the case if the decisive weeks ahead result in morale-draining losses. All the international pressure - European and inter-Arab - for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians may be dwarfed by the president's immediate needs in the election campaign.

Thus, one way to look at the Israelization of America is from the perspective of Henry Kissinger's famous remark that Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy. As is the case here, internal politics in the United States often overrides foreign policy. Apart from this common feature of governments, the highest levels in America are rife with a cogent conservatism that can abet the prime minister's efforts to undermine the initiative for a settlement with the Palestinians. Those who sent America into war with Iraq - officials such as Donald Rumsfeld, for example - have always snorted contemptuously at Palestinian national aspirations (in what the defense secretary likes to call the "so-called occupied territories"). So there is an internal contradiction, whose overall results are still hard to gauge, between the administration's aim to impose a new order in the region, and the ideology of powerful figures in it who have no love for the Palestinian cause.

It is not too soon therefore to be concerned about the possibility that the Sharon-Netanyahu-Rumsfeld-Cheney school of thought will come out on top in the fierce struggle over an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. It will be sufficient for the Sharon government if success is achieved in the initiative - which is now being pursued vigorously under the clouds of war - to obtain political backing from Congress for the Israeli interpretation of the road map. This Israelization of the American initiative seeks to replay the foot-dragging that has delayed any progress toward renewed negotiations. Don't bet your money that it will fail.


http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-isra ... ca-1.13924