The current intifada in Palestine against Israeli occupation is clarifying United States policy towards the Middle East for those who thought President Bill Clinton was acting as a non-partisan mediator. Washington is 100% behind the Israeli state and its violence against the Palestinian people.
On October 25, Clinton said, "I do think Chairman Arafat can dramatically reduce the level of violence". He made no criticism of the Israeli military and its use of tanks and helicopters firing on stone-throwing Palestinians. In fact, he praised Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his willingness to make "peace".
Hours after Clinton criticised Arafat, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution of support for Israel and condemnation of Palestinian leaders for the eruption of violence. The non-binding measure passed 365 to 30. It condemned Palestinian leaders for "encouraging the violence and doing so little for so long to stop it, resulting in the senseless loss of life".
Congress also passed legislation granting Israel a $60 million increase in military aid, pushing up direct military assistance to $1.9 billion — the largest item in the foreign aid budget.
Anti-Arab campaign
Every lie against the Palestinians pushed by Israel is reported by the US media as fact. One news program interviewed the head of the Israeli military in the occupied territories who said that the Palestinian leaders send their children to the streets to be shot at because they "aren't like us". The racist implication is that Palestinians aren't really civilized people. And not just Arabs, but all Muslims.
In a front-page article, the October 26 New York Times reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton, who's running for US Senate in New York, would return $50,000 in political contributions from members of the American Muslim Alliance. There are more than 6 million Muslims in the US.
Why? Because the alliance leaders expressed sentiments in support of the Palestinians and their intifada. The alliance is not some radical support group for Islamic groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It not only gave money to Clinton, it also endorsed the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.
Agha Saeed, president of the umbrella group, told the New York Times, "I am pro-Palestinian, but at the same time I am willing to have reasonable settlement with the Israelis". A political science professor in California, Saeed added, "I have also said that the conflict there was political, not theological. But none of those things are being mentioned."
The Palestinian intifada is a political response to the failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords. The purpose of Oslo wasn't Palestinian self-determination or a settlement of the conflict based on justice. It was to create a Palestinian bantustan with Arab approval.
The key component of the betrayal was a premature recognition of Israel; the final borders were to be settled later in the "peace process". Other issues, like the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the status of Jerusalem and the 4 million Palestinian refugees were also left for the final accord. Washington promised Arafat and the Arab rulers billions of dollars of aid for their cooperation.
The blood pact required Arafat to discipline his own people — no more protests, no more violence — before Israel would contemplate even a rump Palestinian state.
The recognition of the Israeli state and the emergence of a "partnership" with Washington and Tel Aviv before all pertinent issues, including statehood, were solved led militant Islamic groups and many others to reject Oslo.
US and Israeli rulers felt confident because the US is the only superpower in the world. Their arrogance was behind the Clinton-Barak push for a final settlement at Camp David in July, even though Arafat didn't want to attend the talks.
Since the intifada began, Israel has wantonly displayed its superior power. It closed its borders to Palestinian workers and shut down the only Palestinian airport in Gaza. According to the October 30 Business Week, "The Israelis could stop all imports and exports to and from the Palestinian areas, turn off the electricity, shut down the phone system, and halt 70 percent of the water delivery", at will. None of this would change under the "independent" Palestine envisioned by Barak and Clinton.
While Arafat and the Palestinian Authority didn't organise the intifada, they could not oppose it. Israel's refusal to include East Jerusalem as part of an independent Palestinian state allowed Arafat to use the mass civil disobedience and win the support of the Arab ruling elites (complicit in the earlier betrayals) to oppose both Tel Aviv and Washington, and Clinton's open support for Israel.
Egypt's stance, including organising an Arab summit with Iraqi participation, is the most significant. Egypt was the first Arab regime to recognise Israel, and has the most to lose if Arafat is unable to contain the popular movement. President Mubarak is less concerned about Egypt's formal relations with Israel than the fact that pro-democracy movements would grow throughout the Arab world.
The US rulers understand this too. They know the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be settled without the formation of some kind of Palestinian entity; they would prefer a regime under an undemocratic ruler like Arafat, who has shown that he is prepared to discipline his own people — arrest militants and suppress opposition to Oslo.
Clinton's and the Congress' sharp denunciations are a warning to all Arabs: do what is acceptable or face the might of the only superpower. The problem for Washington, of course, is that the Palestinian people aren't under Arafat's thumb. Nor are they under the control of the Islamic fundamentalists like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or of the Arab ruling elites.
The masses' hatred for the status quo is behind the intifada. The only way to make a "peace" is for Israel to become a "normal" state in the region. Yet for Israel to become a normal secular state, the people of Israel will have to break with the ideology of Zionism and support the full rights of the Palestinian people, including creation of a bona fide independent Palestinian state.
Is that possible? History is on the side of the Palestinian people. The intifada will continue in one form or another until victory.
BY MALIK MIAH