- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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