April 4, 2002	atimes.com

Front US hawks call shots on Mideast policy By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The confusing signals from the office of US President George W Bush over the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflect the ongoing struggle between the radical hawks of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the realpolitikers led by Secretary of State Colin Powell. As in so many other major foreign-policy debates inside the Bush administration, the radicals appear to be winning decisively, a victory that reflects the relative strengths of Rumsfeld and his ally, Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as the relentless pressure campaign waged by pro-Likud forces to tie Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Bush's larger "war against terrorism". For months, such groups as the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have played a steady drumbeat, primarily through the Wall Street Journal, attacking Arafat and his Arab allies, denigrating Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposals, and pressing the administration to avoid the urge to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. As Sharon's tanks were launching their siege of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah last week, the Journal said the only solution was "to let the two sides confront each other until they decide they have no choice but to talk again. This means letting Israel defend itself against the kind of terror that Mr Bush would never tolerate if it took place in New York. If that includes the exile of Mr Arafat, so be it." While Bush has not yet endorsed Arafat's exile, virtually all of the administration's other actions appear consistent with the Journal's urgings. Washington has stood firm - apart from its apparently hypocritical support in the United Nations Security Council on Saturday for a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from Ramallah - against increasingly desperate appeals from Arab and European allies to intervene or to at least call directly on Israel to end its growing military offensive in the Palestinian territories. Bush has focused virtually entirely on Palestinian "terrorism" as the cause of the current crisis, adopting wholesale the viewpoint and rhetoric of Sharon and ignoring the Israeli leader's own months-long record of provocation and overreaction, according to observers, including many in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. "Each period of Palestinian restraint was greeted with Israeli assassinations, home demolitions or incursions into Palestinian territory," wrote Mideast veteran Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post last week. "Each terrorist attack launched by Arafat's extremist rivals was answered by devastating Israeli assaults on Arafat's own security forces." Indeed, as the Post observed on Tuesday, five days into Israel's biggest military campaign on the West Bank since 1967, "the only daylight between American and Israeli positions appears to be over whether Arafat himself should be considered a terrorist". While Sharon has denounced him as "an enemy of Israel [and] the entire free world", Bush continues to insist that Arafat remains the only Palestinian who can negotiate for peace and stop the suicide bombing. But Bush's concern for Arafat's welfare and status - reflected by the UN vote and Cheney's highly conditional offer to meet Arafat last month, along with his much-touted appeal to Sharon to let Arafat attend last week's Arab League Summit - appears increasingly to be only a public relations ploy for consumption by anxious foreign leaders who see Sharon's attempts to crush the Palestinian "terrorist infrastructure" as not only futile, but potentially explosive for regional stability. In fact, the administration's actions have in effect given a green light to Sharon, much as former president Ronald Reagan gave Sharon a green light 20 years ago when he served as defense minister to invade Lebanon up to the suburbs of Beirut. Both Rumsfeld and Cheney, whose closest advisers have long been associated with views favoring Sharon's conservative Likud party, have made it clear that they detest Arafat. Cheney reportedly told Israel's visiting defense minister last month that he thought Arafat should be hanged, and Rumsfeld in late December endorsed Sharon's view that Arafat was a "terrorist". The hawks and their pro-Likud allies in Congress and the media have successfully pressed the State Department to tie the Palestinians more tightly to Bush's wider anti-terrorist agenda by listing Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is loosely affiliated with Arafat's Fatah organization, as terrorist groups. Powell has expressed his displeasure with the drift of US policy. Alone among top administration officials, he has urged restraint on Israel, as well as the Palestinians. When he was charged last Friday with publicly presenting Washington's position on Israel's offensive in Ramallah, the normally voluble and confident ex-general spoke from written notes and ended the session with reporters after taking only three questions. His performance contrasted extraordinarily with Rumsfeld's. On Monday, the defense secretary flatly ruled out sending US forces to help enforce a ceasefire between Palestinians and Israelis - a mechanism long favored by the State Department - then went on to accuse Iran, Iraq and Syria of "inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing" in Israel. It was the most sweeping list of potential targets in Washington's anti-terror campaign since Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an "axis of evil", and one that corresponded almost exactly with a list of terrorist states included in a letter sent to Bush from three dozen prominent pro-Likud hawks on September 20. The same letter, written in the name of the Project for a New American Century, of which Rumsfeld and Cheney were charter members, called for Bush to cut off all support for Arafat and the Palestine Authority until it "moves against terror". (Inter Press Service)

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