August 07, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)

Roman Bessonov

THE SHOAL OF WEST BANK

Gulf states are reluctant to cave in to US provocative designs in the Middle East

AN UNPLEASANT LUNCH IN JEDDAH

The closer are the US Presidential elections, the heavier the White House is engaged in geopolitical window-dressing. The blitz visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the Middle East was portrayed by loyal press as an event of a historical dimension. Eight-digit numbers of financial assistance, surfacing in mass media, created an impression that Washington has really managed to organize supposedly moderate Arabic regimes (in one boat with Israel) against the reputedly "rogue" Iran and Syria.

It is true that Condoleezza Rice is more than interested in improvement of political reputation, and especially in the Mideast. After all, it is Mr. Rice who is going to chair the Washington-launched conference on Mideast reconciliation, scheduled for September. In the election year, this event is indispensable for the Republican White House – not only because of the swift overtake of the whole Gaza strip by Hamas Party, marking one more failure of US policy in the region, but also at the face of hard rivalry with the Democratic Party for the American Jewish vote.

Trumpets of success started blowing too early: generous financial assistance, granted by Washington to the Gulf's Sunni regimes, does not guarantee strategic partnership of Moslems against other Moslems. Journalists, following the US delegation, experienced doubts from the very beginning.

At the lunch, served in the royal palace in Jeddah, high guests were startled with the sight of huge sharks flowing beneath them beyond a thin wall of glass. This mise-en-scene was chosen by the King deliberately.

The Saudi Royal House agreed to take part in the September event, chaired by the US Secretary of State, and – for the first time for sixteen years – along with the Israeli Prime Minister, though the Kingdom is still reluctant to recognize Israeli statehood. Still, the Saudi participation is conditioned with four provisions, not much inspiring Ehud Olmert's government. These provisions, constituting the so-called "ultimate status", are as follows: return of Palestinian refugees; definition of the status of Jerusalem; determination of the borderline of the State of Palestine; and, finally, complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank of the Jordan.

Meanwhile, the US side is less capable of guaranteeing implementation of at least one of the provisions than in 1979 when they were originally formulated, and even less capable than a year ago. The recent statement of George W. Bush that the people of Palestine have got "a choice between the way of assassinations of Hamas and the way of peace of [Fatah Party's leader] Mahmoud Abbas" makes the possibility of accord even vaguer. Days before the US visit, Spiegel's correspondent Ulrike Putz published a vivid description of Fatah's torture chamber in Gaza, which the winning Hamas is now using as an impressive exhibition for tourists.

The White House had been warned from a biased support of Fatah Party. Four hours before Bush delivered the quoted speech, Washington Post distributed an analysis of the situation in Palestine, authored by renowned intelligence veterans. They unanimously expressed the view that Mr. Abbas, the nominal president of Palestine, "has failed to gain confidence among his own population, not speaking of other Arab nations; is unable to prevent terrorist actions; and even does not have any influence on the military wing of his own party". Moreover, the specialists intoned that the political and economic isolation of Hamas, undertaken by the State Department, only boosts Hamas's popularity among the people of Palestine.

CIA analysts emphasized in their memo that the only capable force in the West Bank is not the hastily assembled Fatah cabinet but the Israeli Defence Forces. It is noteworthy that the Israeli side has just been discussing the possibility of yielding the West Bank to the Kingdom of Jordan. The proponents of this solution were aware of the present reluctance of the Hashemite Kingdom to take charge for this territory but would be forced to agree in case of an outburst of political and social chaos in the area.

Curiously, similar proposals were earlier made by Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah Party. However, this option, acceptable for polar sides of controversy in the area, is quite undesirable for Washington: by caving in to this solution, the United States would admit a total defeat of its strategy in the Middle East, making the September conference – designed as a crucial propagandist event – absolutely useless.

 

A FLIGHT-FORWARD MISSION

Deciding to compensate its own diplomatic weakness with trivial bribery, Washington allocated generous loans for all of the "moderate" (i.e. loyal) states of the region. The largest sum of $30 billion was offered to Israel, while $20bln was to be distributed among Arab states. Early media reports ascribed this total sum to the Saudi Kingdom alone, stirring unrest in the US House of Representatives, where Bush was reminded of the ethnic origin of pilots of the planes which crashed into the twin WTC towers on September 11, 2001.

Promises of arms imports were one more "carrot" for the Mideast allies. However, such a gift to Arab states was strongly disapproved by their neighbor Israel which would prefer either a gift only to itself or none.

The intention to rig one group of Islamic nations against another was criticized in Europe as well. Dietrich Genscher, one of the most respected German politicians with a background of 17 years in Foreign Minister's office, claimed that arms deliveries to Gulf states "is not going to be helpful in an already complicated situation". To his view, the Middle East today requires a comprehensive development program for the whole region, including Iran, and a diplomatic effort, necessarily involving Tehran, Damascus, and the Hamas leadership. This approach necessarily suggests involvement of the EU and Russia, Genscher says.

Similar views were recently expressed by James Baker's commission, which the present Defense Secretary was a part of. Still, at the straightaway, Washington preferred a flight-forward onrush. The reasons were clear: for the US voter, the most important foreign policy issue was the situation in Iraq. As foreign observers emphasized, Washington was trying to sooth the Gulf nations primarily in order to later entrust control over Iraq to their military commanders.

However, the Jeddah talks revealed that the Saudi side has got serious grudges to Washington over its policy in the occupied Iraq. While the Secretary of States was anxiously gazing at the well-heeled sea predators strolling aside, she was calmly explained that the Kingdom was not at all satisfied with the privileges granted by Washington to the Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds – as opposed to the Sunni population. In addition, Riyadh politely but resolutely urged Washington to force the Iraqi government to adopt an adequate oil trade legislation.

Thus, the Saudi leadership, today's major supplier of oil for the United States, drove an array of conditions for US policy in Iraq, too. Their implementation is not less problematic than the "ultimate status" in Palestine. Right on the day of the Jeddah talks, the Islamic Salvation Front, the largest Sunni party of Iraq, announced its withdrawal from the Iraqi government. This demonstrative political act was most probably coordinated with Riyadh – as well as probably the earlier statement of Oman's Foreign Minister Omar Yussef ben Alawi that Iran does not pose any threat to the Gulf nations.

 

THE SCHEME THAT DOES NOT WORK

Recent articles in Saudi media, reflecting the official view of the Crown, indicate that the primitive political scheme, used by Washington to fuel up confrontation between the Sunni states of the Gulf and the Shi'i Tehran with kindred parties in Palestine and Lebanon (resp. Hamas and Hizbollah) is torn into tatters. The very fact of Washington's flirt with the Iraqi Shi'ites raises doubts over sincerity of US political intentions. The official Riyadh was not only unwilling to sup the broth the US had made in Iraq but unambiguously demonstrated its reluctance to confront pro-Iranian political forces of the Middle East.

While the Kingdom views Mahmoud Abbas as the legitimate leader of Palestine, part of the Saudi clergy openly expresses its negative attitude to the chairman of Fatah party. The "particular view" of a number of influential Saudi thinkers was made public on July 2 – soon after Israeli authorities arrested several Hamas activists who received financial assistance not from Iranian but from Saudi foundations.

Shortly after the open letter of the theologians was published in Saudi papers, the Kingdom's diplomats, attending the latest summit of the League of Arab States in Sharm al Sheikh, Egypt, signed the joint resolution urging Mahmoud Abbas to "display flexibility" in the dialogue with Hamas party". On July 10, Elaph agency, covering the event, expressed this accord as follows: "In case the confrontation between Fatah and Hamas will make the dialogue of Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh impossible, the Gulf countries will promote this dialogue, using the channels of the Syria-based Khaled Mashal" (head of Hamas's Political Bureau).

However, these efforts may appear unnecessary. On August 2, on the day of Condoleezza Rice's personal talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Al Watan, a major Saudi paper, reported that Mr. Abbas is not going to run for Prime minister at the next Palestinian elections. Quoting the poll recently conducted by An-Najah University in Shechem (Nablus), the paper revealed that the most popular political figure among the Palestinian population of the West Bank is not Abbas and not even Mashal but Marwan Barguti, chair of the underground Tanzim organization, five times sentenced to live imprisonment in Israel for terrorist activities.

Judging upon the statements of George W. Bush's emissaries on the last day of their exhausting trip, they guessed quite well that their diplomatic efforts are a failure. On August 2, Robert Gates had to confess that the United States appeared to be "unprepared" for resolution of Iraq's domestic problems. Still, Mr. Gates ascribed this failure solely to "an abyss of mistrust among various ethnic groups of Iraq".

In her turn, Condoleezza Rice, seeking for more ex tempore options to please the Gulf allies, much embarrassed Israeli ministers. During her talks in Jerusalem, Mrs. Rice, ostensibly by occasion, raised the issue of Israel's compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Mrs. Rice was quite aware of the fact that non-membership in NPT was a sacred cow of Israeli policy, which has never officially confirmed possession of nuclear weapons. Disclosing the open secret, Washington deprives Israel of its crucial political argumentation, and moreover, assaults its exceptional status of the key US ally in the region.

Thus, even the most precious cargo of longtime partnership may be jettisoned into the Mediterranean as unnecessary ballast in order to pry the American diplomatic aerocarrier the political shoal it had stumbled upon. The effort is in vain: the September summit is facing a miserable flop. Meanwhile, the narrow strip of the Mediterranean coastline, the ostensible subject of Washington's excessive concern, is going to plunge into a new war, the first sparks of which are flashing today on the West Bank of the Jordan.

 

THE INTEREST THAT OVERSHOOTS REASON

The visible unreliability of the transatlantic Big Brother is a good lesson for the sober-minded representatives of the Israeli establishment, which quite recently hoped for dividends from the US occupation of Iraq, and later from the artificially mounted Sunni-Shi'i controversy. During July, Ehud Olmert made a number of peaceful remarks vis-à-vis Syria. Leftist Israeli authors reminded the head of the cabinet that the permanent confrontation with Hamas and the attempts to isolate Gaza are is not going to bring any benefit to the Israeli state. Ha'aretz's observer Amira Hess indicated that the manners of Fatah's leadership have disillusioned the Palestinian people, for whom the peace process and corruption have become synonymic, while "personal interests of Fatah's nouveau riches too often intercepted with personal interests of Shabak (Shin Beth) generals".

However, as soon as the Prime Minister undertook a step away from confrontation, local keepers of US interests would hurry to disavow his words. That was especially typical for Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, who rejected a direct dialogue with Damascus shortly before the arrival of the US Secretary of State. The same Mrs. Livni accused Hamas of an intention to "establish a new Caliphate across the whole territory of Israel".

As soon as the government of Syria dared to mention about its right to participate in the September conference of Middle East nations, Debka.com, a rightwing Israeli intelligence website, spread rumors over alleged preparations of Syrian military forces to intervene the debated Golan Heights.

While the Republican White House is obviously turning its back to Israel's basic political interests, its true disciples in Eretz Israel are making a scarecrow of Russia, in addition to Iran and Saudi Arabia – in contempt of common reason, and notwithstanding with the impending political vacuum. As soon as the Russian side, in most correct diplomatic terms, emphasizes its intention to negotiate with more than one side in the intra-Palestinian conflict, the same Debka.com shakes the minds of the national audience with a rumor over a military mega-deal between Moscow and Tehran. On July 30, Israeli media reproduced Debka's gossip about Moscow's vicious intention to master a number of 250 (two hundred and fifty) SU-30MKM fighters on a clandestine contract with Iran.

Judging upon the number of reprints, Debka's gossips are taken seriously, though in case 1 per cent of the agency's warnings were truthful, Eretz Israel would have long been replaced by a borderless Sunni-Shi'i- Russian Caliphate. It was Debka which once embarrassed the audience with rumors over occupation of the third largest Lebanese city by a bloodthirsty Chechen gang, linked with the Russian military and the "Tambov criminal community" from Vladimir Putin's native city, St. Petersburg. At that time, only a narrow circle of specialists in real estates could guess that the scandal implies nothing more than a banal property squabble, involving the interests of Israeli oligarch Eliezer Fischman.

The SU-30MKM gossip smells commercial interest as well. As a matter of fact, Russia's Sukhoy Corporation has built only 2 (two) aircrafts of this model for a period of four years since the contract – not with Iran but with Malaysia – was signed. The hysteria, resembling rather economic blackmail, has obviously emerged from the banal fact that the SU-30MKM model is equipped – unlike the SU-30MKI version – not by Israeli but by French avionics.

Syria's commitment for peaceful diplomacy with Israel obviously impedes the opportunities of Israeli military industrial corporations of achieving lucrative orders for defense technologies. If Bashar al Assad did not exist, he had to be invented.

Reports and discussions on popular Israeli websites reveal the fact that the commercial profits of arms producing corporations, as well as personal incomes of local tycoons outside Israel, are in inverse ratio to the security of this land. While the Ministry of Absorption is forced to cut financial assistance to new immigrants and Jewish education outside Israel, while army officials seek possibilities for overcoming the untypical epidemic of draft evasion, the business community enthusiastically boasts with new acquisitions of the Israeli VIP community in the expanse between Montreal and Shanghai.

A huge, insurmountable abyss is yawning between the personal requirements of the high and mighty and the vital needs of both the Jewish and the Arab majority. In this abyss, and not in the insidious plans of "rogue states", one should seek the prime cause and the prime constituent of today’s instability in the Middle East. The forgery of definitions, practiced by Washington, predetermines not only a pre-election disgrace but a bloody re-division of the cradle of the greatest world religions.

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