Powell talks tough at AIPAC by Adnan Abu Odeh aljazeerah.info

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Powell talks tough at AIPAC

by Adnan Abu Odeh, the Daily Star, 4/5/03

A senior US administration official mounts a podium at one of Washington’s hotels every year to make a speech about US relations with Israel. The speech usually focuses on partnership and emphasizes the strategic nature of the friendship between the two countries and US commitment to Israel’s security, supremacy and the preservation of its interests.
This year’s March 30 address by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s main lobbying organization in America, was no exception to the rule.
Yet the timing of official US speeches can lend them an added significance. It would have been inconceivable for Powell not to tackle the US-led war on Iraq a war of which Israel’s interests are one of the most important components at a time like this. Powell tackled issues significantly related to the war proper and to the Palestinian cause. The two issues are related, as the speech suggests.
Powell was careful to send messages to four parties: Syria, Iran, the Arabs and Israel.
The message addressed to Syria was menacing and threatening, and gave the Syrian government two choices: either remains calm and restricts itself to observing events across its eastern borders, thereby gaining approval and security, or it continues according to Powell’s claim to support Iraq, bringing upon itself American wrath with all the problems that this entails, not least of which would be deepening its isolation, depriving it of foreign aid and the implicit sanctioning of Israeli harassment.
The help that Powell claims Syria is offering Iraq is either real or expected. In both cases the motive of the US threat against Syria is to deprive Iraq of any supply lines as it confronts the war being waged against it, so that the war will not drag on. Washington fears that a long, drawn-out war would trigger new Iraqi, international and US dynamics that would throw its military plan into confusion and hinder or prevent an easy, rapid and relatively inexpensive victory over Iraq.
Significantly, Powell’s threat to Syria followed Baghdad’s announcement of the arrival of Arab volunteers to fight alongside the Iraqis. Syria is the only country that would set up a supply line with Iraq, since Iraq’s other neighbors (Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) could not possibly do so for well-known reasons that relate to each country separately.
The message Powell directed at Tehran was one that pleases Israel, which believes that the Islamic Republic’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons is the biggest threat it will face, once the current Iraqi regime has been disposed of. In light of the ongoing war on Iraq and the constraints within which the US is operating, the threat directed at Iran can be interpreted as a warning to Tehran not to contemplate aborting or sabotaging US plans to reshape post-Saddam Hussein Iraq once the Iraqi regime has been removed, given Iran’s influence over the Shiite majority in Iraq.
Powell’s message to the Arabs was one of friendly reassurance aimed at offsetting the fear, anger and uncertainty that are convulsing them as governments and as peoples because of the destructive war that the US is waging on Iraq, the developments and horrific manifestations of which they are watching on television screens around the clock.
Powell chose Palestine as his message of reassurance, saying “no challenge, no opportunity is more important, more pressing, than the quest to put an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians” and indicating that President George W. Bush’s vision of two states coexisting peacefully puts clear obligations on both sides in the conflict.
Outlining Israel’s obligations, Powell declared: “Settlement activity is simply inconsistent with President Bush’s two-state vision. As the president has said: ‘as progress is made toward peace, settlement activity in the Occupied Territories must end.’”
Such talk had been omitted from official US discourse since the “suicide operations” carried out by the Palestinians became the problem on which attention was focused.
The sudden re-emergence of references to Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement activity in Powell’s speech is noteworthy, and raises an important question: Is it a tactic aimed at mollifying the Arabs until the war on Iraq ends, or is it a serious step?
Has British Prime Minister Tony Blair convinced Bush that regime change in Iraq is not enough to establish security and stability in the Middle East and that settling the Palestinian problem is the key to regional stability?
The last and most important message in Powell’s speech was for Israel, including the usual US pledges and commitments to her “security and well-being.”

Adnan Abu Odeh, a former Jordanian ambassador, information minister and chief of the Royal Court, is a regular contri-butor to THE DAILY STAR

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