Arab News

Despite Washington’s protests, the Israelis press on with their assassination of Hamas leaders. And just in case George W. Bush hasn’t got the message from the Sharon administration, Israel troops have now burst into Hebron and rounded up scores of people they claim to be Hamas activists. Nothing could have been better calculated to destabilize delicate negotiations between the Palestinian government and Hamas and the other Palestinian extremists. Sharon is busy blowing up bridges and sowing mines along the US road map to peace. He wants Hamas to strike back, so that he can justify further repression and maintain the awful cycle of violence, until the peacemakers, including Colin Powell, throw up their hands in despair and go away.

The US administration has actively pursued attempts to cut off funds to Hamas and Abu Jihad, an indiscriminate move which hits most at the welfare work that the organizations carry out among the subjugated Palestinian population. Maybe now is the time to think about cutting off funds to Israel as well. It would at least have the virtue of equity and might convince Palestinian hard-liners that Washington really is as even-handed as it claims to be.

And what about American pride? Why should the US government support a bigoted, racist Zionist regime which spits in its face, even as it grabs the cash from its outstretched hand? How much longer can the US endure being humbled by the Israelis? Israel has consistently ignored those members of successive US administrations who appeared dedicated to a just settlement of the Palestinian question. There are powerful Zionist and Christian fundamentalist lobbies in the United States for whom Israel can do no wrong, for whom the solution to the Palestinian question will be the expulsion of the last Arab from all the lands of Greater Israel. No reasonable government can allow such extremists to shape their foreign policy on such a delicate issue, which is of crucial importance, not only to the Middle East but to the wider international community.

So the question has to be asked, is the Bush administration truly reasonable? Is it bearing the very public ingratitude of the Sharon government because in truth it is secretly committed to Zionist plans for a Palestinian settlement? Or is it simply that the Bush White House is running out of ideas on how to deal with an aggressively pumped-up right-wing Israeli government? Even if his boss does not, the thoughtful Colin Powell should appreciate that the longer the United States fails to impose any sort of sanction upon the Sharon administration, the less the Arab world will believe in Washington’s sincerity. The ball is very much in the US court.