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IRAQ: Israel Perhaps the Major Beneficiary of U.S.-led Invasion
Analysis - By N Janardhan
DUBAI, Apr 23 (IPS) - It is the U.S.-led forces that occupy Iraq after
invading it more than a month ago, but the biggest beneficiary of Gulf War
III - without firing a bullet - is Israel, say Middle East analysts.
Notwithstanding the political and economic interests that the United
States had in targeting Iraq, says Umaimmah al-Jalahmmah, "the Jews were the
driving force behind the war, with powerful pro-Israel lobbies in Washington
seeking the destruction of one of the main threats to the Jewish state."
Al-Jalahmmah is professor of Islamic studies at King Faisal University in
Saudi Arabia.
PV Vivekanand, chief editor of 'The Gulf Today' newspaper, agrees when he
speaks of "the marriage between the Jewish lobby in the United States and
the symbols of Christian extremism in Washington."
The two Middle East specialists see themselves vindicated by the views
expressed in the now-famous white paper written in 1996 for the then Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu - titled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy
for Securing the Realm' - in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli peace
talks.
The premise, which targets the Palestinian struggle for freedom, gains
credibility because most of the authors were affiliated to pro-Israeli
organisations. Some of them hold or held influential posts in the Bush
administration. Prominent among them was the Pentagon Defence Policy Board
member Richard Perle.
Another author Douglas Feith, who is presently undersecretary of defence
and policy adviser at the Pentagon, is a member of the Zionist Organisation
of America.
In a press statement on April 9, the organization underlined its utter
aversion to Bush's 'Road Map' for peace in the Middle East. This is "a road
map to disaster," it said, that would "create a Palestinian Arab terrorist
state that will endanger Israel and undermine America's war against
terrorism."
The white paper published by Israel's Institute for Advanced Strategic
and Political Studies laid out ideas for remodelling the region starting
with Iraq. "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in co-operation with
Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria,"
it said.
More importantly, it added: "This effort can focus on removing Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq, an important Israeli strategic objective in its
own right, as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
Thus, Iraq and Saddam were important in the reformulation of the Middle
East that "dispenses with the idea of a comprehensive peace and focuses on
balance of power", presumably for the maintenance of Israeli dominance in
the region, says Vivekanand, a specialist on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict.
He says that the pro-Israeli lobby had succeeded in influencing
Washington's decision to invade Iraq. After all, the Jewish community in the
United States exercised enormous influence on U.S. politics through its
substantial funding of election campaigns.
The Jews in the United States account for more than half of the major
donors to the Democratic Party and, in recent years, between 20 to 30 per
cent of major donors to the Republican Party.
According to the 'Washington Report on Middle East Affairs', the total
contributions to the Congressional candidates by pro-Israel lobby groups
between 1978 and 2000 amounted to about 34 million dollars. Only the gun
lobby groups fared better.
Among the chief lobbying organisations in the United States is the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is credited with the
rise and fall of many U.S. politicians, and a lesser known, but equally
significant B'nai B'rith.
One of the oft-cited examples of AIPAC's clout is George Bush senior
losing his bid for a second term as U.S. president to Bill Clinton in 1992:
The reason: Bush pushed ahead with the Middle East peace process ignoring
the Jewish opposition and threatening to hold back a 13 billion dollars
guarantee that would have provided Israel with funds for the expansion of
settlements.
If the 'Clean Break' notion put forward theoretical considerations, there
were ground realities that made Iraq look ominous for Israel.
A nuclear Iraq was perceived as a potential threat to Israel. Saddam
Hussein's financial and vocal support to the Palestinian 'intifadah' or
uprising and the firing of Scud missiles into Israel during the 1991 Gulf
War were serious concerns. A U.S.-led war against Iraq was seen as an ideal
way to dispel those fears.
Adding perspective to that theory were scholars who delivered lectures
last month at the UAE-based Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up.
Editor of 'The International Politics' journal Ahmed Yousef Al Qurae
focussed on the Israeli military campaigns in the occupied Palestinian
territories that resulted in the death of over 100 Palestinians in one
month.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "achieved in the last four weeks more than
what the Jewish state achieved in the last four months, exploiting the
world's pre-occupation with Iraq," he said.
According to Gad Taha, former dean of Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams
University in Egypt, the "strategic alliance between Israel and the United
States could now turn into a tactical alliance to embody and translate into
reality the goals of Zionism to dominate the Palestinian territories and to
transfer Palestinian refugees to northern Iraq."
Egypt's 'Al Ahram' political analyst Mohamed Sid-Ahmed expanded on the
notion of 'Right of Return' of about four million Palestinian refugees, a
key condition for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"Iraq will be used to solve this problem," he said, adding: "The 'Law of
Right of Return' can be made redundant by getting the Palestinians into Iraq
instead of Palestine," a possibility that was discussed even during the 1991
Gulf War and ahead of the 1993 Oslo agreement.
Sid-Ahmed also referred to the "Transfer Solution, wherein large numbers
of Palestinians could be transferred from Gaza and the West Bank to Iraqi
territory to reduce numbers within Palestinian areas," thereby easing the
security threat to Israel arising from demographic pressure.
Such had been the pressure from Israel on the United States that earlier
this year, when diplomacy seemed to delay action against Iraq, Israelis
unleashed their best lobbying campaign.
Former Israeli ambassador to Washington Zelman Shuval's article in the
Hebrew newspaper 'Yediot Ahronot' stressed that Israel should make "behind
the scenes" effort to get the U.S. administration to attack Iraq "sooner
rather than later". Postponing, delaying or cancelling the war, he asserted,
would create "very negative consequences" for Israel.
"The U.S. pressure on Syria and Iran was also at the instance of Israel,"
says Vivekanand.
He adds: "Syria supports Palestinian resistance groups in its territory
and Iran in Lebanon, those that stage armed attacks against Israeli targets.
The Israeli argument is that Syria wants to keep a front alive with the
Jewish state so that the outstanding dispute over Israel's occupation of
Syria's Golan Heights does not get pushed back into regional priorities."
After the successful military campaign in Iraq, Washington sought "to
kill two more birds with the same stone", he added. "Israel has for long
pressured the United States to act against Syria or risk Tel Aviv taking
matters into its own hands. Fearing that any Israeli action will result in
another full-fledged Arab-Israeli conflict, Washington has kept Tel Aviv
from acting on its own till now."
However, Kuwaiti political analyst Ali Jaber al-Sabah disagrees.
"To subscribe to this conspiracy theory is to belittle the United
States," he says. "Saddam was certainly a threat to Iraq's neighbours,
including Israel. In the short term, Israel will feel secure without him. In
the long term, however, Iraqis will be so economically and politically
mobilised that any U.S.-Israeli manipulation will face more formidable
resistance than the one under Saddam." (END/2003)
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