Online Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 30, 2009, 00:16
Courtesy Of The Online Journal
Where do the Israelis manage to find so many suspicious characters to lead them? Former prime minister Ariel Sharon was the subject of a criminal investigation before he fell into a coma and was earlier branded by an Israeli tribunal as being indirectly responsible for the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.
Ex-president Moshe Katsav has been indicted for rape and assault; former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been accused of corruption, and now they’ve come up with a new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who is also being investigated for corruption and taking bribes.
Worse, in 2001, Lieberman was convicted of assault after hitting and threatening a 12-year-old boy but all he received was a fine. Even Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was accused in 2000 of conspiring with a government contractor in a kickback scheme but charges were dropped ‘due to difficulties with the evidence.’
Put together, they appear more like a crime syndicate than a government. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, these less than wholesome individuals still manage to rise to the top and have the ear of the president of the United States.
On second thoughts perhaps it’s not that inexplicable. During an argument with Shimon Peres at the time he was foreign minister, Sharon was quoted as saying, “Every time we do something, you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear: don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
That statement was dead and buried until January this year, when a similar message was reiterated by Olmert, who embarrassingly revealed that he had told George W. Bush to tell his secretary of state to vote against a United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza -- which, of course, she did.
This week, Lieberman boasted to a Russian reporter that the Barack Obama administration would only back peace initiatives after receiving Israel’s permission. “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions,” he said.
If you believe Israeli Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, this is no two-way street. In response to Obama’s verbal backing of the Road Map and Annapolis. Erdan said, “In voting for Netanyahu, the citizens of Israel have decided that they will not become the US’ fifty-first state and Israel does not take orders from Obama.”
I tend to take them seriously. Israeli ministers are saying what many critics of Israel have long suspected. To a large degree, the US takes its orders from Israel, which might go a long way toward explaining why Bush was so eager to invade Iraq, why successive US administrations have been sabre-rattling against Iran, as well as the US reluctance to criticise Israel for its disproportionate responses in Lebanon and Gaza, which resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.
I suspect that very few Americans are cognisant of this worrying truth. Just imagine. Israel doesn’t take orders from Obama, yet there is a belief that America accepts all of Israel’s decisions while at the same time forking out $3 billion (Dh11 billion) of American taxpayers’ money annually to keep Israel afloat. There is surely something seriously wrong with this scenario, and if it is cast in stone, then the peace process truly is dead and buried as Lieberman recently announced.
If Obama is serious about working towards peace in the Middle East then the only way he can change the status quo in America’s favour is to get tough with the Israelis. This is exactly what Jordanian King Abdullah Bin Al Hussain is advocating. On NBC’s Meet the Press, he warned of another military confrontation in the region if the peace process fails to move forward. This would require determined US intervention, he said, in the belief that the two protagonists won’t achieve anything left to their own devices.
My instincts tell me that Obama is sincere in his Middle East aims. His publication of the so-called ‘torture memos,’ his radical economic policy, his universal health care goal and his willingness to take on both the gun and right-to-life lobbies have proved he’s able to take hard decisions. But is he courageous enough to make a stand against the pro-Israel lobby?
Until now, Obama has avoided controversy when it comes to Israel and, frankly, his approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict is still tinged with mystery. All we really know is that he supports a two-state solution on the lines of Annapolis but, as yet, the substance of his policy either hasn’t been formulated or remains under wraps.
Next month, both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are separately scheduled to visit the White House. Once President Obama has the opportunity to understand both sides’ points of view then, hopefully, he will reveal his administration’s strategy and become more proactive in breaking the current impasse.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Obama team is readying for a confrontation with Netanyahu over his refusal to support a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Just how confrontational such a meeting will get, though, at this point, is anyone’s guess.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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