While Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has established 26 illegal settlements since assuming office last year, is scheduled to meet with President Bush for a fourth time, the administration continues to demand that Chairman Yasser Arafat “take strong, resolute, irreversible action to get terror under control.” The U.S. Senate approved a 2002 Foreign Operations Bill granting $2.04 billion in military aid and $720 million in economic aid for Israel. At the same time, Congress is debating whether to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA). Are these the actions of an honest broker? Is the United States capable of negotiating an unbiased peace?

At a Palestine Center (Palestine Center) briefing on 31 January, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies Phyllis Bennis argued for the importance of international mediation in the Middle East crisis, while Ambassador Edward Peck contended that there is an urgent need to deepen American involvement.

Phyllis Bennis began by noting that the “question of Israel-Palestine and the spiraling conflict was left out of the State of the Union speech [delivered on Tuesday, 29 January].” While many were expecting a shift in White House policy, none appeared forthcoming. “Because there is not an active political negotiating process underway right now, we don’t have to talk about it because we are not engaged.” But at the same time “we are massively engaged in the context of international protection, the granting of impunity to Israeli human rights violations in the context of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is not considered engagement.”

While the Bush administration may be deeply concerned about the region, their concern is with a stable supply of oil rather than a stable political climate. The history of U.S. policy in the region, Bennis pointed out, “has remained remarkably consistent. Israel, oil, and stability have been the three tenets of U.S. policy in the Middle East since about the mid-1960s.” The order of importance occasionally varies, but not the issues themselves. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration’s priorities are different from the Clinton administration’s. “This administration came into power not just defending the oil industry, but they are the oil industry. Condoleezza Rice spent several years as a [director] of Chevron Oil, Cheney had spent his years in the private sector as the head of Halliburton Oil Industries … and of course there is the Bush family itself, whose wealth is very much tied up with international oil trading and the interests of international oil.”

In her analysis of the current administration’s approach to Middle East policy, Bennis noted that “the rhetoric is different, but what is important is that the actions are not different. The use of the veto at the UN to prevent the sending of international observers is not different. The continual sending of F-16s and Apache helicopter gun-ships is not different. The actions of U.S. engagement have not changed. The rhetoric of U.S. engagement on the diplomatic side has changed. So the question then becomes, and this is the fundamental issue for us today, what is the possibility for changing U.S. policy and getting the U.S. to re-engage at the diplomatic level, at the serious level?”

Until the United States calls for an end to the occupation, Bennis believes, their efforts will continue to fail. “What do we do instead? We call on the U.S. to stop doing the worst of what it is doing now. Stop vetoing UN efforts to send international observers, stop sending military aid, and stop licensing U.S. corporations like Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas from sending F-16 fighter bombers that are going to be used against refugee camps, helicopter gun-ships that are going to be used against apartment buildings. Stop sending it.”

It is, suggested Bennis, perhaps time for the U.S. to engage the assistance of the international community. “For everybody who cares about the loss of life in the region, as well as for everybody who cares about the political questions of ending occupation, I think that the real call has to be for international engagement. Not greater U.S. engagement, but for the U.S. to stand aside and let someone else have a chance. The U.S. has failed so far. There is no indication that they will succeed now.”

Fundamental to U.S. policy, stated Edward Peck, former deputy director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism, should be the certainty that “governments only do things that they believe will benefit them.” Israel will not end the occupation or curtail the settlements if it perceives those actions as being contrary to its own territorial and political interests, but U.S. policy has thus far failed to recognize this.

What concerns Peck about current U.S. policy in the region is that the United States is “heading down a very serious, rapidly increasing slope to catastrophe. I worry terribly that the United States, in its efforts to conduct a war on terrorism is going to bring down terrible things on its own head.” Peck believes that for the United States to become further involved in the region would prove dangerous, “but stepping back will be even worse because then there is no one who can take our place.”

Peck concluded stating, “I believe that the world will be a better place the day that Israel is living in peace and security amongst her neighbors, but the current policies of the Israeli government are not going to get them to peace and security amongst her neighbors. The current process will not succeed. History tells us that immutably, unshakably, unavoidably.”

The above text is based on remarks delivered on 31 January 2002 by Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Ambassador Edward Peck, chairman of the Council for the National Interest and vice president of Foreign Service International. The speakers’ views do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine or The Jerusalem Fund. This “For the Record” may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.

This information first appeared in “For the Record” No. 98, 4 February 2002.