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COMMENTARY
March 22, 2002
Watch this space
Pay no attention to the suicide bombers they are not currently the issue. Do not notice how Israel responds. The ceasefire talks that Anthony Zinni is chairing may stop or start. A fundamental shift has just occured in the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Dick Cheney has taken over from Ariel Sharon as Yasser Arafat's gaoler (or more precisely probation officer). The Palestinians who thought they were fighting the Israelis now find themselves staring directly at the United States. This is the meaning of the invitation the U.S. vice president extended to Mr. Arafat to meet him in Cairo Monday before the Arab League Summit in Beirut (on Wednesday and Thursday next week). The invitation is conditional. Gen. Zinni must first report that Mr. Arafat is making a "100% effort" to stop terrorist attacks on Israel. As ever Mr. Arafat thinks he will be the last to blink. He wants to see if Mr. Cheney will meet him even after he has privately ordered his militias to continue with the carnage. Gen. Zinni anticipating that is now telling him it is an extremely stupid idea. But Mr. Arafat has a genius for this kind of stupidity has found it is consistently rewarded and why stop now? Because he is no longer dealing with Israel or Mr. Sharon. He is instead staring down a U.S. administration that is about to decide whether it can live with him any more and frankly doubts that it can. Mr. Cheney had according to my information actually told several Arab leaders during his regional tour that he would be personally taking over Mr. Arafat's file. The news was intended to reach Mr. Arafat from them first. In an exquisite piece of diplomatic choreography Colin Powell the U.S. secretary of state declared the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade under Mr. Arafat's command through the Fatah faction to be an official "foreign terrorist organization" within hours of the suicide bombing it claimed at the corner of Agrippas and King George St. in Jerusalem. President Bush paused in El Paso to express his disappointment with Mr. Arafat's latest failure. And Gen. Zinni let Mr. Arafat personally understand the U.S. was aware the murderer Mohammed Hashaika had been released from Palestinian police detention in Ramallah at Mr. Arafat's instruction. In Israel Mr. Cheney whose purchase on English syntax is firm had been careful to distinguish between the idea of a Palestinian state and the idea of Mr. Arafat. The one idea no longer necessarily contains the other. The U.S. with pressures building towards Baghdad can no longer afford to tolerate a leader who in addition to his established credentials as terrorist and psychopath is in the habit of telling lies and breaking promises. Mr. Cheney also made clear to other Arab leaders that while the U.S. anticipates the establishment of an independent Palestine and has now even sponsored a Security Council resolution to that effect it will not allow the formation of another Islamist rogue state in the suburbs of Jerusalem. A Palestinian leader who will not dissolve every tie he has with terrorist violence is one who must be retired. Syria is also in the firing line. Mr. Cheney not only cancelled his planned visit to Damascus he let the Syrian dictator Bashir Assad know why. The Syrians are instrumental in the current Hezbollah build-up in southern Lebanon where tensions are now sky high. They have been simultaneously playing with Iraq and Hamas. There are intelligence reports of Al Qaeda representation and Damascus connexions keep turning up in Afghan caves. While the ultimate sources of terrorist funding and equipment in the Syrian neighbourhood are the regimes in Baghdad and Tehran Damascus is the safe house and co-ordinating centre. The escalation of attacks on northern Israel is largely intended to distract the Bush administration from Iraq as well as to rally and focus Muslim world opinion. Mr. Assad whose problems include being genuinely dull-witted has thus been gravely warned. If he does not also make a "100% effort" to close down the terrorist operations he is now hosting Syria will also qualify for a regime change. Mr. Cheney's non-arrival was the equivalent to flying a small airplane banner across the sky over Damascus reading Watch this space. Indeed the message at large to the Arab world from Mr. Cheney comes to this: "Talk is important." If you don't have a dialogue going with the U.S. then you are right to lose sleep. And the way to keep it going is to play straight for there is no time left for silly lies and impostures. The invitation of the Saudi crown prince Abdullah to meet with President Bush at his ranch in Texas is not the concession that first appeared. I suspect a conscious effort was made to play on Prince Abdullah's vanity which is considerable. But the purpose of the exercise is to allow Mr. Bush to tell him at close quarters and in a place where there can be no point to Abdullah throwing one of his theatrical tantrums -- no doubt after a fine halal barbeque -- that the U.S. is calling his bluff. That the subject can no longer be changed from Saddam Hussein to Palestine. That the clock is ticking on Iraq. That Abdullah is wrong and has misread U.S. intentions if he thinks Israel is an unavoidable issue. For by their own associations with Islamist terrorism Mr. Arafat and Mr. Assad make themselves not merely enemies of Israel but enemies of the United States. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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