Bush's Indifference Drives Conflict

Published on Friday, June 18, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
by Simon Tisdall

Israel's assault on Lebanon, following Hizbullah's cross-border raid on Wednesday and weeks of unremitting bloodshed in Gaza, brought demands yesterday for international action to contain the crisis and mediate an end to the fighting. But the US, with its unmatched influence over Israel and as self-appointed guardian of the Middle East peace process, appeared reluctant to intervene.

Lebanon's appeal for the UN security council to step in is supported by most Arab governments and by France, Lebanon's former colonial master and the current security council president.

But the council has been vainly trying for a fortnight to agree a resolution on Gaza, with the US threatening to use its veto in defence of Israel. A consensus on the more complicated, fast-moving crisis now engulfing Lebanon is thus unlikely.

Other international bodies with pretensions to global peacemaking, such as Nato and the EU - part of the Middle East "quartet" - are currently reduced to the role of concerned bystanders. Russia says it will table the issue at this weekend's St Petersburg G8 summit. But that may only serve to underscore international divisions.

George Bush's administration warned yesterday of the dangers of destabilising Lebanon. But it otherwise made no serious attempt to curb Israel's offensive. Its spokesmen stuck instead to their favoured hands-off formula: "We are urging restraint on both sides [while] recognising Israel's right to defend itself," said a senior US official accompanying the president in Germany.

Mr Bush was vaguer when asked what he intended to do to prevent the violence spiralling out of control. "My attitude is this: there are a group of terrorists who want to stop the advance of peace. Those of us who are peace living (sic) must work together to help the agents of peace," he said.

Mr Bush's non-committal statements were widely interpreted as unqualified support for Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's effort not only to free captured Israeli soldiers but also inflict as much damage as possible on Hizbullah and Hamas in the process.

That in turn will strengthen regional perceptions that this US administration, unlike those of Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr, is unable or unwilling to play the honest broker.

Analysts suggest there is another reason for Washington's diffidence: US influence and standing in the region is at a historic low ebb, partly because of Iraq. "The worsening conflict in the Middle East is a blatant reflection of the weakness of the American partner," Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli cabinet minister, told Haaretz newspaper.

The US had been reduced to "pretty much sitting on the sidelines," said Dennis Ross, a former Clinton peace envoy. "We're preoccupied in Iraq, we're obviously preoccupied with Iran, and now we're concerned about North Korea. And in the middle of it all we have a crisis in the Middle East that we're just not engaged with," he told the Los Angeles Times.

US leverage with many of the regional protagonists is poor or non-existent. The US has effectively cut diplomatic relations with Syria and encouraged talk of regime change in Damascus. It regards Palestine's elected Hamas government, like Hizbullah's political wing, as a wholly terrorist grouping and refuses to deal with either.

And its confrontation with Iran, whose hostile hand US officials claim to see at work throughout the region, hit new depths this week when the US spearheaded a move to refer Tehran's nuclear programme to the UN for possible punitive sanctions.

Even traditionally pro-western governments such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, no friends to Hizbullah or Hamas, have been alienated by the US "war on terror" and hectoring pro-democracy policies since 9/11, as has much Arab and Muslim opinion.

The Bush administration alone can rein in Israel. Its reluctance to do so may mean there is no quick end to the fighting - and even less chance that Washington will be trusted in the longer term to forge a just and lasting regional settlement.