Mideast Needs Aggressive U.S. Plan to End Conflict

By Shibley Telhami
USA Today

October 9, 2000

Ttragic events in the Middle East have transformed the challenge the United States faces from an obstacle in the peace process to a serious national security crisis.

The immediate task is no longer brokering a final-status agreement or alleviating human suffering, but preventing regional war, civil strife within Israel and a threat to the global economy.

Ehud Barak's ultimatum that Yasser Arafat call an immediate end to the clashes notwithstanding, President Clinton was right to set aside other issues to deal with this crisis. The time has arrived for an assertion of an American plan to end the conflict.

Two weeks ago, the conflict was primarily Palestinian-Israeli. Today it is quickly turning into an Arab-Israeli conflict and a Muslim-Jewish conflict.

Yesterday, governments were the key players in deciding what course to take; today, public passions and religious institutions are increasingly dictating the course.

Jerusalem has turned even Kuwaitis, whose relations with the Palestinians suffered when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, into supporters of the Palestinian cause and defenders of Muslim rights. One-half million people demonstrated in Morocco, a key supporter of the United States and of making peace with Israel. And within Israel itself, Arab and Jewish citizens have confronted each other in an unprecedented manner that could escalate into a civil war.

The Lebanese-Israeli front, largely quiet since the Israeli withdrawal last spring, once again has been ignited.

Internal tensions mount

Perhaps more importantly, the psychology of peacemaking is quickly being replaced by the psychology of war.

In Israel, there is now fear that Israel's "deterrence" posture has been undermined in the past few months, and that Arabs and Muslims are increasingly believing that Israel is weak and that its withdrawal from Lebanon through violence was a powerful example. Many in the Jewish state believe that Israel must now act with an iron fist to dispel this Arab notion.

On the Arab and Muslim side, there is an increasing belief among segments of the public that Israel is out to control Islamic holy places through a peace agreement and that nothing short of a holy war can defend Arab and Muslim rights. Frequent funerals only reinforce these tendencies.

These events are bad enough for their humanitarian consequences, but what's at stake for the United States are serious issues of national security.

While a full war between Israel and its neighbors is not likely, the spread of massive violence among Israelis and Palestinians and across the Lebanese border, political and economic actions by Arab states, and attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets are now serious possibilities.

 Gift for Saddam

These events will be a perfect gift for Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who is always trying to link his conflict with the international community to the Arab-Israeli issue, and thus gain sympathy. He has a powerful weapon: oil. As events escalate into a full confrontation, he could simply halt his oil production and call upon his Arab colleagues to do the same in the name of liberating Jerusalem -- turning himself into a hero.

Even if the Saudis, who have the capacity to make up for lost production, may not respond to his calls, escalation over Jerusalem and public passions would prevent them from making up for the shortage. The consequence will be an economic crisis that could quickly turn into a military crisis.

A rational analyst may hope that Arab and Israeli leaders should have learned by now that their conflict will not be resolved by war and that, after more tragedy, they will ultimately have to return to the negotiating table.

They probably have so learned. But the history of the conflict also shows an extraordinary degree of miscalculation, wishful thinking, mishandled brinkmanship and extremist minorities dictating events in times of crisis such as the one we now face.

This is a time for the White House to set all else aside and aggressively assert an American plan not only to help the parties avoid another bloody war, but also to protect vital American interests.

Shibley Telhami holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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