[Peace-discuss] Palestine, Israel & SOS Rice

[C. G. Estabrook]

[On "Air AWARE" last night David Green and I fell into conversation on what the 
administration is doing vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine.  Now comes an 
interesting article -- in Vanity Fair, recommended by Lois at a recent meeting 
-- on what they've been up to and how ham-fisted (so to speak) they've been in 
promoting their shoddy and often criminal plans. The article is discussed here 
by one of the best political bloggers around, who calls herself emptywheel.  --CGE]

A number of people are talking about David Rose's article on US clusterfuckery 
with its Palestinian policy. If you need any convincing that the entire 
Administration--and Condi Rice above all--is dangerously incompetent, read this 
article.

The story explains how the Administration pushed an election for the 
Palestinians, not seeing what every sane observer saw--that Hamas would win. 
Immediately after the election, Condi started pressuring Mahmoud Abbas to 
dissolve Parliament. When he refused, the Administration started backing the 
Fatah strongman, Mohammad Dahlan, in hopes that he could strengthen Fatah and 
the Palestinian Authority's security organizations--which had been devastated by 
Israel during the intifada--sufficiently to overcome Hamas. This set off a civil 
war between Fatah and Hamas. To end the bloodshed, Saudi's King Abdullah 
brokered a national unity government, without warning the US he would do so. In 
response to Abdullah's unity government plan, the State Department developed its 
own $1.27 billion plan, what Hamas considered "a blueprint for a U.S.-backed 
Fatah coup." The US handed that plan to Abbas and had him adopt it as if it were 
his own. Hamas responded by taking over Gaza and capturing the Egyptian weapons 
intended to strengthen Fatah.

In other words, the story is a description of the US' profoundly incompetent 
Palestinian policy, one which has exacerbated problems with each new 
development. As one Fatah commander described it, the whole plan seemed destined 
to leave Hamas in control.

     You know,” he says, “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the 
brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude 
that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy 
was so crazy otherwise.”

I wanted to focus on what Rose calls "Iran Contra 2.0." When the US decided to 
strengthen Fatah so it could combat Hamas, Congress refused to fund the effort. 
Given our political climate, Congressmen are not about to green light giving 
Palestinians--of any faction--improved arms and military training. Instead, the 
Administration turned to a tactic used in Iran-Contra: to have other governments 
fund the US' desired foreign policy.

     In essence, the program was simple. According to State Department 
officials, beginning in the latter part of 2006, Rice initiated several rounds 
of phone calls and personal meetings with leaders of four Arab nations—Egypt, 
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She asked them to bolster 
Fatah by providing military training and by pledging funds to buy its forces 
lethal weapons. The money was to be paid directly into accounts controlled by 
President Abbas.

     The scheme bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal, in which 
members of Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the 
U.S. The money was used to fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of 
a congressional ban. Some of the money for the contras, like that for Fatah, was 
furnished by Arab allies as a result of U.S. lobbying.

     But there are also important differences—starting with the fact that 
Congress never passed a measure expressly prohibiting the supply of aid to Fatah 
and Dahlan. “It was close to the margins,” says a former intelligence official 
with experience in covert programs. “But it probably wasn’t illegal.”

I'm fascinated by Rose's description of the operation, because of the fissures 
it created within the Administration and with our allies. The move really pissed 
off the Neocons.

     Perhaps the Israelis held the Americans back. Perhaps Elliott Abrams 
himself held back, unwilling to run afoul of U.S. law for a second time. One of 
his associates says Abrams, who declined to comment for this article, felt 
conflicted over the policy—torn between the disdain he felt for Dahlan and his 
overriding loyalty to the administration. He wasn’t the only one: “There were 
severe fissures among neoconservatives over this,” says Cheney’s former adviser 
David Wurmser. “We were ripping each other to pieces.”

The eventual coup in Gaza was actually the precipitating event for David 
Wurmser's departure.

     Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious 
debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who 
resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, 
a month after the Gaza coup.

     Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an 
effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He 
believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. 
“It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an 
attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

And, at the same time, the plan to arm Fatah was met with little enthusiasm--or 
follow-through--on the part of our Middle Eastern allies.

     During a trip to the Middle East in January 2007, Rice found it difficult 
to get her partners to honor their pledges. “The Arabs felt the U.S. was not 
serious,” one official says. “They knew that if the Americans were serious they 
would put their own money where their mouth was. They didn’t have faith in 
America’s ability to raise a real force. There was no follow-through. Paying was 
different than pledging, and there was no plan.”

     This official estimates that the program raised “a few payments of $30 
million”—most of it, as other sources agree, from the United Arab Emirates. 
Dahlan himself says the total was only $20 million, and confirms that “the Arabs 
made many more pledges than they ever paid.” Whatever the exact amount, it was 
not enough.

Though Rose doesn't make the connection explicitly, it was during this 
period--when Condi was finding it difficult to get Saudi Arabia and others to 
cough up millions to pay for our foreign policy--that King Abdullah was 
brokering his own unity government.

     Unwilling to preside over a Palestinian civil war, Abbas blinked. For 
weeks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had been trying to persuade him to meet 
with Hamas in Mecca and formally establish a national unity government. On 
February 6, Abbas went, taking Dahlan with him. Two days later, with Hamas no 
closer to recognizing Israel, a deal was struck.

In other words, I think Condi was having trouble to get Saudi Arabia to fund her 
policy schemes because they simply didn't support them and were actully working 
at cross-purposes to them.

The article ends with Administration officials reluctantly adopting the policy 
implicitly favored by Abdullah: including Hamas in plans for peace.

     With few good options left, the administration now appears to be rethinking 
its blanket refusal to engage with Hamas. Staffers at the National Security 
Council and the Pentagon recently put out discreet feelers to academic experts, 
asking them for papers describing Hamas and its principal protagonists. “They 
say they won’t talk to Hamas,” says one such expert, “but in the end they’re 
going to have to. It’s inevitable.”

Don't get me wrong--I don't really believe the Bush Administration will do what 
it needs to do to actually achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians; 
negotiating with Hamas is not the same thing as negotiating in good faith with 
Hamas.

But Rose's description reveals how futile the American position on Israel and 
Palestine is. I suspect that any move to restore the strength of Palestine such 
that it could perform as a sovereign state would be impossible to pass through 
Congress--AIPAC's just been doing its work too well for too long to support 
strengthening the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, at least, appears to be 
reluctant to support anything less than restoring the strength of the Palestinians.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/03/04/iran-contra-20/#more-1891