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Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared war on Yasser
Arafat and the Bush administration didn't say a word.
"Israel
does not start wars," Sharon told reporters in Jerusalem Monday.
"This war of terror, as in the past, has been forced upon us.
We know who has forced it upon us. We know who is guilty. We know
who is responsible. Arafat is guilty of everything that is happening
here."
Sharon made
these remarks after his helicopters destroyed Arafat's helicopters
in Gaza and just before his F-16s destroyed a police station in
Jenin and Palestinian security buildings in Bethlehem.
Sharon's response
to the weekend's violence should not come as a surprise. Close to
30 Israelis, most of them young men, died after three bombs rocked
a shopping mall in Jerusalem and another blew up a bus in Haifa.
Despite promises from Arafat, none of the terrorists he let out
of jail in the first two months of the Intifada are behind bars.
And Sharon has warned of harsh responses before.
What is surprising
is the lack of evasive evenhandedness from Washington on Monday.
Usually Israeli military action in the wake of Palestinian terror
prompts a stern rebuke from the state department and a milder rhetorical
slap on the wrist from the White House press secretary.
This echoes
the careful dance between Secretary of State Colin Powell and President
Bush on Middle East policy, with Bush being the good cop for the
Israelis and bad cop for the Palestinians and Powell playing his
opposite.
Not this time.
On Monday Ari Fleischer did not, for example, call for Israeli restraint,
warn Israel about provocative actions, or stress the desperate need
for negotiations. He did however say that Sharon did not ask for
and President Bush did not deliver a "green light." Instead
he repeated the president's call for Arafat to live up to his commitments
and the president's statement that Israel has a right to defend
itself.
The closest
thing to the cycle-of-violence rhetoric favored by the administration's
peace processors was when State Department deputy spokesman Phil
Reeker said, "We think the Israelis and both sides need to
consider the repercussions of their actions so that peace can be
achieved." Reeker was asked repeatedly if he would ask the
Israelis to restrain their attacks and he didn't take the bait.
No finger-pointing
or hand-wringing about the possibility of targeted strikes against
Palestinian terrorists and only a fleeting mention of the need for
both sides to talk to each other, almost as an afterthought. Instead
everyone from the president to Phil Reeker has called on Arafat
to comply with the Israeli demand to arrest and keep incarcerated
the terrorists he let out of jail months ago. Reeker couldn't even
bring himself to say that the Palestinians have a right to defend
themselves in the same way the Israelis did.
The majority
of American foreign policy towards Israel and the Palestinians post-Intifada
consists of something called the press guidance — the words
the spokesman for the secretary of state is told to say in response
to questions from reporters. The only tangible thing the state department
usually does in a conflict it would like to see peacefully resolved
is bemoan the absence negotiations.
The guidance
is watched carefully by most embassies in Washington and is fought
over in long meetings most mornings between the various offices
inside the state department and other corners of the government.
Indeed, one State Department official told me that several Arab
ambassadors called the state department after the briefing to ask
why Reeker couldn't say the Palestinians had a right to defend themselves.
They also complained that Arafat lacked the means and physical infrastructure
to arrest the extremists.
When the guidance
isn't working and it rarely does, envoys are sent to the region
to bang heads and get the two sides to start negotiating. The latest
American envoy in the region is a retired Marine general named Anthony
Zinni. He has been booed on the streets of Jerusalem and watched
in his one week on the ground the situation he was sent to defuse
unravel into war. Zinni, is likely to be brought back to the United
States by the end of the week if, in the words of one Foggy Bottom
official, "the situation further deteriorates" which it
probably will.
The guidance
is usually a more polite and less detailed version of what U.S.
diplomats are telling their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts.
For example, when the Israelis talked to the Americans on Monday,
"we didn't call for restraint," this official said. "It
just sounds too hypocritical.
Did U.S. policy
on Israel change Monday? It sure looks like it. Did the president
give Sharon a green light? Well yes. If you don't believe me, just
look at the guidance.
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