Author: Serge Schmemann
Publication: The New York Times
Date: October 6, 2001
Israeli officials have been quick
to try to contain the damage done by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's outburst
on Thursday against the United States, in which he invoked the appeasement
of Hitler in 1938 to warn Washington against making deals with Arab states
at Israel's expense. But exaggerated or not, the statement exposed a frustration
many Israelis feel with the Bush administration's antiterror campaign,
and a serious political problem that this campaign poses for Mr. Sharon.
Though any declaration of war on
Islamic and Arab terrorism should delight Israelis - and did when it was
first declared - the virtually exclusive focus on Osama bin Laden and his
network, Al Qaeda, and the expansive American courtship of most Arab countries,
has left Israel feeling isolated and uneasy.
The logic is simple. This is a war
in which Arab allies are vital to Washington. Their price - imposed in
part by the need of the Arab governments to justify working with the United
States to their own publics - is a visible American effort on behalf of
the Palestinians.
That means American pressure on
Israel for more concessions, and an American readiness to overlook the
organizations and states that Israel would like to see crushed as terrorists
and supporters of terrorists: Hamas, Hezbollah, the various armies of the
Palestine Liberation Organization, Syria, Iran.
It is an irony Israel has tasted
before. President Bush's father took similar steps to shape an alliance
against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and then, too, Israel was asked
basically to stay out of the way. So Israelis, then under Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir, put on gas masks, taped up their windows and endured a
hail of Iraqi Scud missiles without striking back.
At the core of the difficulties
is the simple fact that the national interests of the United States and
Israel have never perfectly aligned. Although the United States has long
been Israel's best friend in the world , the geopolitical interests of
a global superpower are inevitably different from those of a small nation
surrounded by hostile countries.
Whether because of the exigencies
of the cold war, or huge Arabian oil reserves or the need to form alliances
against other foes, the United States has frequently taken steps that Israel
perceives as threatening, like supplying Awacs surveillance aircraft to
Saudi Arabia.
The United States, moreover, has
long understood that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also poses a major
problem for American relations with moderate Arab states, which consider
Washington too friendly to Israel and too timid to put real pressure on
the Israelis. Israel, for its part, has often chafed at what it sees as
American pressure to take steps that might undermine Israeli security.
More broadly, Israelis have always been tacitly aware that, however great
American aid and support, Israel always had to be prepared to defend itself
with its own means. Israel is widely known to have developed a nuclear
weapon, although it has been ambiguous about it.
These tensions, however, have always
been a given in American-Israeli relations, and they have never led to
anything approaching a real breach. Mr. Sharon's reference to Munich went
beyond what any of his predecessors have allowed themselves to say in public,
and, in Israeli eyes, beyond what the current frustration warranted.
"Mentioning Munich was a gross exaggeration,
a mistake, and even Israeli public opinion cannot buy that argument and
saw it as hysterical," said Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the newspaper
Yedioth Ahronot.
What Mr. Sharon's comment confirmed
is that he is not the sort of man to retreat when a fight is shaping. A
hawkish general who led tanks into Egypt in 1973 and, as defense minister,
directed the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he would be unlikely to hunker
down if an American attack against Al Qaeda prompted someone to drop a
missile on Israel.
Mr. Sharon has also never concealed
his view of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, as a terrorist, and has
often invoked Hitler when discussing him. "I don't know anyone who has
so much civilian Jewish blood on his hands since Hitler," was a typical
comment before he became prime minister.
Almost from the time the United
States began building a coalition against Al Qaeda, Mr. Sharon has warned
that it should not be at Israel's expense. According to Israelis who have
observed Mr. Sharon since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the prime minister
has felt frustrated - some said betrayed - by Washington.
After Israel immediately and unconditionally
shared its extensive intelligence on Islamic terror groups with the United
States, they said, Mr. Sharon felt that instead of showing gratitude, Washington
went to the Arabs. On the same day Mr. Sharon made his controversial comments,
for example, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was munching dates
with Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman in his desert tent.
The frustration, however, might
not have been enough to draw so provocative a comment. Not surprisingly
for Israel, there were also critical political factors at play here.
First among them is that Mr. Sharon
is sitting on a very fragile coalition of left and right. He is keenly
aware that both his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, fell
from power because they could not keep their coalitions together, and he
is determined not to follow suit. But that requires a keen balancing act,
for example, excoriating Mr. Arafat at every turn while letting the dovish
foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with him.
So if Washington now puts further
pressure on Mr. Sharon to start dealing, it would also put serious pressures
on his government - the left would leave if he refused, the right if he
complied. The situation is all the more difficult for Mr. Sharon because
Mr. Netanyahu is pressuring him and could force a leadership battle in
the party. For a veteran survivor like Mr. Sharon, a tough battle requires
tough words.
