Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 11:59 PM
Making Sense of U.S. Moves in the Middle East
Rebecca
Gordon
July
19, 2018
Tom
Dispatch
My
father and I always had a tacit agreement: “We will never speak of That Part of
the World.” He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Norfolk, Virginia.
His own father, a refugee from early-twentieth-century pogroms in what is now
Ukraine, had been the president of his local Zionist organization. A liberal in
most things (including his ardent opposition to both of the U.S. wars against Iraq),
my father remained a Zionist to his dying day. We both knew that if we were
ever to have a real conversation about Israel/Palestine, unforgivable things
would be said.
As
a child in the 1950s, I absorbed the ambient belief that the state of Israel
had been created after World War II as an apology gift from the rest of the
world to European Jews who had survived the Holocaust. I was raised to think
that if the worst were to happen and Jews were once again to become targets of
genocidal rage, my family could always emigrate to Israel, where we would be
safe. As a young woman, I developed a different (and, in retrospect, silly)
line on That Part of the World: there’s entirely too much sun there, and it’s
made them all crazy.
It
wasn’t until I'd reached my thirties that I began to pay serious attention to
the region that is variously known as the Middle East, the Arab world, or the
Greater Middle East and North Africa. And when I did, I discovered how deep my
ignorance (like that of so many fellow Americans) really was and how much
history, geography, and politics there is to try to understand. What follows is
my attempt to get a handle on how the Trump presidency has affected U.S. policy
and actions in That Part of the World.
Old
Alliances...
The
United States has a long-standing and deep alliance with Israel. During the
Cold War, Washington viewed that country as its bulwark in the oil-rich region
against both a rising pan-Arab nationalism and real or imagined Soviet
encroachments. In fact, according to the Library of Congress’s
Congressional Research Service, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of
U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has
provided Israel $134.7 billion current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars in bilateral
assistance and missile defense funding.”
The
vast majority of this largesse has been in military aid, which has allowed
Israel, a country of a little more than eight million people, to become
the 14th or 15th strongest military power on the planet. It is
also the only nuclear power in the region with an arsenal of at least 80
weapons (even if its government has never officially
acknowledged this reality). By comparison, Iran, its present archenemy,
ranks 21st, despite having a population 10 times greater.
The
history of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan
Heights -- territories it captured in the 1967 war -- is too long and complex
for even a brief recap here. Suffice it to say that the United States has often
been Israel’s sole ally as, in direct contravention of international law, that
country has used its own settlements to carve Palestinian territory into a
jigsaw puzzle of disparate pieces, making a contiguous Palestinian state a near
impossibility.
Then-Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon explained Israel’s plan for the Palestinian people in
1973 when he said, “We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them."
Promising to insert “a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians
and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank,” he
insisted that “in 25 years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United
States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
Forty-five
years later, his strategy has been fully implemented, as Barack Obama
reportedly learned to his shock when, in 2015, he saw a State Department
map of the shredded remains of the land on which Palestinians are allowed
to exist on the West Bank.
The
“pastrami sandwich” strategy has effectively killed any hope for a two-state
solution. Now, as the number of non-Jews begins to surpass that of
Jews in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, that country once again confronts the
inherent contradiction of a state that aims to be both democratic and, in some
sense, Jewish. If everyone living in Israel/Palestine today had equal political
and economic rights, majority rule would no longer be Jewish rule. In effect,
as some Israelis argue, Israel can be Jewish or democratic, but not both.
A
solution to this demographic dilemma -- one supported by present Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu -- is to legislate permanent inequality through
what’s called “the basic law on Israel as the nation-state of the
Jewish people,” which is now being debated in the country’s parliament, the
Knesset. Among other provisions, that “basic” law (which, if passed, would have
the equivalent of constitutional status) will allow citizens “to establish
‘pure’ communities on the basis of religion or ethnicity.” In other words, it
will put in place an official framework of legalized segregation.
In
the Trump era, Washington’s alliance with Israel has only grown tighter. After
recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital -- despite almost universal
international objections -- Trump sealed the deal in May, traveling to
Jerusalem with a coterie of Zionist evangelical Christians and, on Israeli
Independence Day, opening a new U.S. embassy there. That day, May
14th, was the eve of the 70th anniversary of what Palestinians call the nakba (the
catastrophe of Israel’s seizure of Palestinian homes and lands in 1948).
Donald
Trump could not have sent a clearer signal to the world about exactly where the
United States stands on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That same day,
as Time reported, “cameras captured the chaos as Israeli
soldiers methodically cut down some 2,700 Palestinians, 60 fatally, as they
marched toward the fence that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip.” Gazans, in
case you’ve forgotten, have been subject for years to a vicious blockade,
both literal and economic, that has turned their homes into what has
been called the world’s largest open-air prison. And keep in mind that
Israel also launched major military operations against that tiny territory in
2008-2009, 2012, and 2014, and appears to be ramping up for a new one.
It’s
unlikely, to say the least, that the new “peace deal” that the world awaits
from President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will offer Palestinians much
more than another bite of that pastrami sandwich.
...And
New Ones
Geopolitics
(and a common enemy) can make strange bedfellows. In a recent New
Yorker article, Adam Entous suggests that a new
ménage-à-quatre was formed in the region in the run-up to Donald Trump’s
election, bringing Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and
the United States ever closer. As it happened, there was even an unexpected
fifth player lurking in the shadows: Russia. Entous reports that Mohammed bin
Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and one of UAE's most powerful men,
suggested to an American friend that Russian President Vladimir Putin “might be
interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of
sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.”
The
goal of this new alliance was not so much an end to the brutal Syrian regime of
Bashar al-Assad as an end to the Iranian military presence in Syria. The
unofficial alliance of the Saudis, the UAE, and the Israelis was, above all,
meant to push back or even bring an end to the present government of Iran. This
seems to have been the genesis of a 2016 meeting in the Seychelles Islands
between Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious hire-a-mercenary
company, Blackwater, and a confidant of then-Trump adviser Steve Bannon as
well as the brother of present Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and a figure
who might serve as a Russian-UAE go-between. Endous indicates that the deal
then proved “unworkable,” because Russia had neither the desire nor the
capacity to evict Iran from Syria.
Nevertheless,
this July 10th, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Moscow to
meet with Putin for a discussion of the Syrian situation in which the Russians
are now, of course, deeply enmeshed. At the same time, a top foreign policy
adviser to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was also on his way to
Russia to speak with Putin. Netanyahu returned from Moscow with less than he’d
hoped for, but at least with “a commitment to keep Iranian forces tens of
kilometers from Israel,” according to the New York Times. The
fact that these meetings were happening the week before presidents Trump and
Putin were to sit down together in Helsinki and discuss Syria, among other
topics, is, however, suggestive. Bloomberg News reported that Putin has
“stepped up efforts to broker a deal on the pullback of pro-Iranian militias
from Syria’s border with Israel" as he prepared for his summit with Trump.
The
American president has already backed away from his predecessor’s insistence
that the departure of Syrian leader Assad be a precondition for a peace
settlement in that country. For his part, Netanyahu has made it clear that
Israel can accept Assad in power as long as the Iranian military units in that
country are withdrawn. Before leaving for Moscow, he told reporters,
“We haven't had a problem with the Assad regime; for 40 years not a single
bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.” Presumably, Trump and his feckless
son-in-law feel the same way.
In
the end, the target of all these machinations remains Iran. The dangers
represented by a conflict between the Trump administration and Iran (with the
Israelis, the Saudis, and the UAE all potentially involved) threaten to make
the invasion of Iraq and ensuing events there look mild by comparison. And it’s
hardly out of the question. As University of Michigan history professor and
Middle East expert Juan Cole notes, overshadowed by other
absurdities in Trump’s bombastic post-NATO-summit news conference was this
warning: “I would say there might be an escalation between us and the
Iranians.”
Meanwhile,
in Syria...
Meanwhile,
if it weren’t for Yemen (see below), it might be hard to imagine a more
miserable place in 2018 than Syria. Since 2011, when a nonviolent movement to
unseat Assad devolved into a vicious civil war, more than half the country’s
pre-war population of 22 million has become internally displaced or refugees,
according to numbers from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees.
Actual casualty figures are impossible to pin down with any exactitude. In
April 2018, however, the New York Times reported that the
British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number of
directly caused deaths at 511,000, including fighters and civilians.
Death
and destruction have come from all sides: al-Qaeda-linked terror groups and the
Islamic State killing civilians; the Syrian military, which is presently
driving opposition forces out of the southern city of Dara’a, where the
original uprising began (creating a quarter-million refugees with literally no
place to go); and U.S. bombs and other munitions -- 20,000 of them --
reducing the city of Raqqa to rubble in a campaign to liberate it from ISIS
militants. Add it all up and the war, still ongoing, has destroyed millions of
homes and businesses, along with crucial infrastructure throughout an
increasingly impoverished country.
So
many military forces -- foreign and domestic -- are contending in Syria that
it’s difficult to keep track. Wikipedia’s list of those fighting fills screen
after screen. On the side of Assad’s government are the Syrian military,
elements of the militia of the Iranian-supported Lebanese
party Hezbollah (part of the government in that country), some Iranian
Revolutionary Guard forces, and of course the Russian military. On the
other side are various militant terror groups, including what’s left of the
Islamic State, and a wide variety of U.S.-supported anti-Assad groups,
including those hailing from the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria,
a semi-autonomous, multi-ethnic area in the country’s northeast. Throw
in Kurdish fighters, including Syrian natives and Kurds from Turkey,
and the Turkish military itself (in its bid to tamp down any errant Kurdish
nationalism), at least 2,000 U.S. military personnel, and the Israeli
air force, striking at Iranian targets in the country, and even with
an eventual peace settlement, Syria, the birthplace of the alphabet, will
be a desperate nation for decades to come.
Whose
fault was all of this? There’s plenty of blame to go around and plenty of
actors to shoulder that blame. But when you begin to make that list, make sure
to include Washington’s so-called neoconservatives who, as far back as 1996,
offered Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel’s prime minister then, too)
their “Clean Break” strategy to rebuild the Middle East. That plan
started with unseating Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein and went on to destabilize
Syria. A number of these neocons, including Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz,
then became top officials in George W. Bush’s administration, invading Iraq
themselves to make sure their dream for the Israelis came true. And what a
nightmare it proved to be. Nor should we forget that one of that
plan’s loudest advocates during the Bush administration -- John
Bolton -- is now Trump’s national security advisor. In other words, there’s
plenty of blame to go around and plenty to worry about.
Does
Anyone Remember Yemen?
If
there is a place in the greater Middle East even more desperate than Syria, it
has to be Yemen. With U.S. logistical and financial support,
Saudi Arabia has waged a cruel air war against the Houthis, a home-grown
movement that in 2015 overthrew the government of president Ali
Abdullah Saleh. What is the Saudi interest in Yemen? As in their support for a
potential UAE-Israel-Russia-U.S. alliance in Syria, they’re intent on fighting
a proxy war -- and someday perhaps via the U.S. and Israel, a real war -- with Iran.
In
this case, however, it seems that the other side in that war hasn’t shown up.
Although, like the Iranian government and most Iranians, the Houthi are Shi’a
Muslims, there is little evidence of Iranian involvement in Yemen.
That hasn’t stopped the Saudis (with American support)
from turning that country into “the worst humanitarian crisis in the
world.” Their destruction of infrastructure in rebel-held areas has collapsed a
once-functioning public health system, touching off a cholera epidemic, with the
World Health Organization reporting a total of 1,105,371 suspected
cases between April 2017 and June 2018. The infection rate now stands at 934
per 10,000 people.
Even
worse than the largely unchecked spread of cholera, however, is Yemen’s
man-made famine. Photographs from the country display the familiar
iconography of widespread hunger: children with stick-like limbs and blank,
sunken eyes. As it happens, though, this famine was not caused by drought or
any other natural disaster. It’s a direct result of a brutal Saudi air campaign
and a naval blockade aimed directly at the country’s economic life.
Before
the war, Yemen imported 80% of its food and even today, despite a disastrous
ongoing Saudi/UAE campaign to blockade and take the port of
Hodeidah, Yemen’s main economic center, there is actually plenty of food in the
country. It now simply costs more than most Yemenis can pay.
Because the war
has destroyed almost all economic activity in Houthi-controlled areas, people
there have no money with which to buy food. In other words, the Saudi offensive
against Hodeidah is starving people in two ways: directly by preventing the
delivery of international food aid and indirectly by making the food in Yemen
unaffordable for ordinary people.
We
Have to Talk about It
With
President Trump and his secretary of state now talking openly about a
possible “escalation between us and the Iranians,” there is a real risk that
some combination of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia could initiate
a war with Iran. If there’s one lesson to be learned from U.S. wars since 9/11,
it’s “don’t start another one.”
For
more than 70 years, Americans have largely ignored the effects of U.S. foreign
policy in the rest of the world. Rubble in Syria? Famine in Yemen? It’s
terribly sad, yes, but what, we still wonder, does it have to do with us?
That
Part of the World doesn’t wonder about how U.S. actions and policies affect
them. That Part of the World knows -- and what it knows is devastating. It’s
time that real debate about future U.S. policy there becomes part of our world,
too.
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Rebecca
Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San
Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who
Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books
include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United
States and Letters from Nicaragua.
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Copyright
2018 Rebecca Gordon. Reprinted with permission. May not be reprinted
without permission from TomDispatch.
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