Rural Ruminations

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Americans sometimes seem oblivious to the extent to which developments in the Middle East affect their own lives.

According to statements from al-Qaida, the three main issues that sustain the struggle against the West and America are: America’s tacit and active support of repressive Muslim regimes; the stationing of infidel (American) troops on holy Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia; and the Arab-Israeli conflict. These elements also fuel broader Arab and Muslim distrust of the United States. Absent a fair and even-handed resolution of these issues, the threat of Muslim extremist terrorism against the United States will persist, and it is highly unlikely that there will be peace either there or here.

The two most important players in the Israel-Palestine drama in the recent past have been Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon. Arafat, who died a little more than a year ago, presided over decades of Palestine violence that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke last week, was an architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and bore some responsibility for the massacres of civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. They both had blood on their hands. The other thing that they had in common was the ability to lead their own people.

Arafat never shut down the violence against Israelis perpetrated by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, two extremist Palestinians groups. His apologists said he couldn’t do so. Detractors said he chose not to. Nevertheless, he was indisputably Palestine’s leader. Even though Arafat presided over the corruption of the Palestinian movement, he was the only Palestinian leader capable of exercising some control over the diverse elements in the movement. Today, with Arafat gone, the Palestinian movement is fragmenting. Even Fatah, the leading party in the movement, is coming unstuck. Mahmoud Abbas, the current Fatah leader, has not even been able to exert control over his own party, let alone over others in the Palestinian Authority such as Hamas, who oppose his stated goal of a two-state solution: Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace.

Sharon split from the Likud Party over the issue of withdrawing from all Israeli settlements in Gaza and a few in the West Bank. His supporters said it was a precursor to a peace settlement. His detractors said it was a cynical move to obviate the need to terminate additional West Bank settlements. In any case, current polls indicate that Israelis still favor him over other leaders, such as Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud. If, as is likely, Sharon is unable to return to power after his latest stroke, who will lead Israel?

Recent history indicates that as long as there are incessant attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the majority of Israelis understandably will favor a hard line approach to the Palestinians. Sharon would seem to be the only leader capable of containing his country’s extremist elements.

It looks very much as if future leadership in both Israel and Palestine will be unwilling or unable to seek a peaceful solution to their current impasse. If that proves to be true, then those on both sides who do not want a political solution will gain the upper hand. In Palestine, those who would like to “drive Israel into the sea” will probably arrogate more power to themselves and if that happens, the same views will become far more acceptable in other Arab countries. In Israel, those who promote further Israeli settlement of the “biblical lands” (the West Bank) are likely to gain power.

Neither of these possible outcomes favors American national interests in the Middle East. As long as this situation between Palestine and Israel continues to be marked primarily by provocation and hostility from both sides, any real solution is unlikely to be possible.

It is in the American national interest to find a peaceful and just solution to the Middle East impasse. Any such solution would displease extremists on both sides, but without it, the struggle is likely to persist. As long as it does and the real issues in the conflict are not addressed, instability will reign in the Middle East, and that will foster worldwide Muslim extremist hostility toward the West in general and the United States in particular. The way things are going today, it seems pure fantasy to think that, without leaders such as Arafat and Sharon, the Arabs and the Israelis are going to work out this problem on their own.

The question we must ask ourselves is whether we can afford to continue our hands-off policy. It has been the rare U.S. administration that has gone on record with concrete plans to find a solution. This reluctance results from the assumed political danger of openly pushing a policy that would more than likely end the Israeli settler movement as the quid pro quo for the end of Arab violence. The settler movement has strong support in the American-Jewish community and has recently gained additional support from many fundamentalist American Christians. So we are faced with a true Hobson’s choice: sit back and deal with radical Muslim terror without addressing some of its most critical origins, or intercede in a matter where there is much uncertainty.

It is an unfortunate fact that the United States is the only country in the world that still has the resources and the credibility to intercede on this issue with any hope of ending the decades-old violence. The constructive use of power and influence is never easy. Perhaps it’s time for President Bush to create his own legacy and win a Nobel Peace Prize in the bargain.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon and Iran. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

ust about everyone in the US who has access to the press is currently beating on  Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, blaming him for the failure of the most recent Camp David talks.  President Clinton, needing redemption, and his wife, needing votes, seem to be leading the charge from the political side and even such a serious and unbiased commentator on Middle East affairs as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has joined in the fray.

The rap on Arafat is that he has made no compromises on any important matter of any real substance.  Not only that, he hasn’t even had any proposals to make that could conceivably lead to compromise.  That is probably all true, but there always two sides to every argument.  Unfortunately, the Palestinian side is largely unknown to the American people.

Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were ejected from their homes by the Israelis in 1949.  It was safer to throw them out of the new Israel than to try to assimilate them.  Since 1949, there have been a number of wars between the Israelis and their Arab neighbors.  The Israelis have won them all and have occupied vast tracts of Arab land.  They have occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River (the Palestine homeland) and East Jerusalem (their Capital) both once part of Jordan. They have occupied the Sinai and the Gaza strip, both once part of Egypt, the Golan Heights which had been part of Syria and Southern Lebanon.  In short, at one time they had more than tripled the land mass they had originally occupied.

Most of that land was taken in the 1967 war.  The Sinai was returned to Egypt for political advantage and because there was no emotional Israeli attachment to those barren lands.

Since 1967, a succession of Israeli governments has systematically colonized the West Bank and East Jersulam with Israeli settlers.  This was done for the sole purpose of making the return of those lands (Judea and Samaria of the Old Testament) to the Palestinians difficult or, preferably, impossible.  There are very strong forces in Israeli which do not wish to give up a square centimeter of the occupied territories.  If you are given to dark conspiracy theories, you could make a fairly good construct that the Israelis engineered the 1967 war specifically to occupy the lands taken in that war – in the cases of Samaria and Judea, lands that have an extraordinarily emotional connotation to Jews everywhere.

The point to remember here is that none of this formal waging of war has been undertaken by the Palestinians.  They have no real government and no real conventional army and are dispersed throughout the world in their own Diaspora.  It has been their so-called, fellow-arab friends, the Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Egyptians who have not

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allowed any assimilation of Palestinians in their own countries and have kept the Palestinian refugees festering in virtual prison camps, while they sought to eradicate Israel.

The Palestinians are the lost people of the Middle East.  They have never been in charge of themselves under five hundred years of Ottoman, British, Jordanian and now Israeli rule.  Since 1949, they have become an almost exact analogy to the Jewish Diaspora.  The only major difference is the Holocaust.

During the period between the Second Partition of Palestine in 1949 and last month’s Camp David talks, just about  every move that the Israelis have made to consolidate their position in East Jerusalem and the East Bank has been condemned in the United Nations.  Only the United States and its perpetual and unflinching Security Council veto has prevented the Israelis from feeling the sting of sanctions for its policies in the occupied lands.  The resolutions which have avoided our veto (UN Resolution 242, for example) have all condemned Israeli policies in those lands. Why do we always forget these things?

So, when you start to condemn Arafat and the Palestinians, think of them for what they really are – a people pushed out of their homelands through no fault of their own whose only ability to get back the lands taken from them by force is to throw rocks at Uzi-armed Israeli soldiers or give up their national identity and heritage under American pressure and without protest.  Maybe that will help you understand where the Palestinians and their scruffy leader are coming from and why they do not seem eager to formally give away what they consider their birthright.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served five years in the Middle East.  He lives in Williston.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

What’s going wrong (again!) in the Middle East? Quite simply, the Israelis have announced their intention to build settlements in occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the Palestinians have resorted to the only effective weapon they have – unconventional warfare.  Palestinians see this struggle for their occupied land as war, a war they are compelled to fight without an army.  Their only weapon is a virtually unlimited supply of suicide bombers drawn from an angry, frustrated, fatalistic and hopeless Palestine.

Israeli settlements in Arab Palestine accomplish exactly what they were designed to accomplish.  They make it extremely difficult for any Israeli government to pull out the troops that protect their settlers in Palestine, thus continuing the Israeli occupation.  Furthermore, under  Netanyahu’s expansionist Likud government, new settlements are being encouraged, making the prospects for peace even dimmer.  Despite all their pious pronouncements about peace, Netanyahu and his supporters clearly display their preference for territorial gain in the ancient biblical lands over the peace process.

Does anyone care?  Do Americans care that the Israel they have unstintingly supported since 1947 is pursuing counterproductive and undemocratic policies that will almost certainly have major negative consequences for the United States, other western countries and perhaps the entire world?

Ten centuries before the birth of Christ, Jews ruled Samaria and Judea which together now comprise Palestine.  For that reason, Palestine has major, albeit ancient, emotional and religious meaning for many Israelis.  The Likud party, in power in Israel from 1977 to 1991 and again since 1995, has always actively promoted the establishment of Israeli settlements in Palestine in order to make it as difficult as possible for non-Likud Israeli governments to return Palestine to its rightful Arab owners.

What do Netanyahu and his supporters want?  Real peace would mean an end to Israeli settlements in Palestine.  If the Likud wants peace, they simply need to look at their last election to see that at least half of the population of Israel shares that goal with them.  Unfortunately, it is very clear that what motivates the Likud government is territorial expansion into the Arab lands of Jerusalem and Palestine.

If the Likud continues to expand through the creation of new settlements and through their refusal to carry out agreements (to withdraw from Palestine) already made in the peace process, the Palestinians will respond the only way they know how.  They will continue to murder and destroy Israelis whenever and wherever possible.  Netanyahu will blame them for the destruction of the peace process, vow revenge and carry out harsh retribution, conveniently forgetting that it was his very own expansionist policies that started things up again.  Violence begets violence and there will be no peace.

Now and then it appears that the Clinton Administration understands what is happening here and what is likely to come of these Likud policies.  The Clinton administration’s refusal to join in (and their subsequent veto of) the UN security Council censure of Israel for their settlement in Arab East Jerusalem is and was unconscionable.

Thirty years of US vetoes of legitimate UN resolutions condemning Israel’s international misbehavior in occupied Palestine have enabled, even encouraged, Israel’s expansionist policies and behavior.  Israel right or wrong!  Until that stops, there will be no peace.  We simply need to be a lot tougher.  We have to apply the same moral standards to Israel that we say we apply to the rest of the world.

Despite that, US policy is still designed to discourage Likud expansionism.  The reasoning behind our policy is very simple.  Likud expansionism will undo all of the hard-won gains of the peace process.  It  will lead to a much more hostile environment which will encourage the inherent violence of Muslim fundamentalism.  This will manifest itself in violence toward Israel and her allies, most definitely including the US.  We should not forget the World Trade Center bombing.

As violence escalates, our allies in the moderate Arab states where about 40% of the world’s oil is produced will be threatened.  The unfortunate byproduct of such violence is the accelerated radicalization of the Arab world, something that cannot further US interests.  We cannot afford to allow any of that to happen.  This is not just about Israeli interests, it’s about ours as well.  Unfortunately, they are not always identical.

Finally, our policy represents the right and fair thing to do.  It is time we acknowledge that Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular are no less human or decent than anyone else, Israelis included.  Despite the Israeli fixation on labeling Palestinians “terrorists”, they are no more “terrorists” than were the Minutemen in 1776.  After all, they are fighting for the same thing – the right to self government in their own land.  It was Jordan, Egypt and Syria who started and lost the 1967 war that enabled Israel to first occupy Palestine.  Who has paid the price?  Palestine.  It’s time to give Palestinians a fair shake, something they have not had at least since 1949.  If we are unable to do that, we will lose what little moral credibility we have left in the Middle East and the world will become an even more dangerous place.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served five years in the Middle East.  He lives in Brookfield, Vermont.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

One of the most enduring and uncritical international partnerships that the United States has had since World War II has been that which we have enjoyed with Israel.  It is very clear that the US has been and continues to be Israel’s primary international backer.

The single most important element in our continuing support has been the nearly total identity of American and Israeli national interests.  What was good for Israel was good for the United States.  We all knew it.

The recent visit of the newly- and narrowly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to America has provided a rather unsettling focus on the goals and policies of his Likud Party.  As a result, we must seriously question whether American and Israeli national interests remain identical in all matters concerning the Middle East.

Israeli withdrawal from the peace process which was initiated under Shimon Peres will bring the Middle East again to the brink of hostility.  Although Netanyahu (with less than 51% of the vote in the recent national election) gives lip service to the peace process, enough evidence has come from the Prime Minister and the Likud camp to make any American observer concerned about their true intentions.

How can the appointment of Ariel Sharon, the quintessential Israeli expansionist hawk, to an important security role in the Netanyahu cabinet reassure America?  We have recently learned that the Likud government has decided to postpone implementation of Israel’s previous commitment to pull out of Hebron, the last city in the West bank under Israeli control.  In addition, the Likud have announced their intention to expand Jewish settlements on the West bank, that they will not further consider exchanging the Golan Heights for peace with Syria, and never agree to any partition of Jerusalem.

All of these issues were left either open or undefined during the negotiations of the Peres Labor Government with its Arab neighbors under  the peace process. They are now apparently foreclosed.  Should we be concerned about this?  You bet we should!

Other than assuring the continuing existence and viability of the Israeli State, America has only one overriding interest in the Middle East and that is achieving a lasting peace between the Arabs and the Israelis.  Without such a lasting peace, a level of instability will return to the area and create nothing but problems for us.

In the absence of a lasting peace, we can expect a return to the turmoil that characterized the Middle East before the peace process was begun.  In response to these new Likud policies, we can and should expect a resurgence of aggressive Muslim fundamentalism led by Islamic militants in Iran and elsewhere in the Arab world against the more moderate or pro-western Arab states like Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates.

This will likely be supported by states in the region that hold grudges against America – Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq – and will almost certainly lead to a resurgence of anti-American and anti-western (as opposed to anti-Israeli) terrorism and to increasing Muslim fundamentalism, none of which is in our interest.

Ultimately, Gulf oil supplies may be threatened as they were during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and we will again be placed in a position of choosing between oil shortages and intervention.  And don’t kid yourselves about American altruism, alongside Israel’s well-being, our primary interest in the Middle East is continuing easy access to oil!

The key element here is our commitment to the “continuing existence and viability of the Israeli state”.  It is not in our national interest to support either actively or passively the aggressive intentions of the Likud and its allies to turn back the clock on the peace process and pursue Israeli territorial expansion at the expense of the Arabs.  Such actions will unquestionably lead to Arab-Israeli conflict in the region.  This is no time for America to procrastinate or to humor the Likud.  It is time to be clear in our rejection of those policies.  America must never have to choose between Oil and Israel.

We need to recognize that our American national interests are increasingly different from those of the Likud and its allies.  We cannot afford to support or in any way condone the aggressive expansionism that is creeping back into Israeli foreign policy under the Likud government.  We have to say very clearly that such regression is not acceptable to us.

What right do we Americans have to try to dictate to the Israeli government?  Perhaps the fact that America contributes 8-10% of the $40-odd billion Israeli budget, over $3.3 billion annually, gives us the right to say that peace is more important than Israeli expansion and that we will not support an Israeli withdrawal from the peace process.   That fact may underlie Netanyahu’s clear policy, which just lead to a serious strike in Israel, to make the Israeli economy less dependent on foreign resources.

It is important that the Likud government understand that American interests are fundamentally different from their own.  If that means the withdrawal of our financial support to the Israelis for quitting the peace process and pursuing expansionism, then so be it.  It is in America’s vital interest to do everything possible to see the Middle East peace process successfully concluded and a lasting peace established.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief.  He served in Lebanon and Iran in the sixties and seventies and lives in Brookfield.

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[Originally published in the Burlington Free Press.]

The real issue now is not how we got into o the Persian Gulf War, but what happens when it is over and who the winners and losers will be.

Will the outcome be clear cut enough to answer that question?

If the United States suffers heavy casualties, it will pay the attendant political and economic costs as well.  On the other hand, if we force the Iraqis quickly and conclusively out of Kuwait without suffering extensive casualties, we will be able to claim that we have won.

However, if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein remains in charge of his country- regardless of the damage he sustains – he will be considered to have won by his own people and by most of Arabs as well.

The only clear-cut winners will be Iran and Israel.  Iran will win because we will have accomplished what it could not in eight years of war with Iraq – the destruction of the Iraqi military machine.  This will give the Iranians clear advantage in their quest for dominance in the Gulf.

Israel will win because if we had not gotten involved in this war, Israel would likely have faced a nuclear-armed Iraq at some point in the next five years.  Now they won’t have to take on the Iraqis themselves.

Our Arab allies in the Gulf will be on the winning side if we win, but only if they are not destabilized by their own citizens after the war.  There were pro-Iraq demonstrations by over 300,000 people in Morocco on Feb 3.  Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states also appear vulnerable to destabilization as well as Lebanon and perhaps Syria.

Why are there so many variables?  The answer is quite simple – Palestine.  There will be neither peace nor stability in the Middle East until the Palestinians have a homeland.

Arabs aw well as many Westerners and some Israelis feel that Israel’s refusal to address this issue is unjust.  It is the only issue that unites the Arabs.  The unflinching U.S. support of Israeli policy has made Arabs angry and frustrated with the United States as well.

For over 40 years, since the Palestinians lost their homeland in the wars of 1948 and 1967, we have ignored their legitimate aspirations for their own homeland.

We are told over and over that the situation in Kuwait was important enough to our national interests to have us commit more than 5000,000 of our citizens and tens of billions of dollars to the war.  If it’s that important, we cannot pack our bags and come home afterward without trying to bring some stability to the region.

The Palestinians have hurt themselves horribly in the United States buy supporting Saddam.  The fact that they have done so is a measure of their desperation.

U.S public opinion has always strongly supported Israel.

Americans have not forgotten the Holocaust.  Until very recently, Israel has been able to manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East so that it has always served Israeli interests, but not necessarily our own.  Out interest now must be stability.

There is pretty good reason to believe that the Arab states would sign a peace treaty with Israel guaranteeing its border in exchange for return of the occupied territories to their pre-1967 owners; creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state on the west Bank and a change in the status of Jerusalem.

The Unites States should certainly support that solution and should be prepared to act as a guarantor to it.

The problem is that the Israelis are no0t interested.  Israeli policy, particularly under the Shamir administration, has been to move settlers to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The purpose has been to establish some sort of permanent, legitimate Israeli presence there.

Given our past unflinching support of Israel on the Palestine issue and our demonstrated national interest in the area, it would serve us well to lead the way to an equitable solution of the Palestine problem.

This will not be an easy course.  There will be much Israeli resistance.  The Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, and Palestinian support of Iraq have further polarized feelings.

Now we “owe” the Israelis for staying out of the Gulf war.  In repayment, will we be asked to ignore the Palestine problem?

The United States is unequivocally Israel’s best friend in the world and perhaps the only country with enough influence to move the Israelis toward peace.  Do we have the resolve to put that kind of pressure on an old friend?

If we don’t get involved, or if we obstruct a solution as we have in the past, we will have to fold our tent and go home.  That will almost certainly bring instability to the Middle East and International terrorism.

The Middle East is America’s tarbaby.  Having made the major commitment of a war against Iraq, we now have one hand stuck in the tar.  The only way to let go of that tarbaby is to find an equitable solution to the Palestine problem.  If we can’t or won’t do that, there are likely to be hard times for us ahead.

Haviland Smith of Brookfield spent 24 years as a Soviet bloc specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency, including time in Tehran and Beirut.

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