'Hypocritical' Washington losing its hold on Israel

Shimon Peres was in town this week to get a blast of advice from the US Administration over the Israeli invasion of Palestinian villages.

They should get out "immediately", they were urged by the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, and while the Israeli Foreign Minister was in having his ear bent by the National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, President Bush just happened to drop by "unexpectedly" to reinforce the message.

Mr Peres said Mr Bush warned that violence in the Middle East made it harder for the US to maintain its anti-terrorism coalition. "He would like very much the flames to go down, and I told him we shall do whatever we can to reduce them," Mr Peres said.

But by some accounts not all the Administration were singing off the same hymn sheet. After he met the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Peres was clearly pleased. "I didn't hear a word of criticism. I heard a good deal of understanding," he told journalists.

The argument that has divided the Administration between hawks and doves is whether to extend the war aims to the toppling of Saddam Hussein. It is mirrored in the question of how to deal with Israel. There are those, led outspokenly within the Administration by the deputy defence secretary, Mr Paul Wolfowitz. He is quietly backed by Messers Cheney and Rumsfeld, who view Mr Powell's wooing of unreliable allies among the Arab states as a dangerous imperative that is undermining US key strategic interests. Nor do they approve of attempts to lean on the Israelis. Israel, a democracy surrounded by dictatorships, is Washington's only true friend in the region, or so the argument goes.

It is a point of view that is shared by many of the legion of uncritically pro-Israeli columnists in the press. William Safire writes in the New York Times that, while the US dispatches troops to hunt down Osama bin Laden, "it is the height of hypocrisy to demand that our ally refrain from hunting down killers harboured by the PLO". Such hypocrisy, he argues, is compounded by the nods and winks to the Jewish lobby in the US suggesting that US reprimands of Israel are merely for show. To an extent he has a point: this Administration may publicly reproach the Israelis but it will go no further, as Israel knows. When the Administration of President Bush's father threatened to withhold some of the $3 billion in subsidies paid to Israel every year by the US it contributed to his election defeat.

When he went down to talk to the House Committee on International Affairs on Wednesday, Mr Powell got more of the same in the guise of arguments about definitions of terrorism. Mr Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York, also denounced US demands for Israeli restraint as hypocrisy.

"We are telling them to do as we say, not as we do," he said. "The difference between the Israeli policy and our policy as I see it, at least at this point, is that ... they've been successful in hitting their targets, and we've been less successful in reducing collateral damage," Mr Ackerman said.

Florida's Robert Wexler added: "It seems to me that the Israeli position is not only similar \to that of the US, but exactly the same."

However, Mr Powell was having none of it. "In the Arab-Israeli dispute," he said, "we've got to find a way to move forward and not just continue to have discussions as to what is terrorism, what isn't terrorism, what is a targeted assassination, what is murder, what is provocation, what is retribution. It is a vicious cycle, and as a result of this cycle, there has been no improvement in the region in the almost nine months that I've been Secretary of State. I've heard all the arguments."

Both sides, he said, must "break out of their patterns of behaviour," move on, and "and not simply debate whether something is correctly categorised or not." When Mr Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, asked if that means Israel is supposed to accept terror, Mr Powell said Israel as a democratic state has a right to defend itself "in a way that it sees fit and appropriate". However, the State Department would continue to speak out against assassinations which impede a return to peace talks.

He said he understood the rationale for occupying Palestinian villages but "when they do it, and come out, the question I have to ask myself is 'Fine. Is the situation better? Are we any closer to preventing it from happening again?' So far the answer has not been yes yet." Mr Powell said he had "no illusions about the nature of the regimes in Syria and Iran... Yet Iran is willing to provide search and air rescue" for US pilots who may be downed in Iranian territory during the Afghan operation. "Syria has indicated it wants to at least talk to us about some things." Similarly, "we have no illusions" about Sudan, which is also on the state-sponsor list. "But they have been very co-operative" in sharing intelligence, among other things.

Such talk is anathema to those whose lists of terrorist-supporting states include all the above and who talk with enthusiasm of the next phase of the war.

psmyth@irish-times.ie