| U.S.
role as honest broker in Mideast challenge
 UNITED NATIONS
(IPS)�When Yasser Arafat
was asked what he plans to do about the rising violence in the
West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian leader pointedly blamed the
military excesses on the Israelis.
As is obvious to everyone, Mr. Arafat declared,
the overwhelming number of killings were by heavily-armed Israelis
firing at unarmed Palestinians.
As the death toll rose to more than 220, almost
all of them Palestinians, the Israeli military is increasingly
deploying its U.S.-supplied Cobra helicopters, rockets and
missiles against Palestinian targets, including a vehicle carrying
a Palestinian militia leader who was killed in a rocket attack
recently.
"They are not my helicopters, they are not
my tanks, they are not my missiles," Mr. Arafat told
reporters during a recent visit to the White House. "I have
only one aeroplane."
The ongoing battle between machine gun-wielding
Israelis and rock-throwing Palestinians continues to remain
totally uneven and one-sided.
"A supposed peace-broker supplies one of
the sides with $2 billion worth of arms per year,�� says Mark
Steel, a columnist for the London-based Independent.
"So if they want to be truly neutral they should either cut
that out or, more controversially, send the Palestinians $2
billion worth of rubble.��
Traditionally, the United States has tried to
play the role of the "honest broker�� in mediating the
dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, and also between
Israelis and Arabs.
But the billions of dollars in U.S. economic
and military aid doled out to Israel every year�$1.9 billion in
outright military grants and $1.2 billion in economic aid�clearly
signal a far greater U.S. commitment to Israel than to the
Palestinians.
A public opinion poll conducted recently by the
Bir Zeit University in Israel revealed that about 97 percent of
the Palestinians feel that the United States can no longer be
accepted as an honest broker in any Middle East peace
negotiations.
The survey, which was conducted in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, also revealed that
Palestinians are increasingly of the view that future peace talks
should be sponsored either by the United Nations or by some other
international organization, not by the United States.
The growing anti-American sentiments among
Palestinians were also reflected in the strong support for
military attacks against U.S. targets in the Middle East.
The rising anger at the United States is
predicated primarily on the unrelenting U.S. support for the
Israelis�irrespective of whether Israel is right or wrong.
Israel, on the other hand, has continued to
prevail in the Middle East largely because of its prodigious
military strength built almost entirely on U.S. military aid and
the uninterrupted supply of state-of-the-art U.S. weapons systems.
According to the latest "Middle East
Military Balance, 1999-2000", published by Tel Aviv
University�s Jafee Center for Strategic Studies, Israel
continues to maintain a military superiority strong enough to face
any combination of Arab forces.
As numbers go, Israel has a total of 624
U.S.-supplied fighter planes compared with Syria�s 520, Egypt�s
498 and Jordan�s 91. Israel is also armed with 289 combat
helicopters compared with Syria�s larger fleet of 295, Egypt�s
224 and Jordan�s 68. On land, Israel has 3,895 battle tanks
against Syria�s 3,700, Egypt�s 2,535 and Jordan�s 872.
Last April, Israel announced plans to spend
over $3 billion through 2005, primarily on additional fighter
planes and helicopters, in order to strengthen the rapid mobility
capabilities of the military following Israel�s withdrawal from
southern Lebanon after 18 years of occupation. Israel invaded
Lebanon in 1982 and pulled out in May 2000.
Last year Israel came up with a $17 billion
dollar shopping list for new weapons�including additional
fighter planes, helicopters, military transports and
reconnaissance satellites�as a part of a U.S. compensation
package in return for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
The costs of withdrawal, along with the
construction of new bases, were expected to total more than 10
billion dollars. Over a 10-year period, the eventual costs of the
Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights were estimated at a
staggering 60 to 80 billion dollars�virtually all of it coming
from the United States.
Although the United States is also the primary
arms supplier to Egypt providing about 1.3 billion dollars in
outright military grants annually, Washington has always ensured
that the Israelis have a qualitative military edge over the
Egyptians.
Photo: More than
200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators chant and carry signs outside a
Jewish conference keynoted by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in
Chicago Nov. 13. |
