USA Today
October 10, 2001
By Barbara Slavi

WASHINGTON -- The campaign against Osama bin Laden is severely testing the United States' relations with its closest Middle East ally, Israel, which many Muslims say is a root cause of the Sept. 11 attacks. How Israel deals with its long-festering conflict with the Palestinians -- and how they respond -- could determine the fate not only of peace prospects but the Arab world's fragile support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition.

In the early stages of the conflict against bin Laden and his Afghan protectors, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is proving to be a more agile diplomatic player than Israel's government, a role reversal from the 1991 Gulf War.

A decade ago, Arafat sided with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and encouraged Palestinians to demonstrate against the United States. This time Arafat quickly proclaimed support for the anti-terrorism coalition and even gave blood for U.S. victims.

On Monday, he went so far as to send in Palestinian police to quell a pro-bin Laden demonstration in Gaza. And, for the first time since a Palestinian uprising began a year ago, the police shot and killed two demonstrators.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initially tried to justify strikes against Palestinians by equating them with bin Laden's terrorists. Under intense U.S. pressure, Sharon pulled back. But last week, in response to continued Palestinian attacks, he gave the go ahead for Israeli forces to enter Palestinian-ruled areas. On Tuesday, Israeli bulldozers flattened farmers' fields in Gaza.

During the Gulf War, Israel accepted U.S. pleas to stay on the sidelines, even when 39 Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on the Jewish state. Arab members of the U.S. coalition refused to participate if Israel got involved.

Sharon, frustrated at being asked to play a similar role in this conflict, assailed the Bush administration 3 days before the bombs began to fall on Afghanistan. He accused the administration of "appeasing" Arab countries by not targeting anti-Israel terrorist groups, and compared U.S. policy to the British sellout of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in 1938.

The White House called Sharon's comments "unacceptable." Sharon quickly apologized and both sides declared the incident over. But the remark by the leader of a nation that has received the most U.S. aid in the past 2 decades -- $60 billion -- has left a bitter aftertaste, U.S. officials say.

Other strains since Sept. 11:

• The United States did not block Syria from joining the United Nations Security Council on Monday even though Syria is on a State Department list of 7 nations that sponsor terrorism.
• Last week, President Bush, who had blamed Arafat for refusing to halt the Palestinian uprising, made an unexpected gesture. Bush said for the first time that a Palestinian state was part of his "vision" for a Middle East peace. Sharon aides criticized the comment as rewarding violence.
• On Sept. 21, Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote to the sponsors of a Senate bill that would have punished Arafat's Palestinian Authority for failing to follow through on its pledge to forgo violence. The bill "would be counterproductive to our coalition-building and peace process efforts and we would like to see it withdrawn," Powell wrote. The bill was withdrawn.

The Bush administration's desire to build a broad coalition against bin Laden keeps it from ostracizing Arafat, who remains the symbol of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Washington also views Arafat as the only Palestinian who can restrain militants and negotiate a peace agreement.

The abrupt change in diplomatic favor -- Washington courting Arafat and chiding Sharon -- has upset some Israel supporters.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, says Sharon's "appeasement" charge was "perhaps an unfortunate choice of words but was an expression of cumulative frustration." Powell has spent hours on the telephone with Sharon and Arafat but has not visited the region. Instead, he is going soon to Pakistan and India, another set of rivals whose long territorial dispute not far from Afghanistan also could crack the U.S. coalition.

Israel's supporters insist that there is no real link between the attacks on the United States and U.S. support for Israel. Hoenlein notes that enemy No. 1 for bin Laden and his followers are pro-Western regimes throughout the Muslim world. "The enemy is democracy and blue jeans, not Israel," Hoenlein says.

But the Palestinian issue has been a central Muslim cause for more than 50 years, a fact bin Laden highlighted in a video broadcast on Sunday.

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland, said the Palestinian issue was paramount to most Arabs. "There are other reasons for anger in the region but there is no escaping that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a big part of it," he says.