Roundtable

7 January 2001, PASSIA

American-Palestinian Relations and the New Administration of President Elect George W. Bush

[Photos]

Less than two weeks prior to the inauguration of Gorge W. Bush, PASSIA invited Dr. Fu’ad Mughrabi to comment on today’s political climate in America, its bearing on the Palestinians and to outline his anticipations concerning the new administration’s role in the Palestinian – Israeli – American triangle. The following represents an edited summary of Dr. Mughrabi’s presentation which served as a starting point for broader discussion between the participants.

Dr. Fu’ad Mughrabi

First of all I would like to make some general comments, which may be obvious to most of you, but nonetheless I’ll make them anyhow just to set some kind of context for my comments later on.

The first point: is that historically, there has been a tendency in the Arab world to view the United States through the prism of a power that is driven mostly by the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby. Even from the early 40s, and especially in 1947-48, there were a number of people who became known as Arabists who would always argue, and who found receptive ears in the Arab world. The basic argument was that American interests are primary in the Arab world – therein is the pre-dominant interest for the United States and that Americans are victims of a nasty propaganda; firstly about the Middle East in general and specifically about the Palestine issue and that if Americans were somehow to be told the truth…….that Americans because they are fundamentally decent people and because they were anti-colonial in the sense that they were criticizing the British and the French, that Americans would become even-handed in their approach to the Middle East.

I remember when I was getting ready to go to the United States as a young student, in 1960, an American professor from Yale who was here doing archaeological research asked me what I was going to study. I said I wanted to go study English Literature. Later on of course I changed my mind and studied other things but my love was literature. He said that’s a wonderful thing to do because perhaps you can then write the antitheist to “Exodus” (Leon Uris’ Exodus)…. That would dispel all the myths and the propaganda that has swept all North America because of that book  and the movie and the soundtrack and so on and so forth. So the notion of American innocence was promoted by Arabists and it found a receptive ear among many people in the Arab world. The notion that if somehow Americans were told the truth – then Americans would be even handed. There’s along history to all of this but without going into great detail, one can argue that American interests -  the way the United states defined their interests, based on what we call in international relations the school of political realism, an assessment of power, ways to achieve power, to promote power and to protect it; this definition of American interests prevailed and American policy in the Middle East is predicated fundamentally on an assessment (it’s a piglet assessment) of American interest , based on political realism based on a clear understanding of the array of forces on the ground, and where American interests lie and who does what to promote American interests.

I always argue that even if you were to eliminate all Zionist influence from the United States, ‘cause if all of a sudden the lobby disappeared completely from the United States, I seriously doubt that American policy in the Middle East would change in any appreciable manner, because American policy in the Middle East is consistent with American policy towards South America, towards Africa, towards other parts in the world. It is predicated fundamentally on an assessment of American interest and the mechanisms that are suitable to promote and enhance that interests. 

Now the power of the lobby becomes significant largely because it agrees with that assessment of American interests. There are times historically when differences begin to emerge between what the Israeli lobby and the Israelis and others want in the Middle East and what American interests are. There are certain issues that have….just for the record I’ll list a few; the sale of weapons, Saudi Arabia back in the early days of Reagan administration, the issue of settlements during the Bush administration, and the issue of the loan guarantees, the issue of the sale of weapons to China during Clinton’s administration……in all of these issues, perhaps the most hard issue of these was the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the early days of the Reagan administration….in all these cases, the American administration always prevailed.

The second comment I want to make quickly, is that the notion that the Republicans somehow are better for us than Democrats: I know that no Democrat can be nominated for the presidency without significant financial support from Jewish groups or pro-Israeli groups, I know that most Jews vote for democrats and so on and so forth, but the notion that Republicans are somehow better for us than Democrats I think is a false one. It is predicated on a mechanistic view of American politics. Somehow, the notion that American politicians respond to pressure points by different groups. This mechanistic view of American politics may lead to this kind of analysis; I think it’s false though. I think that there are some stylistic differences between Republicans and Democrats. I always remember George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, used to say the exact same thing that Ralph Nader now says, George Wallace used to say that there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans, and this is exactly what Ralph Nader said. I think he is basically correct. When it comes to the issue of substance they are no differences; they’re two different teams that compete with each other for the management of the American economy, for the management of the American policy, and so on. There are no substantive differences. The difference are mostly at the level of symbolic politics; the management style. They have implications within the body politic in the United States; one would give more aid to the education, one would give less aid to the education, one would give, perhaps on the issue of legislation, policies that are more fellable to big business,…..but given the fact that the Democratic party has shifted towards the center and to the right of the American body politic, I don’t think there’s any significant difference, and I think that the result of the elections indicated that fact.

The fact that the elections were so close represents to me the fact that the differences were like those between “tweedledum” and “tweedledee”.

Now there are certain constants in American policy which I would like to just remind you of: As I said earlier they both adopt political realism, they deal with power on the ground, they project power, they define interests and so on.

US interests in the Middle East has been constant since the days of the Truman Doctrine; the Middle East is defined as an area of vital interest, not our part, but the Gulf area where the oil is. The use of the word vital means that they’re willing to go to war to fight for their interests in the region. This hasn’t changed from the Truman Doctrine, to the Reagan doctrine, to the Clinton doctrine, everybody has a doctrine; it’s the same thing, it repeats the same constants. 

Both Republicans and Democrats agree to an interventionist mode in the world today, it’s not that the Republicans are isolationists and the Democrats are interventionists, both are interventionists. The very first thing that Colin Powell said is that ‘we a role to play in the world today, that includes the willingness to use force to achieve objectives’.

I remember in August 1982 while there was heavy shelling of Beirut a group of us – we were in Washington and we went to the Saudi Embassy and we met with the Saudi Ambassador at that time his name was Faisal Hjilan, and his wife played a fairly active role with the wives of other diplomats and so on, and he was receptive, so we thought we would try to give him some ideas to suggest to his government as ways to pressure in order to force the Americans to put pressure on Israelis to stop the madness. As we were sitting there, the Ambassador goes to the phone and he went and he returned very happy: he said I have some good news for you; Alexander Haig has just resigned and I have it on good authority that George Shultz is going to be the new secretary of State. He said that this is our man and we’re very happy, he knows us . … Well it became a fact that George Shultz was probably, and we keep seeing that everybody who comes in is even more pro-Israeli than the previous one, but George Shultz went so far as to suggest at one point in an interview that he is going structure things so that no matter who comes afterwards, they will never, ever be able to undo the “special relationship” with Israel. The very first thing he does is he calls his ‘buddies’ in the Gulf and he says “ don’t call me, don’t try to see me, I don’t want to hear from you.” This was the man who was a ‘friend of Arabs!

So the notion that republicans are better for us is very misleading and it is very dangerous; the notion that these people make the Gulf people happy…..but history tells us that we should not expect much from them. 

A third general point which I think deserves to be emphasized and that is: people in the Arab world tend to project on the American system their own conceptions. They look in the mirror and they see themselves, for example, Arab officials pay very little attention to the old public opinion, and therefore dismiss the impact of public opinion in the United States. “We don’t care about public opinion, and we don’t think that American officials pay much attention to it”.

In addition Arab officials tended to dismiss the importance of the old legislators. We elect the legislator and immediately we try to murder him!! The emphasis is only on the executive, and we think the same applies to the Americans. 

Arab officials tend to personalize politics, and they place too much importance on the role of the leader- the President, ignoring the fact that an American president has only limited lee-way because congress places tremendous checks and balances on him. The President promises this, this, that and the other …..and we think that’s it! The fact of the matter is that he’s got to negotiate all this, not only with congress but others, but we project on him our own peculiar ways of understanding the world. 

The last general point, you can’t make it in America today - in the foreign policy system and establishment - without subscribing to a certain kind of ideology and that ideology or that hidden transcript they all accept with some few exceptions, in the American frame of Arabs and Moslems in general, is that Arabs are held with contempt. Anti-Arab racism is widespread and deeply rooted in American culture. The attitude is condescending, patronizing; it’s a racist attitude. The Israeli is treated as an equal; as one of “us”; he’s part of “our culture”; he can be trusted. You can have an agreement with the Israelis and you can trust that they will honor that agreement, but if you have an agreement with the Arabs they cannot be trusted! The Arabs are treated as culturally inferior! Failures, hey are terrorists, xenophobes, ranting Muslim fundamentalists…but the bottom line is that agreements with Arabs cannot be trusted; you cannot trust that Egypt will play a role that we want it to play in the Middle east, but we can trust that Israel will play the role that we want in the Middle East. Not because of any analysis of behavior , but because these are Arabs and Moslems , and these are “part of us”.

Now for some specific comment about the new administration. I mean “what do I think of the new administration?”. I don’t want to deal with some of the details, but I want to bring up some issues that I think are specific in nature and deserve some focus.

I think the impact of the Intifada has been rather amazing, with the limited nature of this Intifada; the fact that this Intifada is not really an Intifada - it’s not really a national uprising in the sense that the earlier Intifadawas, despite the failure of the authority, despite the fact that we don’t have any mechanisms, we have not generated any mechanism to deal with public opinion in the world; despite many of the failures the Intifada has produced some rather interesting results. I look at it not as an event, but as a cascade, that has mushrooming implications.

For a long time; most analysts stopped talking about the relationship or the importance of the Palestine issue as an issue that could create regional and international complications. In the past, the Palestine issue was seen as important because it could generate. It has real implications that could lead to a war in the region and in the past during the Cold War, it had international implications - the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. Back in those days Kissinger’s analysis was that if he could reduce, eliminate Hanoi from the front pages in the New York Times, he would have succeeded. That is, to sign an agreement within the international dimension, to find an agreement as a regional dimension, and to leave Hanoi, to leave Saigon, the issue of Vietnam and the localized issues. The same thing applies here, that is to try to find agreement at the international level, at a regional level, in order to force the Palestine issue to be a localized issue; one that could be managed; managed by the Israelis with the help of the neighboring Arab countries. That is; while the issue will never be resolved completely, it can be managed, and for some years now, the Palestine issue became localized and most American analysts would say that it’s no longer something that can trigger a regional conflict. Now this has returned, now it’s clear that the issue here can in fact lead possibly to a regional conflict. And it does have international implications, it does have an impact on Europe; it has a very serious impact on Europe potentially. But that link has been re-established because of the Intifada, and I think it is extremely important.

The second point, which resulted from the Intifada, is that a link in a very practical way, has been made between American interests in the region, and American policy in the region at the level of the street. Some governments have had to deal with this because of pressure from the street. There is the notion that has always been there but it has never been clearly spelled out and has never been clearly understood in our desire to accommodate the United States in the region we‘ve always failed to focus on it and that is - that Americans……they’re not likely to change their policy because we succeed in establishing a kind of lobby, they’re not going to change their policies in the region because we all-of-a-sudden became adept at public opinion and public relations and because we have better spokespersons addressing American public. Americans would change if the cost to their policies in the region begins to escalate, begins to go up. If they have to pay a cost for their policies in the region. That is; if people begin to boycott their products and begin to attack their interests and so on and so forth. When the cost begins to go up, then American public support for Israel will evaporate; and I remember years ago being rather surprised and interested to find out that a study, one of the earlier studies of American public opinion, was done by Seymour Martin Lipsod, who was a sociologist in Berkley at that time. Lipsod found that in all analyses of American public opinion polls referring to support for Israel there was a hardcore of support for Israel of about 20-25% in the American public; the rest is soft support, which evaporates depending upon events. The hardcore 20 % support is the lobby’s support, is the lobby’s influence, and in all the public opinion polls I have done (probably no less than 15 of them; nation wide polls through gallop through the survey research I’ve done through the University of Michigan etc) all this always comes up is always getting validated and constantly reaffirmed. The hardcore is about 20-22 percent and then there’s the soft-core support. 

When the Americans were in Beirut, and the Marines were blown up, when the Americans were in Somalia and their soldiers were hurt, debate almost inevitably on all of the talk shows, the media, the call-ins; all the debate begins to go, “what are we doing there?”, “why are we doing it?” what’s in it for us?” “There’s no logic for us being there!” I imagine that the same thing would hold in anything related to Israel; why are we there? Why are we supporting Israelis?, what’s in it for us? That support would begin to evaporate.

In that connection, let me show you just quickly a recent article in Ha’aretz called, “An Intifada hits the market in Egypt”, I don’t know if you saw it. They talk about the British supermarket Sainsbury and its problems. In April 1999 the chain store’s turnover was about 59 million British pounds, and projection for April 2000 quoted 100 million British pounds. Very successful; looked like a very promising new chain in Egypt. Now the articles says; “since the start of the Palestinian Intifada, and all the more after the Arab League summit the campaign boycotting American, British and of course Israeli products, has been gaining momentum. Sainsbury is one prominent example. Egyptians now will not set foot in Sainsbury stores, the article says. “Sainsbury in Egypt may be the most recent victim of the Palestinian Intifada, but it is certainly not the last,” a member of the Egyptian chamber of commerce said: “wait until the Parliament session on Wednesday to hear how deep the Intifada has seeped,” referring to queries and demands several Parliament members are planning to present including the demand to revoke the citizenship of Egyptians married to Israelis, or big Jews to visit the grave of Rabbi Abu Hatzera and to have the Egyptian agriculture Minister submit a detailed report on the scope of agricultural normalization between Israel and Egypt. “Campaign Against American Products” predates the Intifada. In the summer radical Islamists, (this is what the article says), raised a war against the heretics and their supporters embodied by Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, they charged the Coca Cola’s logo when held upside down into a mirror reads “La Mohammed La Mecca” , and that Pepsi Cola Egypt’s name in English is no more than an acronym for a Zionist slogan which reads; “Pay Every Penny to Save Israel.” The point here is that, I don’t want to exaggerate the influence of the Intifada or the Arab street, I don’t want to exaggerate the importance of the movement, but I do think that there’s something there. If I were an American political officer in any Middle East capital, I would certainly be busy writing reports, trying to do an audit - a careful survey - of anti-American sentiment in the region. I would do a serious, careful audit of attempts to boycott American products and I would certainly be worried. This would not be the end of the American economic myth, but it is certainly an indication of something that is serious and it is an indication that if things get worse, attacks against American interests might become a great deal more severe.

Given the fact that we see quite clearly that the official Arab tone in dealing with America is very conciliatory and accommodating and yet the tone of the Arab street is very definitely anti-American.

Along with the increase of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernisms comes the fact that the Intifada is making it difficult for those who, under the pressure of the United States, have accelerated their attempts to normalize relations with the Israelis. Even before the Israelis were giving any evidence at all of any serious compromises on the issues – instead of linking normalization with Israel to its behavior on the issue of Palestine, or the issue of dealing with Syria and so on, we normalized we improve relations, we give them access and so on and then we start begging the Israelis and the Americans to force or to pressure the Israelis to compromise. But it’s clear now that at the level of the street that these governments are going to be under serious pressure not to normalization manners as they used to before.

The new administration in my opinion is more likely to focus on the regional question in the Middle East than on the Palestine-Israel issue. Based on the fact that the Palestine-Israel issue is really a very “no-win” issue to them the way it is currently formulated. They will follow an approach, I doubt that there will be anything new or innovative in their approach to the Middle East. I think that they will go back to dealing with the region; they will raise the specter of the “threat” from Iraq, Iran, and Syria. They will focus on weapons of mass destruction, on missiles, they will increase the rhetoric in that regard, they will show toughness against Iraq, but at the same time, they will begin to make, at times, softer statements or perhaps what might be interpreted as somewhat critical statements on Israel dealing with the Palestine issue and the issues of peace with Syria and so on. To the point where people would begin to assume that this is “a truth” and that there is something more coming from the administration in its desire to pressure Israel and to cater the Arab interests. I don’t think that this is going to happen. I think what’s going to happen is, at the level of symbolic politics, they will issue some formulations that may be will be designed to try to alleviate conditions in the region psychologically, and perhaps to protect their interest, but I don’t think there will be any shifts in substance at all.

They will work with the Europeans - perhaps better, but the Europeans will still be given a secondary role to play. This is not an American problem; it’s really a European problem and I think the European will be delighted to keep playing the same role they have played so far and I don’t expect anything significant will come from the Europeans.

The approach to dealing with Israel will, at times, be somewhat critical in order to alleviate anti-American tensions, but I think it will have no teeth and the fundamental reason there is that this new administration will not want to tangle with Congress on this particular issue. If they tangle with congress; if they enter into a confrontation with Congress on issues dealing with Israel, then they will be destroyed; that is their domestic agenda or any other serious agenda will be seriously hurt. So given the domestic restraints, given the international constraints, given the balance of force in the region, I don’t expect anything innovative or new, but I do expect a certain kind of symbolic shift in style. The danger of that is that the Arabs in general, especially our Palestinian comrades, will misinterpret it and see it as sign of hope.

The second thing is that we have numerous opportunities to take advantage of openings in the US. I see no reason for example, why the Palestinians should not have a very large mission in Washington with an educational officer who tries to find opportunities for Palestinian students to do graduate work, and to get scholarships and to get training and so on; a commercial officer who has a group of people working to try to find all kind of things; an information officer…numerous, numerous things… We should have a mission that is rational, modern, active, intelligent, that works in the US so that when you go to meet with people in Congress you know whom you’re talking to, you know the background of the person, you know the profile of that person, you know where that person comes from, which district, which state, who are the influential people, etc. There’s so much that can be done and should be done. I just…it’s beyond me, why as America impinges so much on our lives in such a destructive manner we just take it! And we think that by issuing declaration or giving a speech to the UN, we have resolved and dealt with the issue. We can analyze American policy endlessly but the failure is basically our failure, we have failed and we continue to fail. I think that these are painful things that we have to understand and to deal with.