BY NORM DIXON
The US and British governments' carefully scripted countdown to a massive military attack on Iraq is being disrupted — possibly delayed — by mounting popular anger throughout the Middle East provoked by Israel's murderous escalation of its war on the Palestinian people.
Israel launched its vicious military invasion of the West Bank on March 29, on the pretext of fighting "terrorism". Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's real goal was to deliver a massive, crushing blow to the Palestinian national liberation movement by killing and detaining as many young Palestinian freedom fighters as possible, and terrorising and demoralising the entire Palestinian population.
At first, Sharon's escalation of his war of terror in the West Bank was embraced by Washington — as it has been for the past 18 months — as a legitimate front in the global "war on terrorism". In his first statement on the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invasion of Palestinian towns, on March 30, US President George Bush declared: "I fully understand Israel's need to defend herself".
Protests
Huge protests erupted daily throughout the Middle East. Protesters have condemned Washington's support for Israel's state terrorism against the Palestinian people and increasingly have also directed their anger at the region's timid pro-Western kings, emirs and dictators, demanding that they at long last take decisive action to support the struggle of the Palestinian people.
Among the increasingly popular demands were for Jordan and Egypt to sever diplomatic relations with Israel, for the removal of US military links, for Arab governments to allow their citizens to travel to Palestine to join the fight, for Arab regimes to provide military assistance to the Palestinian people and for a oil embargo to be imposed on the US.
As the protests in support of the Palestinian intifada have rapidly gathered momentum in size, militancy and passion, the undemocratic regimes in Jordan and Egypt — which are among Washington's closest allies — and Bahrain, the home port of the powerful US Fifth Fleet, have become increasingly fearful that they may be swept away.
The dilemma facing the region's governments was summed up by Abdel Qader Abdel Khazem, a Jordanian prayer leader quoted in the April 6 New York Times: "O Arab leaders, your people are boiling like water in a pot. You have to take them on your side against your enemy before they turn against you."
"The demonstrations are getting stronger by the day. The street is boiling. We are being forced to take steps that we don't want to take because people are angry and public opinion in the Arab world cannot be ignored", moaned Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muashar in the April 3 New York Times.
Violent police repression of anti-Israel protests in Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain has demonstrated their governments' collaboration with Washington and appeasement of Tel Aviv, fuelling the anti-government nature of the developing protest movements.
The response of the Jordanian monarchy has been particularly harsh, with the thousands of protesters who daily attempt to reach Israel's embassy in the capital Amman being turned back by riot police in armoured vehicles firing rubber bullets and tear gas. Even though all "unauthorised" protests have been banned in Jordan, more than 200 have taken place since March 29.
Cops have paid special attention to preventing protests inside Amman's Palestinian refugee camps reaching the city. Jordan's repressive monarchy rules over a population that is 60% Palestinian.
In Egypt, more than 50,000 protested on March 31, and again on April 1. After they were turned back from Israel's embassy, a hapless KFC restaurant bore the brunt of the crowd's rage. President Hosni Mubarek on April 3 was forced to downgrad diplomatic relations with Israel. As Egypt's foreign minister told the April 8 New York Times, the radicalisation "is reversing something that we in Egypt have managed to achieve, and that is acceptance of Israel".
In Bahrain, a protester was killed on April 5 as 20 people from a 3000-strong march succeeded in entering the grounds of the US embassy. The man was struck by a tear gas canister or a rubber bullet. It remains unclear whether the fatal shot was fired by Bahrain riot police or US marines. Demonstrators have called for the US military to be denied access to the Persian Gulf island.
Significant anti-US, anti-government protests have also taken place in the usually politically quiescent Gulf states of Qatar, Kuwait and — most worrying for Washington — Saudi Arabia. Vast semi-official protests have been permitted in Yemen, Morocco and Syria.
Big demonstrations in Iraq, Iran and Libya — all on Bush's hit-list of "evil-doers" because they remain too independent for Washington's liking — have backed their governments' declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people's struggle.
Iraq's wily dictator, Saddam Hussein, has moved to align his regime with the demands of the Arab masses, in order to make a US attack on his country more difficult.
Iraq's imposition of a 30-day oil embargo has increased Hussein's anti-imperialist image, making it even harder for pro-US regimes to openly side with a US-British attack without themselves becoming targets of their own peoples' anger. Libya and Iran have offered to join a boycott only if all other oil producers do likewise.
The willingness of Saudi Arabia to immediately increase production to cover Iraq's halt in exports has exposed its support for the Palestinian cause as being mere hollow words and proves that its greater loyalty is to the US. This is likely to fuel more opposition to the Saudi regimes and its other Arab Gulf allies.
US forced to change tack
Washington was forced to reconsider its public posture on Israel's all-out assault on the Palestinians as it became apparent how serious a threat to US interests the protest movement that rapidly mushroomed across the Middle East could become.
On April 4, after two days of intensive consultations between Bush, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice-President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Bush delivered a speech in which the president's previous unqualified support for Israel's assault was moderated.
"The unusually high-level speechwriting committee reflected the delicate task ahead: to soothe the Arab world by demanding Israeli restraint, without appearing to compromise Bush's vow to give no quarter to terrorists", reported the April 6 Washington Post.
While Bush called on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, he again indicated that Washington considered Israel justified in taking action to prevent "terrorism" and placed the blame for Israel's invasion on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Bush also announced that Powell would be sent to the region.
Powell's task is to try to secure a "ceasefire" and to begin discussions on a political settlement, perhaps based on a plan proposed by Saudi Arabia at the March 27-28 Arab League summit.
Bush gave no definite deadline for Israeli troops to withdraw and subsequently US officials gave varying timelines, from "immediately" and "without delay" to "as soon as possible". This was interpreted by Sharon as a green light to continue his offensive until Powell arrived in Israel on April 11. Sharon seized on the death of 13 Israeli soldiers during the IDF's invasion of Jenin and the suicide bombing of a bus inside Israel on April 10 to further delay a pull-out.
The leading lights of the Bush administration had reluctantly concluded that, unless the pro-Palestinian movement was defused, key pro-US regimes in the region — an important pillar of US imperialism's control of the world's major source of oil — may be in danger of being overthrown.
"The concerns here were that the foundations for peace in the Middle East were getting undone", a senior Bush administration official told the April 6 Washington Post. "One of the foundations for peace is that you do have several Arab regimes that have made their peace with Israel, and those were under real strain."
Washington also realised that the situation could spin out of its control if, under popular pressure and desperate to save their own skins, some Middle Eastern regimes were forced to provide military assistance to the Palestinians or allow their citizens to join the fight, prompting Israeli retaliation.
There remains a real possibility that Israel will open a "second front" against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, possibly triggering a war with Syria and even air attacks on Iran. Such a development would massively inflame the Middle Eastern masses' rage against Washington and its Arab allies.
An added concern for the US rulers is that some Middle Eastern oil producers may agree to the call by Iraq, Libya and Iran to impose an oil embargo, negatively impacting on the US economy.
War plans
Clearly, unless the US can calm the situation, it will all but be impossible for even the most pro-US Middle Eastern regimes to quietly acquiesce — let alone openly support — the US-British assault on Iraq.
In the current atmosphere, any unilateral US attack on Iraq would simply further inflame the Arab masses' anger and may result in pro-Western regimes toppling like nine pins.
In any event, it may be impossible for the US to put the genie back in the bottle. The vast majority of people who are marching in solidarity with the Palestinians will also take action in solidarity with Iraq.
Prior to the latest events in Palestine, Washington seemed determined to launch its all-out attack on Iraq, even without the backing of key Middle Eastern and European governments. The Bush gang's war plans are still in effect, even if their timing is now more fluid.
The Bush administration was confident that even if Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states opposed military action against Iraq in public, they would silently allow the use of their territory for the attack to take place.
The US would prefer to use these countries' airfields, ports and airspace to launch an attack on the scale that is being planned. One option that the US and Britain are seriously considering is the occupation of northern Iraq with up to 200,000 troops.
Before Israel's latest blitzkrieg, Washington and London were confident that the European Union would quickly fall into line once the war on Iraq was underway. Now, however, the depth of solidarity with the Palestinian people in Europe has made opposition to Israel's war a potent issue that even conservative political parties cannot ignore.
Big sections of the already huge global justice and anti-war movements have swung behind the struggle of the Palestinian people. This will now make European governments' backing for a US-British attack less likely. It could also influence France's vote in the UN Security Council for endorsement of military action.
Russia and China, also permanent members of the UN Security Council, had previously seemed unlikely to vote against a US-led war on Iraq. Both have signed on to the US "war on terrorism" and in return were given a US blank cheque to intensify repression against their own Muslim minorities under the guise of fighting "terrorism". This is now much less certain.
Since soon after September 11, Washington and London have been steadily cranking up the propaganda about Iraq's alleged possession of "weapons of mass destruction" and began to demand that Iraq allow UN weapons inspectors unrestricted access to every nook and cranny of the country, at any time of the day or night. The US has made it plain that a failure to allow inspectors to return will be the "trigger" for military action.
Yet, it is an open secret that the US has no intention of aborting its military plans, even if Iraq agrees to allow inspectors to return. Washington's only goal is the overthrow of Hussein and his replacement with a pliant, pro-US puppet regime: "regime change" in Bush-speak.
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has long been the goal of the US ruling class. It has especially been the rallying cry of the influential circle of right-wing warmongers that dominate the Bush administration, dubbed "hawks" by the US media. These same "hawks" pushed for full support for Sharon's murderous war.
Staged 'crisis'
A studiously stage-managed, carefully scripted "crisis" is set to unfold over the coming months to justify the US-British military attack on Iraq.
On May 30, the US is scheduled to present the UN Security Council with a new list — prepared in collaboration with the Russian government — of goods and technology to be banned under a more "targetted" regime of "smart" sanctions.
Washington will also insist on the resumption of the weapons inspection program which was suspended ahead of the US and Britain's four-day bombardment of Iraq in 1998. The US — either with the open support of the Security Council or its quiet acquiescence — will issue an ultimatum demanding Iraq's "compliance" within a certain time-frame, after which US and British military forces will begin to mass for the decisive attack.
Before the most recent "complications" in the Middle East, the likely dates being touted around Washington for the launch of the attack on Iraq was sometime between August and December.
In the clearest signal yet that the US-British war plans have been disrupted, the Bush administration postponed providing an intelligence briefing to UN Security Council members that would have contained "evidence" that Iraq is developing banned long-range missiles, supposedly to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
The decision to back off slightly in its propaganda war follows a similar decision by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government to delay the publishing of a "dossier" outlining evidence against Hussein's regime.
The April 7 New York Times reported that a diplomat who has seen the contents of Blair's dossier said it had been shelved to avoid fueling "anti-Western sentiments in the Arab world and because of concerns that the evidence was not sufficiently convincing ... 'It's non-specific', the diplomat said".
Following their meeting in Texas on April 6-7, both Bush and Blair confirmed that their policies remained directed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But they refused to be drawn on when such an attack would take place. Other US officials have begun to emphasis that no definite date for action against Iraq has been set.
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.