WHEN the US intervened in 1999 to stop the mass murder of a Muslim minority by Slobodan Milosevic, it was savagely criticised by a Europe desperate to distance itself from the action.| Even though they were unable to solve the problem themselves. |
It is becoming increasingly de rigueur around the world and, for that matter, in certain segments of the Democratic Party, to place responsibility for all international crises on the US Government.
When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, it has attained the level of high fashion to ascribe the persistent absence of peace to a lack of adequate US "engagement" in resolving it.
If the administration of President George W. Bush were truly engaged, the argument goes, the chances for Middle East peace would be greatly improved. Next week's meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, between Israel and Arab representatives has the look and feel of more of the same. The State Department has sent out formal invitations to the event, but it remains unclear who will attend besides Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
If history is any guide, the meeting will yield unsatisfactory results, Israel will be blamed for failing to make the requisite concessions and the Bush administration will be criticised for its "failure to engage".
This analysis, simple and neat, and for so many so satisfying, would seem at odds with the historical record.
The problem is that all too often, those who blame the US for failing to deliver Mid-East peace are some of the world's most culpable enablers of Mid-East violence -- and those who are themselves actually responsible for erecting the fundamental roadblocks to a resolution of the conflict. This is so obvious as to almost go without saying -- except that the penchant for placing the blame on the US is so widespread and so addictive that it goes largely unsaid.
It was the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the UN's 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side. Instead, it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than choosing to co-exist with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the past 60 years.
This was not a decision made by the US.
The US is also not responsible for the Arab world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could have done so -- before there were any Jewish settlements there to serve as the public object of Arab grievance.
It was not the US whose leaders rejected peace with Israel, negotiation with Israel and recognition of Israel in 1967.
Nor can the Clinton government be criticised for failing to pursue Yasser Arafat with sufficient solicitude between 1993 and late 2000. The Clinton administration was, after all, the most ardent of suitors of the Palestinian leader -- only to be forced to watch Arafat reject an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank.
It was the Palestinian leadership, not the US, that decided in 2000 that, rather than accept an independent Palestinian state, its wiser course was to launch a four-year bombing campaign against Israel's civilian population. This particular decision has also resulted in suffering throughout the region, and instability beyond -- but it was a course of action chosen and implemented by the Palestinians and publicly supported by Arab states, not by the US.
When Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in 2005, the Arab world had the opportunity for a fresh start there.
Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity, the Hamas-dominated Palestinian leadership opted to begin and then intensify a missile-launching campaign against Israeli civilian centres. This choice led to Hamas's international isolation, and conditions in Gaza have grown steadily worse for Palestinians there.
For its part, the Arab world has stood by and permitted this to occur, and has once again remained unwilling to place the welfare of Palestinians ahead of its desire to stir opposition to Israel.
However significant the role of the US is in nurturing political settlements of international disputes, it simply cannot prevent the Palestinian leadership and itsArab backers from making extraordinarily poor choices or, in Clinton's parlance, "tragic mistakes". There is a marked tendency on the part of most of the world to cite the Bush administration's lack of engagement as the principal stumbling block to peace.
It isn't.
As for the Arab world, there is an even more pronounced habit of fingering the US as the party that has the means at its disposal to bring about a Middle Eastern settlement, or at least conditions favourable to a settlement.
If the past is any indication, the US does not ultimately possess those means. The Arab world does.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, whose treasuries overflow with petrodollars, are in a position to invest heavily in the Gaza Strip, create economic opportunities for its destitute population and dilute the toxin-filled atmosphere there.
They have not done so.
And won't, most probably, because they're not interested in the so-called "palestinian people", only in what this tool can do to further their aims.
Egypt could stop the flow of rockets and bombs into Gaza, where they are used to attack Israeli civilians. They have not done so.
Europe and Russia, whose lucrative contracts with Iran provide them with such enviable revenues, have been in a position to pressure Tehran into stopping the funding of Hezbollah, which assaults Israel from Lebanon, and Hamas, which assaults Israel from Gaza. They have not done so.
Under the circumstances, one might imagine that those in a position to improve the situation in the Middle East -- but who have chosen by their inaction to worsen it -- might feel sheepish about placing the onus for the absence of Middle East peace on the US.
The only thing in shorter supply than sheepishness when it comes to the Middle East, however, is helpfulness. As far as helpfulness is concerned, it is past time for those who complain most about the lack of American engagement to begin providing some.