Rice 'new Middle East' comments fuel Arab fury over US policy
Rice 'new Middle East' comments fuel Arab fury over US policy
By Roula Khalaf,Middle East Editor
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 31 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 31 2006 03:00
As the Qana massacre yesterday carried the tragic face of Israel's Lebanon offensive across the world, the anger of Arab public opinion was directed not only at Israel but at a US administration that has resisted international and regional pressure for an immediate ceasefire.
The gruesome killings follow a week in which US has faced a torrent of criticism on Arab television screens and newspaper pages for its refusal to stop Israel's relentless bombings. The latest wave of anti-Americanism has been exacerbated by Condoleezza Rice's description of the war as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East".
Ms Rice might have been simply reiterating US policy. But rarely has a phrase caught as much attention and provoked as much anger from radicals and moderates, who have seen in it a new and more determined American strategy aimed against Arab interests.
Many analysts have made an association with the title of a 1993 book by the Israeli elder statesman, Shimon Peres. In the New Middle East, he argued that Jews and Arabs should develop economic relations to promote peace. It is an attitude, however, that Arabs have long regarded as an Israeli plot to control the Arab world without withdrawing from occupied lands.
"[Ms Rice's] calls for a new Middle East spell doom . . . for all Arabs," charged Khaled al-Maeena, editor of Saudi Arabia's Arab News.
According to al-Ayyam, the Palestinian daily, the expression "concealed a plan designed to impose US-Israeli hegemony by eliminating the option of resistance through the destruction of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements".
For the United Arab Emirates' al-Khaleej, the call was an American attempt to "make up for the US debacle in Iraq by waging, through Israel, a counter-attack in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories".
The Arab world is fond of conspiracy theories but the suspicions over the New Middle East underline people's bitterness towards US policies they perceive as misguided and contradictory.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Washington has sought to distance itself from authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and promote democratisation to counter religious extremism.
But in the bungled invasion of Iraq, freedom has been accompanied by bloody sectarian conflict. Elsewhere in the region, elections have produced gains for Islamist groups that are anti-American, prompting a US rethink of the strategy.
The Bush administration's reaction to the victory of the Palestinian radical Hamas movement earlier this year was to isolate the new government and deprive it of direct funding until it accepted Israel's existence and all previous peace plans, and renounced violence.
Most resented in the Arab world, however, is the fact that the US has looked at the region through the prism of the war on terrorism. Therefore, the administration seems to make no distinction between al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Middle Eastern groups involved in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and considered by Arabs as legitimate resistance movements.
Adding to the confusion is that the US has enlisted the support of the very regimes it has sought to reform, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to put pressure on Hizbollah and Hamas.
"The new Middle East is the one the administration believes it has been creating by pushing for democratisation and for counter-terrorism. What they see this doing is weakening an illegitimate actor [like Hizbollah] which inhibits democracy," says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Arab states are where the US wants them to be, but one of the strange inconsistencies is that people are not where the governments are - the people see the US perpetuating autocracy."
In Lebanon, Ms Rice has been insisting the US wants a "durable" ceasefire, which could lead to disarming Hizbollah, as demanded by UN resolutions, and allow Lebanese democracy to flourish.
Much of the rest of the world, however, has interpreted this attitude as a US attempt to give Israel more time to batter a tenacious Hizbollah.
But as Israel pounds Lebanon day after day and civilian casualties mount, Hizbollah has gained political support while the Lebanese government, supported by the US, appears to have been weakened.
A poll by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information and published at the weekend in Beirut's Daily Star, shows more than 89 per cent of respondents do not consider the US an honest broker while 87 per cent support Hizbollah's retaliatory rocket attacks on Israeli towns.
Mostafa Kamel al-Sayed, an Egyptian political analyst, said the US had yet to understand Arab mentality or the nature of Hizbollah. He noted that, until this conflict, the Lebanese group had focused its attacks on military targets, helping to force Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.
"US policy has no credibility in the region, the talk of democracy has no credibility in the region, and the Lebanon policy was the last nail in the coffin," he said.
By Roula Khalaf,Middle East Editor
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 31 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 31 2006 03:00
As the Qana massacre yesterday carried the tragic face of Israel's Lebanon offensive across the world, the anger of Arab public opinion was directed not only at Israel but at a US administration that has resisted international and regional pressure for an immediate ceasefire.
The gruesome killings follow a week in which US has faced a torrent of criticism on Arab television screens and newspaper pages for its refusal to stop Israel's relentless bombings. The latest wave of anti-Americanism has been exacerbated by Condoleezza Rice's description of the war as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East".
Ms Rice might have been simply reiterating US policy. But rarely has a phrase caught as much attention and provoked as much anger from radicals and moderates, who have seen in it a new and more determined American strategy aimed against Arab interests.
Many analysts have made an association with the title of a 1993 book by the Israeli elder statesman, Shimon Peres. In the New Middle East, he argued that Jews and Arabs should develop economic relations to promote peace. It is an attitude, however, that Arabs have long regarded as an Israeli plot to control the Arab world without withdrawing from occupied lands.
"[Ms Rice's] calls for a new Middle East spell doom . . . for all Arabs," charged Khaled al-Maeena, editor of Saudi Arabia's Arab News.
According to al-Ayyam, the Palestinian daily, the expression "concealed a plan designed to impose US-Israeli hegemony by eliminating the option of resistance through the destruction of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements".
For the United Arab Emirates' al-Khaleej, the call was an American attempt to "make up for the US debacle in Iraq by waging, through Israel, a counter-attack in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories".
The Arab world is fond of conspiracy theories but the suspicions over the New Middle East underline people's bitterness towards US policies they perceive as misguided and contradictory.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Washington has sought to distance itself from authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and promote democratisation to counter religious extremism.
But in the bungled invasion of Iraq, freedom has been accompanied by bloody sectarian conflict. Elsewhere in the region, elections have produced gains for Islamist groups that are anti-American, prompting a US rethink of the strategy.
The Bush administration's reaction to the victory of the Palestinian radical Hamas movement earlier this year was to isolate the new government and deprive it of direct funding until it accepted Israel's existence and all previous peace plans, and renounced violence.
Most resented in the Arab world, however, is the fact that the US has looked at the region through the prism of the war on terrorism. Therefore, the administration seems to make no distinction between al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Middle Eastern groups involved in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and considered by Arabs as legitimate resistance movements.
Adding to the confusion is that the US has enlisted the support of the very regimes it has sought to reform, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to put pressure on Hizbollah and Hamas.
"The new Middle East is the one the administration believes it has been creating by pushing for democratisation and for counter-terrorism. What they see this doing is weakening an illegitimate actor [like Hizbollah] which inhibits democracy," says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Arab states are where the US wants them to be, but one of the strange inconsistencies is that people are not where the governments are - the people see the US perpetuating autocracy."
In Lebanon, Ms Rice has been insisting the US wants a "durable" ceasefire, which could lead to disarming Hizbollah, as demanded by UN resolutions, and allow Lebanese democracy to flourish.
Much of the rest of the world, however, has interpreted this attitude as a US attempt to give Israel more time to batter a tenacious Hizbollah.
But as Israel pounds Lebanon day after day and civilian casualties mount, Hizbollah has gained political support while the Lebanese government, supported by the US, appears to have been weakened.
A poll by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information and published at the weekend in Beirut's Daily Star, shows more than 89 per cent of respondents do not consider the US an honest broker while 87 per cent support Hizbollah's retaliatory rocket attacks on Israeli towns.
Mostafa Kamel al-Sayed, an Egyptian political analyst, said the US had yet to understand Arab mentality or the nature of Hizbollah. He noted that, until this conflict, the Lebanese group had focused its attacks on military targets, helping to force Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.
"US policy has no credibility in the region, the talk of democracy has no credibility in the region, and the Lebanon policy was the last nail in the coffin," he said.
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