As Iraqi war rages, what about Israel and Palestine?

A couple of weeks into the war against Iraq, it's already clear that some of the promises made by the Bush administration — that ordinary Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators, and that Saddam Hussein's regime would quickly fall — haven't materialized. But what about Bush's other pledge, that the defeat of Saddam would coincide with an American-led resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Assuming that he eventually ousts Saddam, will the President complete a spectacular encore by solving this enduring dispute?

The omens aren't good. Those folks who remember Gulf War I in 1990-91 may recall that 'linkage' — the idea that conflict with Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute might be connected — was originally Saddam's idea. Ever the opportunist, Saddam maintained that his occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 was legally indistinguishable from Israel's (then) 23-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and that he would only withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdrew from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Saddam was correct in his reading of international law, but deluded in his belief that this offer might ward off Operation Desert Storm. However, after the coalition forces completed their rout of the Iraqi army, the first President Bush tacitly acknowledged the persuasive power of 'linkage' (outside the United States, at least) by convening a comprehensive Middle East peace conference, and placing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the head of the agenda.

Twelve years on, Israelis and Palestinians are further from peace than ever. Across this period, thousands of civilians have been killed, the population of Israeli settlers has more than doubled to over 400,000, and the Israeli electorate has recently made Ariel Sharon the first prime minister to win reelection in a generation. Moreover, the faith of Palestinians (and Arabs and Muslims more generally) in an American-led peace process has been entirely exhausted. The blame for this lies with the Oslo process, which offered the worst possible framework for peacemaking: A series of agreements were worded so vaguely that both Palestinians and Israelis harbored divergent interpretations of their meaning, even as the overwhelming military and political power of Israel ensured that the "facts on the ground" adhered to Israel's vision alone. Palestinians got limited self-rule in their cities, even as their lands were expropriated for the massive expansion of Israeli roads and settlements.

Since Bush and Sharon are more hawkish than their predecessors in office, they might produce an even more catastrophic 'peace process' than the Oslo framework. Even in advance of the publication of the new U.S. sponsored "road-map" for a final resolution of the conflict, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported this week that Sharon has strong reservations about the existing text, and that he is adamant that only Israel and the United States should monitor the implementation of any agreement because other parties (including Europe, Russia and the United Nations) have "an unbalanced approach to the conflict." Sharon, like every other Israeli prime minister since 1991, would be happy to see Palestinians administer their cities but would like a free hand to draw the boundaries of a 'greater Israel' inside the West Bank and Gaza. To this end, he's already building an enormous fence to encircle Israeli settlements deep inside the Occupied Territories, and he's consolidating the network of settler roads (built under Oslo) which binds large areas of the West Bank to Israel.

'Operation Iraqi Freedom' won't provide a blueprint for a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; in fact, it's more likely that the prolonged injustice of the Israeli occupation will influence American conduct and strategies within Iraq. The logic of the 'war on terror' is horribly congruent with Israel's own battles with the Palestinians. Reluctant to address the root cause of the conflict — the ongoing Israeli seizure of Palestinian lands — Israel's leaders and people have found themselves locked in a downward spiral of repression, retaliation and hopelessness that's reaching new depths of brutality on both sides. In the same vein, the Bush administration has refused any meaningful discussion of the roots of terrorism, even as it has begun a preemptive war in violation of the will of the United Nations. The failure of the Iraqi people to embrace the American and British invasion, and the disturbing Iraqi resort to suicide attacks in response to the imbalance of military power between the sides, suggest that the war in Iraq will create more problems for the region than it could possibly solve.

The very idea that the United States would end the Israeli occupation after itself occupying Iraq has a whiff of Dr. Strangelove to it, an idea that only someone truly insane could come up with. But we're living in crazy times, so don't be surprised when the eventual 'road-map' leads nowhere; and the only "linkage" between Israel-Palestine and America's war in Iraq is the same dangerous cycle of violence and despair.