opinion: Bush’s dying days in Gaza —Álvaro De Vasconcelos

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by: Álvaro de Vasconcelos ,Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies, Paris

During a visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates warned that enemies of the United States should not use the power vacuum there to try to alter the status quo or to undermine the new American president’s objectives. But the major challenge in this respect is now coming, ironically enough, from America’s main ally in the region, Israel.

Israeli hardliners saw the “war on terror” and the war in Iraq as their wars, supported Bush’s war-like rhetoric and isolation of Iran, and considered the neo-conservatives their ideological kin. In particular, they shared the neo-cons’ conviction that military intervention is a legitimate and effective way of achieving political change. This is what the Israeli government tried to achieve in Lebanon by “smashing Hezbollah” in 2006. Now it is trying to do the same in Gaza.

In response to Hamas rockets, Israel is now using disproportionate force, just as it did in Lebanon. The result will probably be the same: at the end of the campaign, Hamas will have increased its popularity in Palestine and in the Arab world. Indeed, the current military operation follows Israel’s two-year blockade of Gaza, which was supposed to have damaged Hamas, but failed to do so.

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The Israeli government is, in short, using the Bush administration’s dying days to implement its military-first policy. At the same time, it is trying to create a situation that will, in effect, make it more difficult for the new president to achieve his policies in the region. News reports show that revulsion is spreading through the Arab world, where American and Israeli flags are burned side-by-side. This war, therefore, will simply make it more difficult to engage with those countries at the very moment such talks are absolutely necessary.

Read the article article: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\01\10\story_10-1-2009_pg3_6