Harry Targ
This commentary was prepared during the Israeli war on Lebanon in the
summer, 2006 and updated in 2009. Its portrait of the main actors in the tragic
circumstances of Middle East peoples remains unchanged today in 2023.
The commentary hints at the fundamental
role the United States has played in the Israel/Palestine conflict, the Israeli
vision of a “Greater Israel” empire, and the need for a movement of
progressives to mobilize to end US complicity with Israel’s violent policies
which victimize the Palestinians while continuing to expose Israeli citizens to
terrorist retribution. Unfortunately, none of these core features of the Middle
East catastrophe have changed for many years.
This time the peace movement must expand its militancy demanding that the Biden
administration end its support of Israeli militarism and promote the liberation
of the Palestinian people.
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ASSESSING THE CURRENT MIDDLE EAST CRISIS:
CONSEQUENCES FOR EFFORTS TO REDUCE VIOLENCE
The
current Middle East crisis has emerged with
rapidity. We have seen a seemingly unending escalation of violence
against expanding civilian targets in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank and Israel. Also
Muslims and Jews have been increasingly threatened within the United States.
However, spokespersons of both parties proclaim that the United States needs to
exert military power regionally and globally.
Key Actors in the Middle East Drama
To better understand the immediate causes of this
Middle East crisis and its relationship to United States foreign policy the
major actors in the tense drama must be examined.
First, the Israeli
government is driven by a vision of regional hegemony and the elimination of
the Palestinian people as a political force. As Noam Chomsky has argued,
Israeli governments (and the United States) have always envisioned a region
based on a “Greater Israel,” that is Israeli control of the politics and
economics of Southern Lebanon, Western Syria, and Palestine. Crushing the
growing popularity of Hamas and Hezbollah is a necessity from the vantage point
of this vision and ultimately as well destroying their base of support in Syria
and Iran. The brutal assault on Israelis on October 7, 2023 provided an excuse to indiscriminately target
Palestinians living in Gaza.
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/3/israel_leak_gaza_expulsion_egypt
Second, the Middle East
crisis has profound consequences for the United States and the Biden
administration. President Biden by word and deed has given the green light to
Israel to expand its violence in Gaza and Lebanon. He has forestalled
diplomatic activity to bring a halt to the violence despite cosmetic visits by
Secretary of State Blinken and others to the region. He even has been slow to
remove US citizens trapped in the war zones of Gaza. Further, the continued
tension between the United States and Iran suggests that the former would not
oppose an Israeli strike on the latter. The US would get its war on Iran
without having to carry out the war itself. In the end, this Middle East crisis
could give renewed intellectual justification for the neoconservative vision of
a globalization of American power.
Third, this administration seems to be increasing support for militarism
in the face of growing danger of war in virtually every region of the world:
the Korean Peninsula, East and South
Asia, Central Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The Biden
administration, as with most administrations since World War II, seems wedded
to the unlimited use of military force as opposed to diplomacy.
Fourth, “Political Islam” refers to those movements, primarily in the
Middle East, the Gulf, North Africa, and Asia that fuse the drive for political
power with religious fundamentalism.
Paradoxically, Political Islam drew much of its initial support from US
global policy. For example, the United States provided massive aid and training
to rebels fighting against the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan in the
1980s, including the 9/11 enemy icon, Osama Bin Laden. In fact, President
Carter began funding the creation of Political Islam in Afghanistan before the
Soviet Union sent troops to that country.
Hamas and Hezbollah, allied with outside actors Syria
and Iran, formed in the 1980s. They sought to capture the support of
Palestinians and their allies in response to growing Israeli brutality against
the Palestinian people and the corruption of the Palestine Liberation
Organization. There is much evidence that Israel gave financial support to
Hamas to weaken the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. While these two
formations have supported what is called terrorism and religious fundamentalism
they at the same time have provided significant social services and a political
voice for the repressed Palestinian population.
Finally, we need to reflect more systematically on Syria and Iran as
regional political actors sympathetic to the Palestinian people and opposed by
the state of Israel. It is clear that both Syria and Iran are targets of the
US. Israel receives huge military support
from the United States in part to “balance” the influence of other state actors
in the region. The US wants to control the flow of oil, and Israel wants to control territory and people.
It remains to be seen whether the growing worldwide protest against the Israeli
war on Gaza and US acquiescence to it will bring a desperately needed ceasefire
soon, and in the future, and whether anti-war candidates can win victories in 2024 US elections. The enormous increase in anti-war
and free Palestine movements in the United States and growing opposition to the
United States and Israel in the Global South suggest the emergence of a “second
global power,” the power of the people against militaristic governments.
