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Friday March 15, 2002

Cheney, Zinni trips show U.S.-Israel convergence

DAVID MAKOVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON -- The twin trips of Vice President Dick Cheney and peace envoy Anthony Zinni to the Middle East this week are seemingly unrelated, but in fact, they fit together.

President Bush dispatched his vice president to demonstrate resolve in combating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a resolve that could include military action against Baghdad.

He wanted Cheney to consult with a variety of Arab countries, most prominently Saudi Arabia, amid hope that he can elicit their cooperation in this effort. If he's successful, it could have a significant impact on future prospects for Israeli-Arab peace.

The Bush administration views Iraq as a linchpin for its regional strategy, given Iraq's proven record for troublemaking.

If the United States were successful in installing a friendlier regime in a country that has huge amounts of oil reserves, some figures in the Bush administration believe, other Arab oil states would lose their ability to blackmail the United States.

The Bush administration's view is that the best way to obtain multilateral support is to demonstrate unilateral determination. Hence, the importance of the Cheney mission.

Enter the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Bush administration fears that Cheney's mission could be marred if, instead of the focus being Iraq, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah and other Arab leaders start launching tirades about how it is hard to support the United States in confronting Iraq while pan-Arab satellite Al-Jazeera television broadcasts images of Israelis killing Palestinians during the current violence.

Bush, fearing that Arab complaints on this issue would undercut the focus on Iraq, decided to dispatch Zinni to the region amid hopes that he could help tamp down the violence.

This marks a change for the Bush administration, which over the last two months -- in the aftermath of the discovery that the Palestinian Authority sought to smuggle Iranian weapons on the Karine A ship into the Gaza Strip -- offered no criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's handling of the current crisis.

The success of the Cheney mission is no less important to Israel than it is to the United States, given that Saddam Hussein has always been a leading Arab rejectionist of Israel.

Indeed, the case could be made that there is a greater strategic convergence between the United States and Israel today than in virtually any other moment of the history of the Jewish state.

Israel understands the importance of maintaining strategic convergence with the United States, and thus the idea of sending Zinni to ease the Cheney mission was welcomed in Jerusalem.

The United States is under no illusion that a Saudi plan promising Arab world "normalization" with Israel in return for withdrawal from the territories will produce peace.

There is an understanding in Washington that the core problem is Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, and a recognition that any peace deal must make both parties feel safer and less vulnerable than today.

Israel has ample reason to question whether any pre-Passover cease-fire will merely be a tactical maneuver -- given a long slew of broken promises by Arafat in the past -- or something more durable.

Some inside and outside the Bush administration believe the only hope for halting violence will require both a mechanism for compliance -- and defined consequences for the Palestinians if they don't -- and incremental steps to revive the shattered confidence on both sides.

The bottom line is that Sharon would like Cheney to succeed, and realizes that the timing of the Zinni mission is designed to maximize such prospects. However, it is not just up to Sharon.

During the last six months of 2000, the United States had hoped that it was on the verge of conflict resolution in the Middle East.

Now amid the current escalating violence, the mere prospect of crisis stabilization is a tall order.

Given failures in the past, it is hard to be overly optimistic about the prospects of the Zinni mission.

Yet the horrific death toll on the ground coupled with the Cheney trip to the region underscores the urgency of its success.

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