60 Former Diplomats Condemn Bush For Total Support Of Sharon

by Jim Lobe

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- Some 60 former U.S. diplomats and other government officials who served overseas have signed a letter to President George W. Bush protesting his unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Palestinian conflict.

The letter came soon after a similar protest signed by 52 former British ambassadors and senior government officials and sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. That missve warned that Blair's strong support for Bush's policies in both Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were "doomed to failure."

The U.S. diplomats' letter, which applauded their British colleagues' initiative, is focused far more on the Israel-Palestinian issue, noting in particular Bush's Apr. 14 endorsement of Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from the Gaza strip while consolidating five large settlement blocs on the West Bank.

Bush's endorsement, which also rejected the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes on Israeli territory, "reverses longstanding American policy in the Middle East," the former diplomats wrote.

"Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends," the letter said. "Nor is this endorsement even in the best interests of the State of Israel."

The letter, which is still being circulated for endorsements, will be sent May 28, according to the organisers, who said they had received an "amazing" response from former colleagues who wanted to sign it.

To date it has been signed by at least 16 former ambassadors, most of whom, like Edward Peck, James Akins, Talcott Seelye and Chas Freeman, Jr, represented Washington in Arab capitals, as well as several dozen former deputy chiefs of mission, consul generals and chiefs and deputy chiefs of CIA stations, including Ray Close, a well-known CIA officer who served part of his career in Jeddah.

Former U.S. Information Agency (USIA) officers and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employees were also well represented among the signers, who were organised by former ambassador to Qatar Andrew Killgore and a former USIA chief inspector, Richard Curtiss.

But despite the prominence of some of the signers, the letter's impact may be somewhat limited, particularly compared to the controversy provoked by the letter to Blair.

While Blair's Middle East policies have come under strong attack both within his Labour Party and by the two major opposition parties, Bush's alignment with Sharon has not provoked much criticism from other major political figures, including his expected Democratic challenger in the upcoming November elections, Senator John Kerry, who is wary of alienating American Jewish voters. Kerry himself is half-Jewish.

Shortly after Bush's Apr. 14 embrace of the Sharon plan, Kerry declared not only that he supports it as well, but that he also backed Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, an action that provoked widespread outrage by U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world -- the same countries that Kerry says the Bush administration has ignored to its detriment.

Kerry's declarations are obviously an attempt to keep U.S. Jews, who have historically voted Democratic, from deserting the party, in what most analysts believe will be an extremely close presidential race.

Thus, Kerry has backed away from his earlier proposal to appoint former President Jimmy Carter or former Secretary of State James Baker to oversee renewed peace negotiations, because of "the Jewish community's perception that they are overly sympathetic to Arab positions," as the Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz' recently put it.

The Bush campaign for the November vote is making a major bid for Jewish support, based almost exclusively on his strong backing for Sharon, despite the fact that most U.S. Jews do not favour the positions of the Israeli leader's Likud Party against substantial territorial compromise with the Palestinians. Many American Jews began a slow shift from the Democratic Party in the Nixon era.

Despite Kerry's unwillingness to oppose Bush's unprecedented support for Sharon, however, public concern over Washington's general position in the Middle East appears to be on the rise, particularly concerning the recent disasters in Iraq and the growing knowledge that U.S. actions, most recently the abuse and humiliation by U.S. troops of Iraqi prisoners, is intensifying anti-U.S. hatred and anger in the region.

The former diplomats and other regional specialists say the Bush administration does not appear to appreciate how the U.S. occupation in Iraq and its support for Israel's actions in the occupied territories are seen increasingly in both Europe and the Arab world as part of the same picture, and that, by tying Washington to Sharon, Bush is making it far more difficult to gain or keep much-needed allies in its "war on terrorism" and in Iraq.

That Likud members rejected Sharon's withdrawal proposal despite Bush's support further undercuts U.S. credibility, according to Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution here who has long warned that U.S. support for Israel is the main "prism" through which Arabs gauge U.S. intentions.

"Now, if it looks like this Gaza withdrawal isn't going to take place," he told 'The Los Angeles Times', "it will be very difficult for the administration to deal with moderate Arab governments. The immediate issue for the administration is what do they do next week, when the King of Jordan (who cancelled a previous visit to protest Bush's endorsement of the Sharon plan) comes to town"?

The diplomats made a similar point in their letter, which urged Bush to take the position of a "truly honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians. "A return to the time-honoured American tradition of fairness will reverse the present tide of ill will in Europe and the Middle East -- even in Iraq," they wrote, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "at the core of the problems in the Middle East."

The letter echoed the views of U.S. allies, as well as of the Palestinians themselves, by noting that Bush's backing for the Sharon plan, in addition to apparently reversing longstanding U.S. policy, also flouts a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions dating back to 1948, and undermines the so-called "road map: for peace drawn up by the"Quartet" -- the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia. Quartet representatives met Tuesday at the United Nations.

Moreover, the administration acted after a series of negotiating sessions between Israeli and U.S. diplomats, said the letter, "but which left out Palestinians," adding, "In fact, you and Prime Minister Sharon consistently have excluded Palestinians from peace negotiations." In so doing, it said, "you have placed U.S. diplomats, civilians and military doing their jobs overseas in an untenable and even dangerous position."