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'THE ISRAEL PROBLEM'
From Israel/Palestinian Conflict to 9/11 to the 'Clash of Civilizations'
MER -
MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 27 May: What
can be called 'The Israel Problem' has quite a long history for the
Americans and indeed for the whole world. Had this problem been
properly dealt with in decades past it is likely we would have a far
better and far less confrontational world today. Indeed 'The Israel
Problem' has terribly poisoned U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim
worlds for the past two generations, and it was for sure of the major
factors leading to 9/11 and what has become today the 'Clash of
Civilizations'.
While the Israelis are considerably responsible for what has happened;
so are the Americans considerably culpable for allowing things to
transpire as they have and indeed for facilitating Israel policies with
great amounts of money, armaments, and political cover.
Today we learn from a just made public 1975 Henry Kissinger memo that
thirty years ago the Americans were well aware of the dangers posed by
Israeli policies and wanted to do something to essentially put the
small Jewish State into a more normal and reasonably limited
relationship in the overall scheme of world affairs.
But largely because of powerful 'Israel Lobby' efforts by Kissinger and
subsequent Administrations have all failed and 'The Israel Problem' has
not only horribly metasticized but is more negatively consequential and
more dangerously out of control than ever.
By Calvin Woodward
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 27, 2006
The
United States reached out to hostile Arabs three decades ago with an
offer to work toward making Israel a "small friendly country" of no
threat to its neighbors and with an assurance to Iraq that the U.S. had
stopped backing Kurdish rebels in the north.
"We can't negotiate about the existence of Israel,"
then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told his Iraqi counterpart in a
rare high-level meeting, "but we can reduce its size to historical
proportions."
A December 1975 memo detailing Mr. Kissinger's probing
conversation with Foreign Affairs Minister Saadoun Hammadi eight years
after Iraq severed diplomatic relations with Washington is included in
some 28,000 pages of Kissinger-era foreign policy papers published in
an online collection yesterday.
George Washington University's National Security Archive
released the collection, drawn from papers available at the
government's National Archives and obtained through the group's Freedom
of Information requests.
In it, Mr. Kissinger tells Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in June
1972 that the United States, mired in Vietnam, probably could live with
a communist government in South Vietnam as long as that evolved
peacefully. "If we can live with a communist government in China, we
ought to be able to accept it in Indochina," he said.
He also hints that the United States, newly courting China,
would consider a nuclear response if the Soviets were to overrun Asia
with conventional forces.
At the time, Chinese-Soviet tensions were sharp and the United
States was playing one communist state against the other as best it
could while seeking detente with its main rival, Moscow.
The transcript of Mr. Kissinger's meeting with Mr. Hammadi in
Paris sheds light on a little-known maneuver that spoke to America's
broader effort to win friends in the Arab world even as it was giving
military support to the Jewish state.
The meeting was frank and open -- diplomats' preferred
description of any such meeting but in this case, true. And Mr.
Hammadi, a friend of the Soviets, was a tough sell.
"We are on the other side of the fence," Mr. Hammadi asserted.
"What the United States is doing is not to create peace but to create a
situation dominated by Israel."
Mr. Kissinger pressed: "Our attitude is not unsympathetic to Iraq. Don't believe; watch it."
He said U.S. public opinion was turning more pro-Palestinian
and U.S. aid to Israel could not be sustained for much longer at its
massive levels. He predicted that in 10 or 15 years, "Israel will be
like Lebanon -- struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab
world."
Mindful of Israel's nuclear capability, a skeptical Mr.
Hammadi peppered Mr. Kissinger with questions, including whether
Washington would recognize Palestinian identity and even a Palestinian
state. "Is it in your power to create such a thing?"
Mr. Kissinger said he could not make recognition of
Palestinian identity happen right away but, "No solution is possible
without it."
"After a settlement, Israel will be a small friendly country," he said.
Mr. Kissinger said U.S. officials had believed Iraq was a
Soviet satellite state but had come to a "more sophisticated
understanding now. We think you are a friend of the Soviet Union but
you act on your own principles."
Saddam Hussein was then vice president, in control of internal security and oil.
When Mr. Hammadi persisted with complaints about U.S. support
for the Kurds, Mr. Kissinger brushed them off by saying, "One can do
nothing about the past."
"Not always," Mr. Hammadi countered as the meeting closed and he escorted Mr. Kissinger to the door.
Washington and Baghdad renewed relations after the start of the
Iran-Iraq war; Mr. Hammadi became prime minister in the Saddam era.
The collection, also available in microfiche, consists of some
2,100 memorandums of Mr. Kissinger's secret conversations with senior
officials abroad and at home from 1969 to 1977, serving under
presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
William Burr, senior analyst for the research group, said the
papers are the most extensive published record of Mr. Kissinger's work,
in many instances offering insight into matters that the diplomat
ignored or merely touched on in his prolific memoirs.
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