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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1046411,00.html
The war game

David Hirst's account of the Arab-Israeli conflict, The Gun and
the Olive Branch, caused a storm 25 years ago. In this edited
extract from his new and updated edition he offers a personal
and highly controversial view of the current crisis in the
Middle East

Sunday September 21, 2003
The Observer

By the summer of 2002, George Bush had firmly set his new
course: 'regime change' and reform in the Muslim and Arab
worlds, and, where necessary, American military intervention to
achieve it. Hitherto, it had been assumed that the US could not
go to war in one of the two great zones of Middle East crisis -
Iraq and the Gulf - before it had at least calmed things down in
the other, older and more explosive one, Palestine. But the
American administration's neo-conservatives had a very simple
answer to that. The road to war on Iraq no longer lay through
peace in Palestine; peace in Palestine lay through war on
Baghdad.
It was all set forth, in its most comprehensive, well-nigh
megalomaniac form, by Norman Podhoretz, the neo-cons' veteran
intellectual luminary, in the September 2002 issue of his
magazine, Commentary. Changes in regime, he proclaimed, were
'the sine qua non throughout the region'. They might 'clear a
path to the long-overdue internal reform and modernisation of
Islam'.

This was a full and final elaboration of that project, 'A Clean
Break', which some of his kindred spirits had first laid before
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu back in 1996. It was
the apotheosis of the 'strategic alliance', at least as much an
Israeli grand design as an American one.

Under the guise of forcibly divesting Iraq of its weapons of
mass destruction, the US now sought to 'reshape' the entire
Middle East, with this most richly endowed and pivotal of
countries as the lynchpin of a whole new, pro-American
geopolitical order. Witnessing such an overwhelming display of
American will and power, other regimes, such as
Hizbollah-supporting Syria in particular, would either have to
bend to American purposes or suffer the same fate.

With the assault on Iraq, the US was not merely adopting
Israel's long-established methods - of initiative, offence and
pre-emption - it was also adopting Israel's adversaries as its
own. Iraq had always ranked high among those; it was one of its
so-called 'faraway' enemies. These had come to be seen as more
menacing than the 'near' ones, and especially since they had
begun developing weapons of mass destruction.

So excited was Israeli premier Ariel Sharon about this whole new
Middle East order in the making that he told the Times, 'the day
after' Iraq, the US and Britain should turn to that other
'faraway' enemy - Iran. For Israel, the ayatollahs' Iran had
always seemed the greater menace of the two, by virtue of its
intrinsic weight, its fundamentalist, theologically anti-Zionist
leadership, its more serious, diversified and supposedly
Russian-assisted nuclear armaments programme, its ideological
affinity with, or direct sponsorship of, such Islamist
organisations as Hamas or Hizbollah.

Nothing, in fact, better illustrated the ascendancy which Israel
and the American 'friends of Israel' have acquired over American
policy-making than did Iran. Quite simply, said Iran expert
James Bill, the 'US views Iran through spectacles manufactured
in Israel'. Impressing on the US the gravity of the Iranian
threat has long been a foremost Israeli preoccupation.

By the early 1990s, the former Minister Moshe Sneh was warning
that Israel 'cannot possibly put up with a nuclear bomb in
Iranian hands'. That could and should be collectively prevented,
he said, 'since Iran threatens the interests of all rational
states in the Middle East'. However: 'If the Western states
don't do their duty, Israel will find itself forced to act
alone, and will accomplish its task by any [ie including
nuclear] means.' The hint of anti-American blackmail in that
remark was nothing exceptional; it has always been a leitmotif
of Israeli discourse on the subject.

The showdown with Iraq has only encouraged this kind of
thinking. 'Within two years,' said John Pike, director of
Globalsecurity.org, 'either the US or Israelis are going to
attack Iran's [nuclear sites] or acquiesce in Iran being a
nuclear state.'

To where this Israeli-American, neo-conservative blueprint for
the Middle East will lead is impossible to forecast. What can be
said for sure is that it could easily turn out to be as
calamitous in its consequences, for the region, America and
Israel, as it is preposterously partisan in motivation,
fantastically ambitious in design and terribly risky in
practice.

Even if, to begin with, it achieves what, by its authors'
estimate, is an outward, short-term measure of success, it will
not end the violence in the Middle East. Far more likely is
that, in the medium or the long term, it will make it very much
worse. For the violence truly to end, its roots must be
eradicated, too, and the noxious soil that feeds them cleansed.

It is late, but perhaps not too late, for that to happen. The
historic - and historically generous - compromise offer which
Yasser Arafat, back in 1988, first put forward for the sharing
of Palestine between its indigenous people and the Zionists who
drove most of them out still officially stands. It is completely
obvious by now that, without external persuasion, Israel will
never accept it; that the persuasion can only come from Israel's
last real friend in the world, the US; that, for the persuasion
to work, there has to be 'reform' or 'regime change' in Israel
quite as far-reaching as any to be wrought on the other side.

Given the partisanship, it is, admittedly, highly unlikely to
happen any time soon. But if it doesn't happen in the reasonably
foreseeable future, there may come a time when it can no longer
happen at all. The Palestinian leadership may withdraw its
offer, having concluded, like many of its people already have,
that, however conciliatory it becomes, whatever fresh
concessions it makes, it will never be enough for an adversary
that seems to want all.

The Hamas rejectionists, and/or those, secular as well as
religious, who think like them, may take over the leadership.
The whole, broader, Arab-Israeli peace process which Anwar Sadat
began, and which came to be seen as irreversible, may prove to
be reversible after all. In which case, the time may also come
when the cost to the US of continuing to support its infinitely
importunate protégé in a never-ending conflict against an
ever-widening circle of adversaries is greater than its will and
resources to sustain it.

That would very likely be a time when Israel itself is already
in dire peril. And if it were, then America would very likely
discover something else: that the friend and ally it has
succoured all these years is not only a colonial state, not only
extremist by temperament, racist in practice, and increasingly
fundamentalist in the ideology that drives it, it is also
eminently capable of becoming an 'irrational' state at America's
expense as well as its own.

The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to
political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very
earliest days. It was first authoritatively do***ented, in the


for acts of madness' or 'going crazy' if ever Israel were
crossed. Without a 'just, comprehensive and lasting' peace which
only America can bring to pass, Israel will remain at least as
likely a candidate as Iran, and a far more enduring one, for the
role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.

Iran can never be threatened in its very existence. Israel can.
Indeed, such a threat could even grow out of the current
intifada. That, at least, is the pessimistic opinion of Martin
van Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. 'If it went on much longer,' he said,
'the Israeli government [would] lose control of the people. In
campaigns like this, the anti-terror forces lose, because they
don't win, and the rebels win by not losing. I regard a total
Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of
the Israeli state and society. We'll destroy ourselves.'

In this situation, he went on, more and more Israelis were
coming to regard the 'transfer' of the Palestinians as the only
salvation; resort to it was growing 'more probable' with each
passing day. Sharon 'wants to escalate the conflict and knows
that nothing else will succeed'.

But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? 'That depends
on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several
hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at
targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European
capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General
Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to
bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have
to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all
possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth
strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have
the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure
you that that will happen before Israel goes under.'