Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 08:01:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: steve sharra <mlauzi-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: fwd: [NYTimes]Raising Munich, Sharon Reveals Israeli Qualms


Raising Munich, Sharon Reveals Israeli Qualms

<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/06/international/06ASSE.html>

October 6, 2001 

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 5 - Israeli officials have been quick
to try to contain the damage done by Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's outburst on Thursday against the United States, in
which he invoked the appeasement of Hitler in 1938 to warn
Washington against making deals with Arab states at
Israel's expense. But exaggerated or not, the statement
exposed a frustration many Israelis feel with the Bush
administration's antiterror campaign, and a serious
political problem that this campaign poses for Mr. Sharon. 

Though any declaration of war on Islamic and Arab
terrorism should delight Israelis - and did when it was
first declared - the virtually exclusive focus on Osama bin
Laden and his network, Al Qaeda, and the expansive American
courtship of most Arab countries, has left Israel feeling
isolated and uneasy. 

The logic is simple. This is a war in which Arab allies are
vital to Washington. Their price - imposed in part by the
need of the Arab governments to justify working with the
United States to their own publics - is a visible American
effort on behalf of the Palestinians. 

That means American pressure on Israel for more
concessions, and an American readiness to overlook the
organizations and states that Israel would like to see
crushed as terrorists and supporters of terrorists: Hamas,
Hezbollah, the various armies of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Syria, Iran. 

It is an irony Israel has tasted before. President Bush's
father took similar steps to shape an alliance against
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and then, too, Israel was
asked basically to stay out of the way. So Israelis, then
under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, put on gas masks,
taped up their windows and endured a hail of Iraqi Scud
missiles without striking back. 

At the core of the difficulties is the simple fact that the
national interests of the United States and Israel have
never perfectly aligned. Although the United States has
long been Israel's best friend in the world , the
geopolitical interests of a global superpower are
inevitably different from those of a small nation
surrounded by hostile countries. 

Whether because of the exigencies of the cold war, or huge
Arabian oil reserves or the need to form alliances against
other foes, the United States has frequently taken steps
that Israel perceives as threatening, like supplying Awacs
surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia. 

The United States, moreover, has long understood that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict also poses a major problem for
American relations with moderate Arab states, which
consider Washington too friendly to Israel and too timid to
put real pressure on the Israelis. Israel, for its part,
has often chafed at what it sees as American pressure to
take steps that might undermine Israeli security. More
broadly, Israelis have always been tacitly aware that,
however great American aid and support, Israel always had
to be prepared to defend itself with its own means. Israel
is widely known to have developed a nuclear weapon,
although it has been ambiguous about it. 

These tensions, however, have always been a given in
American-Israeli relations, and they have never led to
anything approaching a real breach. Mr. Sharon's reference
to Munich went beyond what any of his predecessors have
allowed themselves to say in public, and, in Israeli eyes,
beyond what the current frustration warranted. 

"Mentioning Munich was a gross exaggeration, a mistake, and
even Israeli public opinion cannot buy that argument and
saw it as hysterical," said Nahum Barnea, a columnist for
the newspaper Yedioth Ahronot. 

What Mr. Sharon's comment confirmed is that he is not the
sort of man to retreat when a fight is shaping. A hawkish
general who led tanks into Egypt in 1973 and, as defense
minister, directed the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he
would be unlikely to hunker down if an American attack
against Al Qaeda prompted someone to drop a missile on
Israel. 

Mr. Sharon has also never concealed his view of Yasir
Arafat, the Palestinian leader, as a terrorist, and has
often invoked Hitler when discussing him. "I don't know
anyone who has so much civilian Jewish blood on his hands
since Hitler," was a typical comment before he became prime
minister. 

Almost from the time the United States began building a
coalition against Al Qaeda, Mr. Sharon has warned that it
should not be at Israel's expense. According to Israelis
who have observed Mr. Sharon since the Sept. 11 terror
attacks, the prime minister has felt frustrated - some said
betrayed - by Washington. 

After Israel immediately and unconditionally shared its
extensive intelligence on Islamic terror groups with the
United States, they said, Mr. Sharon felt that instead of
showing gratitude, Washington went to the Arabs. On the
same day Mr. Sharon made his controversial comments, for
example, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was
munching dates with Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman in his
desert tent. 

The frustration, however, might not have been enough to
draw so provocative a comment. Not surprisingly for Israel,
there were also critical political factors at play here. 

First among them is that Mr. Sharon is sitting on a very
fragile coalition of left and right. He is keenly aware
that both his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Benjamin
Netanyahu, fell from power because they could not keep
their coalitions together, and he is determined not to
follow suit. But that requires a keen balancing act, for
example, excoriating Mr. Arafat at every turn while letting
the dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with him. 

So if Washington now puts further pressure on Mr. Sharon to
start dealing, it would also put serious pressures on his
government - the left would leave if he refused, the right
if he complied. The situation is all the more difficult for
Mr. Sharon because Mr. Netanyahu is pressuring him and
could force a leadership battle in the party. For a veteran
survivor like Mr. Sharon, a tough battle requires tough
words.


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