“Fasten your seat belts,” warns Raghida Dergham, New York bureau chief of the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, because the Bush administration is well and truly on the warpath in the Middle East and the Gulf. US President George W. Bush has finally resolved the debate within his administration about how to act in the region, she says. He has isolated Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign policy specialists, and “adopted the logic” of his hawks and corporate and Republican Party backers. Bush did this not only because of the November congressional elections, but also as a result of the financial scandals in which senior figures in his party and administration have been implicated, Dergham says. The best cover for such scandals is “patriotism,” and the means to evoke it in the current climate is war ­ with the Gulf and Middle East as the primary theater.

Dergham says Bush was persuaded by his “personal trainers” ­ with concerted Israeli lobbying and help from “the ‘hush-hush’ Arabs who declare one thing in public and woo America with the opposite” ­ that there’s no need to resolve the Palestinian situation before attacking Iraq, and nothing for Washington to fear from the so-called “Arab street.”
They convinced him that fears of a popular backlash against America and its local clients should it go to war are misplaced, and that the Arab street and public opinion ­ whether moderate or extreme ­ are disorganized and can be stifled by the ruling regimes. Even if Arab regimes were to be overthrown, that would enable people to choose their rulers, which could be seen as the US promoting democracy in the Arab world. And even if anarchy ensued, that could justify US intervention to uphold its vital strategic interests in the region, which pivot ­ as ever ­ around oil and Israel.

Then, the hawks envisage, “Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might even achieve his dream concept that ‘Jordan is Palestine.’ The outbreak of a formal war might enable him to expel the Palestinians from Palestine, some perhaps to Iraq after its regime is toppled by war. According to scenarios that might appear extraordinary ­ but cannot be ignored at a time when the Bush administration and Israeli government are thinking war ­ Iraq might even revert to the Hashemite dynasty.”

Nothing can be ruled out with Sharon in control in Israel and Bush supporting him to the hilt, blinding his earlier Middle East “vision,” and coming out last week in favor of continuing the renewed Israeli occupation of the West Bank, says Dergham.
She goes on to “apologize” to readers for predicting in previous articles that the voice of reason within the Bush administration, as represented by Powell, would ultimately prevail. Unless it proves that Powell has only lost one round in an ongoing bout, there is good reason to be “frightened” of what Bush has in store for the region, she cautions.
“George W. wants wars because he needs them, and for corrupt reasons,” Dergham writes. He has “held the Arab-Israeli conflict hostage to the ‘war on terror,’ exactly as Sharon sought.” Thus everything the Arabs have “invested” in his administration ­ from their anti-terrorist intelligence cooperation with Washington, to the Arab peace initiative ­ has gone to waste. Bush has turned it all to Sharon’s advantage, lined up behind his administration’s “Arab-ophobes,” and “trashed” the advice that it would be disastrous to blitz Iraq without first tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“War is certainly coming to Iraq,” says Dergham. If Baghdad relents and agrees to readmit UN arms inspectors unconditionally, it might be able to “impede” Washington’s war plans for a while. And Iraq might be spared if a “miracle” were to occur that removes the regime from power. But Russia, France and China won’t come to Baghdad’s aid if it maintains its present stance linking arms inspections to the lifting of the UN sanctions regime. “And the Arab states have notified Washington, in one way or the other, that they will turn a blind eye to what happens in Iraq, while hoping and wishing that Washington would first deal with the Palestine question ­ which is not going to happen,” she writes. “The message Bush received was that when push comes to shove, the friendly Arab government will line up behind the US decision. As for the unfriendly governments, they are isolated. And being isolated by America at this juncture in history is a curse no regime wants,” she warns.

Abdelbari Atwan, editor in chief of the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, suspects that Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s diplomatic moves to pacify the situation in the Occupied Territories, ostensibly as a prelude to resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, are aimed at setting the stage for America’s war on Iraq.
“What is happening at present is the revival of an old trade-off offered by the Bush administration to its Arab clients: give us Saddam Hussein’s head, we’ll give you the venerable Palestinian state,” he writes.

It was no coincidence that the Saudi and Egyptian governments both praised the “positive elements” in Bush’s June 24 Middle East policy speech, and urged the besieged and humiliated Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, to welcome it even though it demanded his removal.
“It is this kind of shameful submission that encourages the Pentagon hawks to draw up plans to invade Iraq, using the territory of at least six Arab states, without even consulting them or seeking their approval,” Atwan laments.

“The Bush Administration will not give the Arabs an independent Palestinian state. It will deceive them as the previous Bush administration did during the 1991 Gulf war,” when it pledged to pursue a just settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict in exchange for Arab support for its war to eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait, he recalls.
Now, Baghdad faces the prospect of a campaign that could fragment and destabilize Iraq, “perhaps for decades,” Atwan warns. When Bush vows to use “all tools at our disposal” to topple Saddam, “that is a byword for mass destruction, and bloody slaughter that could claim hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent Iraqi victims.”
The US has plans for destroying Iraq, but has no idea how it will be rebuilt or what regime will emerge from the ruins of the present one if its plan succeeds, Atwan says.

In Jordan, the leading semi-official daily Al-Rai angrily refutes ongoing media speculation ­ despite repeated official denials ­ that a US attack on Iraq might be launched from Jordanian territory, among other places. The paper uses its main leader to dismisses claims of “Jordanian-American moves aimed at attacking Iraq” as “cheap allegations” and “fabricated information,” pointing out that if there were any truth to them, there would be physical evidence of such preparations on the ground

The fact that such “lies” and “imaginary scenarios” are still being circulated despite Jordan’s official denial “of any possibility of participating in, agreeing to, or being prepared to undertake such a task,” indicates that the motives of those circulating them are “not innocent,” Al-Rai writes. “We in Jordan must be more alert to and wary of what is being hatched against us, and of the instability and turmoil that is sought for our country following the failure of enemy schemes to involve us in plans to eradicate the Palestinian cause and empty the Palestinian territories of their people,” it warns.

Throughout the past 12 years of political and diplomatic “wars” over Iraq, and underlying rivalry over the country’s oil resources, Jordan’s position has been consistent, Al-Rai stresses. “Jordan was at the forefront of those who rejected, and continue to reject, any military solutions to the outstanding differences and problems between Baghdad and the United Nations (and United States). Our country still sees dialogue as the only way of sparing the region and its peoples the horrors of war. War will not stop at the limits of the objectives declared by the Bush administration, but plunge the entire region into untold chaos and instability, and expose the entire world to dangers that no one, however powerful, can forecast or claim to be immune from.”

In the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, Mohammed al-Awwam also warns of “violent turmoil sweeping the region the moment the first shot is fired” in the impending US war on Iraq, which is “no longer an option being considered, but a plan being implemented.”
Yet when Arab states are asked about their reaction, they reply that they are not aware of any US plans to invade Iraq, even though the Bush administration has made its intentions amply clear. This is not mere rhetoric, but part of a strategic plan it has adopted, in which “Baghdad is but a small pearl in a large oyster shell,” Awwam writes. And the countries that are exerting political pressure on the US not to opt for war are about as much of a match for it as the Iraqi Army is for the US armed forces.

“The day the first shot is fired, the true positions of the allies whose support and protection Baghdad expects will be revealed,” he says.
“We don’t want Arab officials to tell us what they know about the American plan. The media supply us with the details as they emerge. What we want to know is how we will face the resulting dangers and avoid being hit by the fallout from the battles.” Asharq Al-Awsat also runs an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in which he reiterates the Kremlin’s opposition to the use of the “military option” against Iraq. Ivanov stresses that Moscow is not privy to Washington’s plans. But he says military action against Iraq is “impermissible at a time when the Middle East is living through an explosive situation because of the non-resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” He warns that US war on Iraq would split the international community and weaken its unity in the “war on terror.” This is “what we are trying to persuade our partners of,” he says.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak makes no mention of Iraq in a “comprehensive interview about the most crucial contemporary issues in the Middle East” published in the semi-official Cairo daily Al-Ahram.

The bulk of his talk to Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Nafie is devoted to Palestine. Mubarak indicates Egypt will remain engaged in the quest for peace there despite the bleak outlook, Sharon’s “extremely intransigent” position, and Washington’s failure to date to “clarify” aspects of its approach to the problem.

Mubarak also specifically denies that Egypt intends to play any “security role” in Palestine, or that he ever discussed the removal of Arafat with Bush. He defends Arafat as the legitimate Palestinian leader and the only one capable of negotiating and signing a peace deal with Israel, and warns that its demand for his removal is a recipe for “anarchy.” But Mubarak suggests Arafat might step down “in a year or more” after a peace pact has been signed.