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Washington Shifts Gears On Policy In Middle East

WASHINGTON, March 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While trying to turn up the heat on Iraq, the George W. Bush administration has shifted its Middle East policy from hands off into high gear.

The urgent dispatch of special envoy Anthony Zinni to try to obtain a ceasefire in Israel and the Palestinian-controlled territories, coupled with a 10-day tour of a dozen countries in the region by Vice President Dick Cheney, puts a spotlight on the Middle East unseen since the era of former president Bill Clinton.

Aside from Cheney's long-planned visit, the United States has, in the past several days, taken several positions and issued several statements that were unthinkable even weeks earlier:

· Returning Zinni to the region without waiting for a drop in the violence that has killed more than 1,400 people in 18 months, a condition presented previously as imperative for the return of the U.S. mediator.

· Publicly pressuring hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to yank his troops from Palestinian-controlled areas, after months of accepting his security policies.

· Advocating an end to a ban on travel by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to allow him to move freely, despite having backed his confinement to Ramallah in the West Bank since the ban was imposed in December.

· Presenting and propelling the adoption by the UN Security Council of a historic resolution mentioning a Palestinian state.

A number of reasons have been presented to explain the evolution, not the least of which is the catastrophic escalation of the violence and the advance of the conflict that has engulfed the region since September 2000, when the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, began.

But U.S. pride at not being left behind by recent efforts by European and Arab nations to negotiate peace, as well as the need to rally the Arab world to back an eventual offensive against Iraq, also figures prominently.

"Clearly there is a need for outside intervention to try to resolve it, and given that the United States has so vehemently objected to the U.N. or the European Union taking the leadership, that necessitates the United States assuming the leadership," said University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes.

Many observers, both at home and abroad, have questioned the real motives behind Washington's policy shift - a possible trade of flexibility on the Palestinian situation to achieve greater cooperation from the Arab world in U.S. efforts to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Bush's repeated pistol waving and barely-veiled vows to topple Saddam Hussein earn bad press in a Gulf region concerned at the suffering of the Iraqi people and the unforeseen repercussions of regime change in Baghdad.

The German daily newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, wryly noted recently that the U.N. Security Council vote mentioning a Palestinian state could not be a mere coincidence in Cheney's pocket as he seeks to charm the Arab world.

The fate of the multifaceted strategy, coming on the heels of months of caution and deferred action in the region, remains to be seen, analysts said.

"The administration was late in involving itself in Middle East diplomacy; The U.S. decision to stand aside during the beginning of the administration doesn't help," said international policy analyst Lee Feinstein of the Carnegie Endowment.

Analysts also could not help noticing that, despite criticism, it is out of the question for Washington to downgrade ties with Israel, its primary ally in the region and the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid - some three billion dollars annually, mostly in the form of military assistance.

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