TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022009.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.2 KB | 169 lines

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                                                          WORLD, Page 38

THE MIDDLE EAST

Saddam's Lucky Break


The Temple Mount killings give Iraq a fresh pretext to link the
takeover of Kuwait with the frustrated Palestinian cause

By LISA BEYER -- Reported by Jon D. Hull/Jerusalem, William
Mader/ London and James Wilde/Cairo


    For once Saddam Hussein must be delighted to share the
limelight. Eager to divert attention from his rape of Kuwait,
the Iraqi leader has tried repeatedly to drag Israel onto
center stage in order to convince his fellow Arabs that the
enemy is not Iraq but the Zionists and their American backers.
Israeli security forces played right into his hands last week
when they fired into an angry Palestinian mob on Jerusalem's
Temple Mount, killing 19 Palestinians and wounding 140. The
deaths, said Boutros Boutros Ghali, Egypt's Minister of State
for Foreign Affairs, were "Israel's great gift to Saddam
Hussein."

    Thus ended the low profile Israel had maintained in the gulf
crisis at the request of the Bush Administration, which had
persuaded Jerusalem that its silence was essential to keeping
most of the Arab world united against Saddam. The tragedy on
the Temple Mount, one of the most sacred sites in Islam, put
Israel under diplomatic siege. Saudi Arabia decried the "brutal
and savage attack," and Jordan denounced it as "racist and
criminal." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused Israel of
"brutal repression," while Syria alleged that Israel actually
orchestrated the clashes to force Arabs out of the occupied
territories.

    Even President Bush allowed that Israeli forces "need to act
with greater restraint." At the U.N. Security Council, the
U.S., which frequently uses its veto there to shield Israel
from criticism, found itself in the odd position of sponsoring
a resolution castigating its ally for using excessive force to
quell the Palestinians, who were throwing rocks at Jewish
worshipers gathered at Judaism's sacred Western Wall.

    Washington's uncharacteristic behavior arose from its
desperate need to placate the Arab members of the anti-Saddam
coalition. Certainly Saddam was doing his best to pull them
into his orbit by exploiting the calamity in Jerusalem. The
Iraqi President threatened to avenge the Palestinian deaths
with powerful missiles he claimed to have added to his arsenal.
Calling his new device the "Stone" (after the weapon of
preference in the intifadeh), Saddam boasted that it had a
range of hundreds of miles and could therefore hit "the targets
of evil when the day of reckoning comes."

    At the same time the U.S. was wary of putting too much
pressure on Israel, for fear of lending credibility to Saddam's
effort to link his annexation of Kuwait with the Israelis'
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A direct linkage
would be disastrous, but given the depth of Arab fury over the
carnage in Jerusalem, a strong connection already exists
whether Washington likes it or not. Said a senior British
diplomat: "The Arab-Israeli problem is now openly a part of the
gulf crisis."

    In the end, Washington's balancing act produced a compromise
resolution in the Security Council. After two all-night
sessions of wrangling, the 15 members agreed unanimously to a
British suggestion to marry the U.S.-drafted text with a
watered-down version of a proposal made by Yemen on behalf of
the Palestine Liberation Organization and backed by the seven
other nonaligned Council members. The Yemeni faction had wanted
the resolution to blast only Israel but, faced with the threat
of a U.S. veto, the group relented in the end. The approved
draft "expresses alarm" at the violence in general, thus
indirectly criticizing the rock-throwing Palestinians, and
"condemns especially" the behavior of the Israeli security
forces.

    The U.S. and the nonaligned group agreed that the U.N.
Secretary-General should dispatch a team of envoys on a
fact-finding mission to the occupied territories. The Yemeni
draft had called for the team also to recommend ways of
ensuring the protection of Palestinians there, a proposal the
U.S. successfully fought off. Washington does not want the U.N.
directly involved in the management of the Palestinian problem.

    The P.L.O. objected bitterly to the final wording of the
resolution, but for the moment the compromise had spared the
alliance against Saddam from a major rift. Even Washington's
Western allies on the Council were prepared to accept Yemen's
original draft and were concerned by the prospect of an
American veto. As the Arab states saw it, the issue was whether
there was one international law for Arab governments and
another for non-Arabs. "This time the world community must prove
that principles (such as those used to justify collective
action against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) are indivisible,"
editorialized the Egyptian Gazette.

    For the Arab states aligned against Iraq, getting the U.S.
to damn Israel's latest belligerency was a matter of politics
as well as principle. That these governments are now in a
military alliance with the U.S., Israel's principal supporter,
is a source of embarrassment -- and potentially of instability
-- at home. The assassination last week of Egypt's speaker of
parliament Rifaat el-Mahgoub was a blunt reminder of just how
vulnerable these governments have become. While no one claimed
responsibility for killing el-Mahgoub, who was shot in his car
by four gunmen who escaped on motorcycles, authorities said the
murder probably was carried out either by a foreign hit squad,
most likely Palestinians, or by Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists.

    With the Desert Shield coalition so subject to upheaval,
patience in the gulf waiting game is wearing thin. In a BBC
interview last week, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd
said the anti-Saddam forces would need to decide "in a matter
of weeks" whether the economic sanctions against Iraq were
sufficient or whether to prepare to go to war to liberate
Kuwait.

    In the meantime, to make the center hold, several
governments are stressing the need for an international
conference to address the Arab-Israeli conflict, a proposal the
U.S. supports but only if it follows an Iraqi withdrawal.
French President Francois Mitterrand said last week that events
had given a "new actuality" to the notion of a conference.
Meeting with Saddam in Baghdad two weeks ago, Soviet envoy
Yevgeni Primakov dangled the possibility of a Middle East
conference -- with both Soviet and U.S. participation -- if the
Iraqi leader left Kuwait. Though there was no evidence
whatsoever that Moscow's offer had Washington's blessing,
Primakov is a trusted confidant of Mikhail Gorbachev's and
planned last week to brief Bush on his Iraqi visit.

    As the crisis stretches on, it becomes increasingly clear
that members of the anti-Saddam alliance have their own goals
to pursue. Last week, for example, Lebanese President Elias
Hrawi asked Syria to help him rout his rival, General Michel
Aoun, from his stronghold in Beirut's Christian enclave, thus
giving Damascus the opportunity to complete its control of
Lebanon at a moment when the world is distracted by other
events in the Middle East. Syrian President Hafez Assad ordered
thousands of troops to Beirut to beef up the 10,000 Syrian
soldiers already there. On Friday a lone gunman shot twice at
Aoun, missing the general and wounding an aide instead.

    Last Saturday at dawn Syrian forces opened a devastating air
and artillery bombardment of Aoun's headquarters. But Aoun
apparently had advance knowledge of the attack, and had already
taken refuge in the French embassy. By noon, Lebanese forces
loyal to Hrawi had taken over Aoun's fiefdom and the French
were negotiating safe passage out of the country for the
general. Aoun's defeat not only offered Assad unprecedented
control over Lebanon but also gave him the satisfaction of
defeating a man who had once got his weapons from the Syrian
leader's most implacable foe: Saddam Hussein. All of which
served as a reminder that while the occupation of Kuwait may
be the most pressing issue in the region, it is hardly the only
one that occupies the players in the Middle East.