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US investment in Israel is bad
The American administration should disinvest in the Jewish state and opt for a just solution to the Middle East problem.
- By Duraid Al Baik, Foreign Editor
- Published: 00:00 August 23, 2006
- Image Credit: Illustration by Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
The way Israel's 33-day war against Lebanon concluded on August 15 was not good news for more than 3,000 evangelical Christians who met in Washington last month.
They had gathered to lobby American lawmakers and seek support for Israel in its war against an Arab country. The war was a great failure, despite those who deemed otherwise.
Evangelicals, who believe that Israel is God's first love, were disappointed because they have been awaiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ and were anticipating that the outcome of the war could pave the way for it.
From the evangelicals' point of view there are reasons to be concerned over the defeat of Israel, which they believe is God's most favoured nation.
Ironically, it appears that Hezbollah, which translates into "The God's Party", won that position.
Defending the reason for backing Israel, John Hagee, the pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, said: "God gave the land [Palestine] to the Jewish people and that Christians have a Biblical duty to support it and the Jews."
In his book Jerusalem Countdown: A warning to the world, Hagee predicts that the final battle between the East and the West at Aramageddon will fulfil the Biblical prophecy of the end times and the ultimate second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the living and the death.
On the other hand, for many Americans who are not interested in knowing who ranks first in heaven, the failure of Israel in its first ever mission against the "international war on terrorism" and "Islamic Fascism" was hard to digest.
They believe that it is a great financial loss for their country in its overseas strategic investment.
Most reliable ally
Every taxpayer in the US invests heavily in Israel, indirectly, just for a moment like this. Moreover, the US army, which is currently overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq, needs an urgent help to arrest the growth of Hezbollah.
Israel was the most reliable ally to accomplish this mission, but it failed in spite of the American diplomatic and military cover.
Today, the US is at a crossroads vis-a-vis the position of Israel in the war against terrorism. There are sensible calls from a number of American intelligentsia and think-tanks to review the US policy in the region and rework its calculations, that seems to have been based on facts but are now outdated.
If evangelicals have metaphysical reasons to support Israel, the common American is not happy to see his or her investments going up in flames after being hit by Hezbollah's Katyushas.
John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at Wendell Harrison, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Robert and Renee Belfer, wrote in a joint paper: "Since the October war in 1973, Israel had been the largest annual recipient of direct economic assistance and the largest recipient in total since the Second World War.
"By the 2004 prices, Israel cost America $140 billion. This means that every Israeli costs the US $500 per annum, despite the fact that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income equal to South Korea and Spain."
The two American writers stated that this generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for the US backing.
"One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War… but the first Gulf War [1991 war to liberate Kuwait] revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden… The history was repeated in 2003 when Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition and Israel stood on the sideline of the war once again," they wrote.
Americans believe that Israel, which was well prepared for the war against Hezbollah, could not eliminate the risk of the party in case of any possible conflict between the US and Iran, which in turn leads to jeopardising the US interests and the security of its troops in the region.
Patrick J. Buchanan, a US writer and presidential candidate of the Republican Party, wrote recently that the US was the main loser in the war against Hezbollah because it refused to condemn Israel for the destruction it had caused to Lebanon and to its democratic regime.
"Bush-Cheney are thus politically and morally culpable for what was done to Lebanon and its democratic government," he said.
The US administration, however, has left itself with a single workable and wise solution to solve the outcome of this war.
The solution is low cost, simple and highly effective and costs much less than $140 billion of lost investment on Israel: Resolve the problem of the Middle East in a just and amicable manner. Don't wait for long before solving the mother of all conflicts in the region because no one could predict the nature and the extent of the coming conflicts and the weapons that the warring parties may use in their next unpredictable confrontation.
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