US tells Israel to back down

Dubai: Washington will be talking tough with Israel this week when it dispatches four senior foreign policy and security officials to tell Israel to back down on colony construction in the West Bank and to shelve any plan to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The announcement came as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned Israel of retaliation if such an operation was carried out.

"If the Zionist regime [Israel] attacks Iran, we will surely strike its nuclear facilities with our missile capabilities," Mohammad Ali Jafari, Guards commander-in-chief, told Iran's Arabic language Al Alam television.

The latest events indicate a growing rift between the US and its long-standing ally Israel. "There certainly is a strain between the US and Israel, as much as the leaders attempt to keep a polite tone," Nathan Brown, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Gulf News.

Today, US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell will meet with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she expected "fruitful" talks.

"Senator Mitchell is exploring deeply with the Syrians how they would respond to renewed negotiations with the Israelis," Clinton said. "The timing on that, the simultaneity of it, that's all to be determined." Syrian foreign minister Walid Al Mua'allem also expressed optimism over the meeting, saying his country is working to rebuild its diplomatic relationship with the United States.

Israel seems to be finding itself in an increasingly uncomfortable position. Last week Clinton told a press conference in Thailand that the US was prepared to arm the Gulf States to create a "defence umbrella" in the region, seemingly admitting Washington's inability to halt Iran's enrichment programme through diplomacy.

Israel has repeatedly stated it would not wait indefinitely and would take matters into its own hands before Iran was able to build a nuclear-armed missile.

However, Obama's senior military advisers have said that a strike could cause more problems than it would solve in the short run.

On the issue of colony activity, Israel has been under increasing international pressure as it continues with a controversial plan in the Arab populated Silwan district of Occupied East Jerusalem that has destroyed Arab homes to make way for a tourist park. Colonists also continue their land grab in the West Bank by setting up illegal outposts.

We are yet to see any results, and results is all that matters. Until them I believe we are all looking at these dialogues from a distance of doubt.
Latif Shaikh
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 26, 2009, 12:46