A Rightwing Blueprint for the Middle East

George W. Bush's silence in the face of the destruction of the Palestine Authority (PA) -- and with it, the nine-year-old Oslo peace process -- marks a sweeping change in U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The appeals of Arab allies to rein in Sharon have fallen on utterly deaf ears. The lack of response to date suggests that the Bush White House has now fully embraced the rightwing view that Israel is the U.S.' only strategic ally in the region. And that the interests of Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will have to take second place to the broader "war against terrorism."

This shift in perspective marks a huge and potentially decisive victory for a coalition of largely Jewish neo-conservatives and Christian Right Republicans both inside and outside the administration. They have argued with increasing vehemence in recent months that Washington's traditional deference -- which they label as "appeasement" -- to Arab rulers is ultimately counter-productive.

Who is the Pro-Israel Lobby?

Members of the anti-Arab lobby within the administration include: Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the second and third in command at the Pentagon respectively; Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser; Elliott Abrams, a senior member of the National Security Council Staff; John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for international security; and John Ashcroft, the evangelical Christian who heads the Department of Justice. It is also evident that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney generally share the views of their immediate deputies.

Outside the White House, William Bennett-- the influential former Reagan and Bush Sr. appointee who often spans the divide between neo-cons and the Christian Right -- is one of the prominent advocates of Israel. "America's fate and Israel's fate are one and the same," he wrote two weeks ago. Criticizing the State Department for calling on Sharon to exercise restraint, Bennett claimed that "Israel is being pressured so that we can assuage countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet it just so happens that those countries are responsible for the reappearance of the worst forms of anti-Jewish propaganda since (Nazi Propaganda Minister) Joseph Goebbels."

Bennett's article was one of dozens that have been churned out by the pro-Likud Right through publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Washington Times, as well as the nationally syndicated columns of Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, and Michael Kelly.

Targeting the State Department

Many of these sources favor the even harder line of Sharon's main Likud rival, Benyimin Netanyahu. They have not hesitated to attack Sharon himself when he has shown any hesitation in destroying the Oslo peace process -- an initiative they have opposed from the outset.

But their principal target has been the State Department, and especially its Near East Bureau, which the Right believes has long been a hotbed of pro-Arab, if not anti-Semitic, sentiment. In their view, the Bureau's analysts (and Mideast specialists in the Central Intelligence Agency which tend to back up the Bureau) are simply wrong.

For example, the State Department's perspective -- which is shared by virtually all Mideast specialists in the United States, Europe, and even Israel -- sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a central factor in the region's politics. Bureau analysts argue that any effort by Washington to build Arab support for an attack on Iraq will be made far more difficult by an escalation of the conflict or, worse, the complete collapse of the peace process. Their view of Israeli actions is best summed up by Nicholas Veliotes, retired head of the Bureau and ambassador to Egypt, who told CNN that the situation "in the West Bank and Gaza is an obscenity," which will badly damage U.S. interests in the region.