U.S. National Security Requires Mideast Peace

[Editor's Note: This essay is part of a series of Audits of the Conventional Wisdom, a project of the Center for International Studies at MIT.]

Two myths have important, distorting effects on the Bush administration's policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First is the optimistic belief that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only a minor obstacle to American foreign policy -- a modest hindrance that will not prevent the United States from achieving its main foreign policy goals. Second is the pessimistic belief that a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is infeasible, so a forceful U.S. push for peace will only waste effort on a fool's errand. These two assumptions have led the administration to adopt a passive policy toward the conflict, declining to offer firm U.S. leadership toward peace.

In fact, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now poses a major threat to U.S. national security. It does this by easing al-Qaeda's recruiting efforts, helping al-Qaeda terrorists to find friendly haven in Arab and Islamic societies, and making Arabs and non-Arab Muslims less willing to cooperate with U.S. efforts to destroy al-Qaeda networks. Accordingly, the U.S. should treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a serious menace to America's safety and move forcefully to end it.

Moreover, a strong U.S. push for peace could well succeed, as many pieces needed for a settlement are now in place. The conflict poses an unprecedented threat but is also ripe for solution.

The al-Qaeda threat and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Whatever helps al-Qaeda endangers the U.S. because al-Qaeda itself still poses a grave danger. We should not be lulled by the quiet since 9/11/01. Al-Qaeda has ambitions to wreak mass havoc and may also have the power. Its gruesome goals are expressed in Osama Bin Laden's declaration that "to kill Americans … civilian and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible." Al-Qaeda's press spokesman, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, has claimed a right for al-Qaeda to kill four million Americans, including two million children.

The U.S. destroyed al-Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan in 2001 and its remaining leadership is now in hiding. This forced it to morph into a more decentralized organization, but it remains dangerous. Today its leaders plot new mayhem from sanctuaries in Pakistan's northwest frontier region and elsewhere. They seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and may also have the opportunity: enough nuclear materials remain poorly secured in Russia to make tens of thousands of Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. Many Soviet nuclear and biological-weapons scientists also remain underpaid or unemployed, ripe for hiring by terrorists.

Why does al-Qaeda endure against U.S. efforts to destroy it? Why does it still find recruits and support? An important reason lies in the poison spread through the Mideast region by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Opinion polls show that the conflict is highly salient in the Arab and Islamic world. Surveys also show that U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine is deeply unpopular among Arabs and Muslims and that the U.S. itself is also deeply unpopular in these quarters. Further, polls show that the first and second phenomena cause the third -- that Arabs and Muslims resent the U.S. largely because they care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and disapprove of U.S. policies toward that conflict.

A March 2001 poll commissioned by the University of Maryland asked respondents in five Arab states -- Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Lebanon -- to identify the "single most important issue" for themselves, to include local domestic political issues. In Egypt a whopping 79 percent named the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; 60 percent did so in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE and Lebanon. An additional 20 percent in these last four countries identified the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as among their top three issues. Similarly, a spring 2002 Zogby International survey of five Arab states -- Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia -- found that about two-thirds of respondents viewed the Palestinian issue as "very important" or "the most important" issue facing the Arab world today.