Middle East double-standard
published: Friday | November 28, 2003
A RECENT report in the Los Angeles Times that Israel can now launch nuclear missiles from submarines, thereby putting her nuclear arsenal beyond the reach of any Arab missiles, points to a dangerous tension at the heart of the Middle East.
The ever-closer alignment of US with Israel gives rise to an obvious double-standard. While the US has invaded Iraq and is now applying pressure on neighbouring Iran, all because of the dangers posed by these countries' putative efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, Washington is turning a blind eye to Israel's nuclear build-up.
US administrations have always adopted the attitude that Israel retains its nuclear arsenal purely for defensive purposes. As such, the US says it is not a threat to regional peace.
However plausible this argument might be, it looks to Arabs like semantic quibbling in favour of a friend. The road map to peace which the Bush administration promoted after the Iraq invasion, apparently under British pressure, appears for all practical purposes to have died. Not that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has shed many tears: he has been using the cover of the war on terror to go after his country's opponents with little in the way of American criticism.
The Bush administration may well believe that its position on Israeli aggression and weapons of mass destruction is principled and defensible. Be that as it may, it also looks bad, and is unhelpful to regional peace. A more even-handed appearance is needed if the US is to ever play the role of honest peace-broker.
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